CALLING SPECIAL ATTENTION TO JAY GRIFFIN
I’ve always considered Jay Griffin, whom I’ve known most of my life and worked with on many beneficial projects, to be an exceptional person and the article he wrote in this issue of Point of View (page 13) highlights both his sensitivity and his genius.

UNITY BANK AND THE PPP LOANS
“With over $650 million in assets, Boston-based One United Bank was the second-largest Massachusetts bank not to participate (in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans). One United is the state’s only black-owned bank. It has offices in the Financial District, Roxbury and Dorchester, though most of its deposits are in its Florida and California locations.” (By Greg Ryan in the Boston Business Journal as reprinted in The Republican, April 26, 2020) In the same article, Ryan wrote that Florence Bank in Western Massachusetts was the largest bank not to participate in the PPP. It is notable that Springfield’s newest bank, New Valley Bank and Trust, is participating, which is important because it has already been demonstrated that the older, larger banks that participated favored their older, larger customers who least needed the money.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, TRUMP
Trump did all of us a good favor by endorsing the Republican Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate as did his followers in the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature, which won a battle against Democrats who wanted to delay elections. The court ruled in favor of the Republicans who mistakenly believed that a low turnout was in their favor. The low turnout, it turns out, was on the Republican side. Democratic voters turned out in substantial numbers and the Democratic Supreme Court challenger trounced the incumbent Republican. Keep up the good work, Trump.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, TRUMP
Can you imagine Trump attacking the Midwestern governors, including the highly regarded Michigan governor (70%+ approval rating), the way he recently did as though he doesn’t need those states to win re-election? The myth – in his mind anyway – of his power over all things is beyond comprehension.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, TRUMP
Those Troglodytic Southern Republican governors who are responding to Trump’s call to remove their coronavirus restrictions will soon discover the folly of their decisions when the deaths start piling up in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee and anywhere else where governors decide to make political decisions contrary to the medical realities. The tragedy is that the people will suffer.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, TRUMP
Keep attacking the trusted Dr. Anthony Fauci. And fire him! It will be the last straw for those many Americans who trust Dr. Fauci and distrust you.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, TRUMP Keep giving medical advice that kills people while your poll numbers continue to decline and we will surely be rid of you in the next election.

IF YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR HAND SANITIZER, DON’T EXPECT IT SOON
According to The Boston Globe (April 15, 2020), hand sanitizer will not be readily available for some time–even though companies are producing more–for several reasons, one of which is that the plastic bottles used to package it are in short supply and health care organizations are getting shipments first. Additionally, one of the key ingredients used to make the hand sanitizer is also in short supply. Inexcusable in America!

“THE LOOMING BATTLE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND STUPIDITY”
Boston Globe columnist Scott Lehigh summed it up best in the above captioned article (April 24, 2020) in which he quoted philosopher Friedrich Schiller who wrote: “Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain.”

“SAY IT LOUD, SAY IT CLEAR: DONALD TRUMP NEEDS TO RESIGN”
The above headline in the Boston Sunday Globe (April 26, 2020) says it all. But the writer, Michael Cohen, was even more precise when he wrote: “It’s not just the catalogue of screw-ups that led us to this point – the playing down of the threat, the lack of testing, the spread of misinformation and lies, and the government-wide inattention to the issue. It’s that Trump represents an ongoing danger to the health and well-being of the American people.” (For Trump’s most recent spectacular gaff, see Marjorie Hurst’s “Trump Alerts on page 23, which also includes the sane words of our much-missed previous president.)

MASSACHUSETTS SJC TO THE RESCUE
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s (SJC) decision to reduce by 50% the number of signatures candidates need to qualify for the ballot is just another example of the Court’s fairness and fearlessness. “Fairness,” because it is the right thing to do under the circumstances of a pandemic that no candidate could have anticipated. “Fearlessness,” because the legislature was dragging its feet in a shameless effort to protect its members. The Massachusetts House of Representatives refused outright to change the rules and the Senate voted to change the rules for all candidates except for those running for Senate offices in a “petty” move to protect its own members from outside challengers. The Boston Herald’s Joe Battenfeld wrote it best: “The legislature is first and foremost guided by political self-preservation and saving its members’ own hides, and nowhere was that more evident than the dispute over whether to lower the number of required signatures to get on the ballot.” (April 18, 2020) In the same article, Battenfeld made the astute observation that the Senate vote was intended “to bail out U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, who was having trouble getting his 10,000 signatures.” (At last count, Markey was about 3,000 short so the SJC ruling saved him a big embarrassment.) The SJC ruling also allowed candidates to submit e-signatures through the internet and pushed back the filing date from May 5 to June 2. A lot of late filing candidates must feel relieved while the early filers might feel a bit cheated. But it was the right thing for the Court to do.

ALAN SISITSKY AND THE “SILENCE OF THE LAMBS”
Some might remember former Massachusetts Senator Alan Sisitsky who was determined to “do the right thing no matter the consequences.” He was “a strong consumer advocate” who “fought for the little guy” and was known for his “public battles with powerful figures” in his own Democratic Party. He was a State Representative from 1968 to 1972 and a State Senator from 1972 to1982, after which he left to practice law in Springfield. I had just returned to Springfield in 1968 after graduating from Howard University and Alan Sisitsky became one of my early local heroes. I left Springfield for Chicago in the mid-seventies and returned in 1981 and shortly thereafter Alan Sisitsky retired from the Senate an apparently broken man whose lonely and relentless battles with entrenched authority seemed to have finally worn him down. And I’ve often wondered since then, as I observed the “follow-the-leader” nature of our current legislators, if we would ever again know an Alan Sisitsky or anything close to him. I doubt it  because it seems that individual courage among our state legislators will not soon suffer from overabundance. We’ll just have to comfort ourselves with an Supreme Judicial Court that is willing to cut against the grain of a legislature whose primary purpose revolves around protecting the longevity of its members. So sad.

SURPRISE! WE’RE ALL THE SAME
It was late at night. Actually early morning when I was flicking through the channels with the TV turner looking for something of interest that might eventually put me back to sleep when I came across a Libyan comic who must have been a Muslim based upon a joke he told that put me in stitches. I listened to him for awhile out of curiosity because I had never known (possibly to my chagrin) a comic who identified as Libyan. And he was funny, talking about how he migrated to America after serving as an English interpreter for our military and found himself all alone and lonely and decided to become a stand-up comedian as a remedy. He had the audience laughing like hell and, as good comics often do, suddenly and subtly switched to a completely unrelated subject saying, “I’ve read the Bible a thousand times (briefly hesitating) in order to know my enemy (brief hesitation) and discovered we’re all the same.” As one who has read the Bible and the Koran and who considers himself an amateur but earnest student of history, I got a special laugh out of this humble and honest observation from a Muslim who could have been justified emphasizing distinctions that some say divide us but chose to make the simple but elusive observation that we are more alike than different. The primarily Christian audience erupted in laughter as did I. ■