BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

BULLETIN: This just in. Pittsfield mayor Linda Tyer has suffered her second major defeat. She announced today she’s killing the toter-garbage scheme. Her announcement, in which she spent the first two thirds saying why it was such a great idea, offered no other plan in its place. City Hall sources told THE PLANET that Tyer plans to launch a pay-as-you-throw system. Again, no details were shared.

THE PLANET later heard from other sources, more informed, who say the pay-as-you-go plan is the still-birth brainchild of councilor’s John Krol and newbie Helen Moon. It would be safe to infer than Moon, as a rookie, would not propose such an initiative on her own. We are pursuing the “why.” We have to credit the Mayr for listening to citizens and small businesses on this. It’s not easy to back off, but she did it.

We understand why Moon. Would fall in line, but why would Krol, as a ward councilor, be so eager to switch to such a citywide plan? It’s a query that leaves a trail, one THE PLANET shall be following. With city hall a mess of intrigue, we almost have no choice. Many want to talk, no one wants to use names, and we only have to tightening up the screen through which we sift the info.

And not to state the obvious, but some of those sources credited this website’s early and relentless coverage as a major factor in winning this battle for We The People. While we would not make that claim, we nonetheless realize our unraveling the toter plan in a way no other media outlet did got both councilor’s and constituents riled, in a good pay, that is, in a productive way.

Now, to our regularly scheduled column.

First in a series

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY MARCH 14, 2018) — The most underrated president of the 20th century is also the most misunderstood. His name is Herbert Clark Hoover.

Prior to becoming involved in public office, Hoover had already carved out a remarkable career as a businessman of stunning organizational talent, an entrepreneur willing to take calculated risks that would shrivel others, and a humanitarian who saved millions of Europeans from starving following horror’s aftermath at the close of WWI. Orphaned early, he graduated from Stanford with a degree in geological engineering.

Hoover took his knowledge overseas, striking pay dirt in the gold fields of Australia and China. He made, lost, and remade a fortune. President Woodrow Wilson enlisted Hoover’s great abilities as a manager during The Great War to prevent a near-disastrous food shortage in devastated Europe. After the war, Hoover, almost single-handedly, helped rescue continental Europe’s economy while issuing a prophetic warning — tragically ignored by the a”victorious” allies — that the excessively harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles would come back to savage the world within a score of years. They did.

In Spain (Franco), Italy ( Mussolini), Germany (Hitler), and the Soviet Union (Stalin), totalitarianism took hold owing in large part because of Versailles. Economies were ruined, and the allies pounded Germany. As the dominant European power central literally in a geographic sense and financially to the continent’s health, Germany had neither the money nor the manufacturing base to satisfy the Allies lust for punishment. The result, Hoover correctly called, set up the conditions ripe for a demagogue. Enter Hitler.

And Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

During Roosevelt’s first run at the Oval Office, in which he ran against incumbent Hoover, Historical revisionists in the Democrat Party acted early in the creation of the myth that Hoover caused The Great Depression during his presidency (1929-32). They weaved this fiction based on the flimsy coincidence and ignoring the fact that presidents do not cause such things. The Depression can be more accurately linked to the international crisis set up by Versailles, and the isolationist financial bubble created in the U.S. by the feverish over-valuation of the stock market on Wall Street. The go.d and capital on the Continent fled to the U.S., helping to create a flush of unearned money that greedy financiers pumped into Wall Street.

The center could not hold.

Hoover, in fact, inherited the Depression from his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, who at the end of his term was a shell of his former shell, a president in name only because of illness. While Wilson slept, world economic forces lurched.

To be continued.

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“Too many fellow’s in town are willing to throw bricks” — Herbert Hoover.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The Usual Disclaimer.