Dear Senator Collins,
I am not going to send you any money. And the fundraising organization that is
conducting this campaign will probably ignore my reply, so my writing one is
actually the sort of lament from the wilderness that you claim yourself to be
doing below. Nevertheless just in case
someone actually deals with feedback from your solicitees I shall write this
anyway, to explain *why* I am not going to send you any money.
You assert that the left is exerting itself to intimidate people
they disagree with. This is certainly
true, and in this regard most of the "news" media are acting in
concert with and therefore acting as part of the Left.
The Left has been engaging in Hate Crimes since before we won in
2016, and all of us voters who made that win happen are the objects of their
hatred. Not just you. Individuals and mobs have been serving the
Left just as the Brownshirts (SA) served Hitler and as the Bolsheviks served
Lenin. We all see video of
"Antifa" (actually, Pro-"fa") mobs threatening citizens
with deadly force on the streets in Portland and in some cases applying
it. Remember that damage done to a
victim which does not heal fully in six months is defined as serious bodily
harm in most States, and that inflicting or threatening to inflict serious
bodily harm is a use of deadly force justifying a response with up to deadly
force to stop the attack.
We common citizens have only the common law and some places
statute law which acknowledge that we have what Blackstone called "the
cardinal human right of self defense."
For most of us common citizens, this human right is our *only* shield
against intimidation and threat of death or grievous bodily harm from Leftist
mobs. For most of us, there is no one
available but ourselves to protect us, and unless we are in a State that allows
us to carry the means for self defense, we are completely defenseless, and
unable to exercise our cardinal right, in the face of deadly Leftist mob
violence.
You ask for money so that you may protect yourself against
intimidation. This is absurd. You are a sitting US Senator and as such have
available to you armed security, to a degree unavailable to most common
citizens, to augment your own right and ability to defend yourself if you so
choose and if your State or District government rulers allow you to do so.
I already pay what is, to me, an obscene amount of money in
Federal taxes which pay your salary and expenses, including I am sure armed
security, in serving as you have been elected to do. Inasmuch as I am solely responsible for my
own defense and that of my family, and inasmuch as the Left's hatred is
directed not merely at politicians but at the people such as me who elected
them, it is I who should be asking your support in my defense, not you asking
me. Let's see you vote enthusiastically
in favor of National reciprocity for State concealed weapon permits, for
example; I am presently not permitted to carry weapons in Oregon and so if I
found myself in Antifa's way there, I would be reduced to begging on my knees
unless I, a 70 year old man, foolishly tried grappling with club wielding, fit
young men. Either way with good luck I
might merely wind up in a hospital. So I
look forward to your support for this.
If on the other hand you are seeking funds to facilitate your
re-election as a US Senator, there are two problems with this. The first is that your duty is to serve the
interests of the State of Maine, not of me or of the State of Wyoming. Therefore it would seem appropriate that you
raise funds from Maine and let we in Wyoming raise funds for the people who
actually represent *our* State.
The only rationale for my contributing money to your next
campaign in Maine would require that I somehow concluded that your actions in
the Senate served my interests and those of Wyoming. Your letter refers to your dramatically
belated consent to the President's appointment of Brett Kavanaugh as though it
is some incredibly laudable act on your part.
I don't agree. Given that Sen
Schumer (the same man who grinned during the House hearings about the murdering
of women and children by Janet Reno's minions in Waco Texas) basically
announced in advance that his party would vote in lockstep to oppose *any*
nominee proposed by the President, the appropriate advice from the entire
Republican party would have been to dispense with hearings not required by the
Constitution and proceed to consent immediately. You simply did the right thing, as did your
peers in this case; but, as you have done on several matters before the Senate
since we elected President Trump, you once again grandstanded for publicity by
taking advantage of the Media's enthusiasm for representing you as some sort of
un- principled swing vote who could be swayed by the winds of public opinion
polls often conducted by those same media.
I might be wrong, but to me it certainly appears that your public
grandstanding is designed to serve Susan Collins and not Maine, the United
States or we citizens. I am also pretty
sure that the reason the Left is perhaps targeting you more than some other
Senators is that rather than simply voting "yea" you milked the
situation for as much publicity as you could get. If that is not the case, you need to redesign
your messaging because that is exactly what it conveys now, at least to me.
My problem with supporting your next campaign, Senator, is that
in many of your past grandstandings you finally cast your vote in ways that *do
not* serve the interests of me, my family, my State, our my Nation. For simply one example: Perhaps you do not fully understand what the
falsely named "Affordable Care Act" has done to destroy the
feasibility of insuring a working family in this country. Up until 2010 I could insure a person
extremely well using a high deductible major medical policy and just paying for
most services and medications up to the deductible. Total cost on the order of $4500 per year
with no services needed, 8500 per year max and thereafter no co-pay and no practical
upper limit.
Last year, only seven years later, the least expensive Obama
approved non short term policy available for my 40 year old domestic partner
here in Wyoming would have cost us $7200 a year in premiums and a $6000
deductible, with 50% co-pay after the deductible. Let me help with the arithmetic. This means a guaranteed loss of $7200 every
year. It means no help whatsoever with
our expenses until we have paid out a total of $13,200 cash in one year (mandatory
premium plus deductible amount.)
Thereafter the 50% co-pay applies.
What this means is a minimum health care cost of $7200 per year for a
healthy person who needs none, and it also means that the Obama approved policy
*only increases* the cost of health care above and beyond what the cash price
would be, unless a person's annual cost of health care actually exceeds a
number on the order of $20,000 at which point it starts producing a small
benefit. This assumes, of course, that
the unfortunate insured is not already bankrupt after having shelled out more
than $20,200 herself (7200 + 6000 + 14000/2) as of that point. If so, then the lucky insured would find that
the *next* 20k worth that year only cost her another $10k, again assuming she
was not yet bankrupt. And of course it
all begins again at the start of the next year.
Seven years is a mighty short time for these costs to change
that much given that the reason for the change was a cynically deceptive claim
by the Left of making the whole business of personal survival
"affordable". George Orwell
could not have misnamed it better.
I will not send you even $10 because you have voted to preserve
this obscene scam known as the ACA. My
family needs to conserve its money to pay the drastically increased costs which
we must endure thanks to the ACA, and we can only shudder when thinking about
what next move the Leftists, probably with your thoughtful, deliberative and
publicity-rich assistance, plan to make with that knife they have shoved into,
and which you have voted to leave in, our backs.
Very Respectfully – Greg, a common citizen who loves liberty and
despises hypocrisy.
