For What it’s Worth: Warren Hecht

I must hand it to the progressives. They are doing their best to make sure that the Republican Party will take over the House of Representatives, the Senate, and more state legislatures or governorships. One of the Democrats’ strongest arguments is that Republicans in many states are changing the rules for voting after Trump’s loss to make it harder to vote and take control away from non-partisan election officials and giving it to the legislature. Then the NYC Council passed a law that allowed voting in a municipal election by “a person who is not a United States citizen on the date of the election on which he or she is voting, who is either a lawful permanent resident or authorized to work in the United States, who is a resident of New York City and will have been such a resident for 30 consecutive days or longer by the date of such election.”

One of the reasons Joe Biden was elected president was because the majority of people wanted someone who could unify the country. They were sick of the divisiveness they felt was caused by Donald Trump.

On January 5, 2021, the country was divided. There was Trump and many of his supporters claiming election fraud, namely, that the election was stolen from him. Then there was the rest of the country, which accepted the results. There was no court or any recount that supported Trump’s claims. A year has passed since then and nothing has changed. The Big Lie of election fraud is still being made. There have been more recounts and court proceedings which upheld the election results.

It is hard in this highly-polarized country for both sides to come to an agreement. Former President Trump’s Chief of Staff and former member of the House of Representatives Mark Meadows hit the daily double by getting both sides mad at him. It took a lot of talent for Meadows to get himself in this predicament. Meadows was asked to provide documents and testimony to the January 6 House Select Committee. His initial approach, which I believe was the correct approach, was to cooperate.

Last year, I was mentioned in 49 letters to the editor in this paper. The topic that received the greatest discussion was my article in the July 22 edition, titled “Struck Out.” I thought we could move on. However, Rabbi Schonfeld, in last week’s Queens Jewish Link, wrote on the issue of an orthodox ice skater, Hailey Kops, who is representing Israel at the Winter Olympics. I do not want to repeat my arguments stated back in July. You can look at them online.  However, I need to address a few comments made by Rabbi Schonfeld.

A friend of mine said, tongue in cheek, that one good thing about my having surgery is that I will have something to write about. This may have been a subtle hint that I should not write about politics since he and I have very different views. He will be disappointed, since I must mention about the death of former U.S. Senator and majority leader Robert Dole on December 5, which also happens to be the same English date as my father’s death. His death is a reminder of how far this country has fallen.