In Your Opinion: Township Democrats Must Oust Prasad

By Mark Grieco, Somerset.

For those busy sharpening their pitchforks in preparation for the Great Hunt for the Emboldened Trumpists Who Don’t Want “Colored” Statues, let me go out on a limb and tell you that particular corner of the fevered Trump Universe is probably a figment of an equally fevered Democratic mind possessed by Councilman Rajiv Prasad. To be sure, there are those who question the location, the need, the process, and the selection of persons to be honored in statuary in the proposed Franklin Peace and Nonviolence Park. They have legitimate concerns, but I suspect the assertion by Prasad that a Trump-inspired plot is behind the park’s opposition smacks of the Q Anon conspiracy drivel swallowed whole by the dimmest of the dim in the Trump cult. Then again, I could be wrong, but when challenged by the township’s Republican Chairman at the September 13th Council meeting to produce evidence of these conspiratorial Trumpists, a long awkward silence by Prasad was followed by a whole lot of nothing in the way of proof. It’s been a week since that meeting, and Prasad has still not produced evidence.

For those who remember the Prasad-inspired Great Hunt for the Nazi Skinheads Who Don’t Want Catalpa Park, this should have been deja vu all over again. Then there was the Great Hunt for the Republicans Suppressing the Black and Asian Vote. Or go back further to when Prasad asserted the township would save $200,000 a year by dumping its own Health Department in favor of a contract with the County Health Department. Like the Emboldened Trumpists, the Nazi Skinheads, and the Vote Suppressors, the annual 200 grand is, to borrow a phrase from my old Appalachian-born sergeant, “about as scarce as hen’s teeth.” It is like the “alternate facts” Trump likes to tweet about; they don’t exist in the real world of real facts. In fact, I’d say Trump and Prasad share a lot in common.