Reply to the Heroic Susan Collins of Maine

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.