Open Letter to Senator Carl Levin

Senator Carl Levin
℅ United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510-2202

April 20th, 2012

    
Dear Senator Levin,

I received your letter, dated March 12th, 2012, explaining your reasoning for rejecting my request, as your constituent, that you vote in favour of Senator Blunt's amendment (S.AMDT.1520) to the Surface Transportation bill (S.1813) that would have granted all Americans the right to choose whichever insurance coverages they would provide for themselves or their employees based on the already Constitutionally guaranteed right to free exercise of their religion. Although, based on your history, I expected a negative response to my plea; what I did not expect was the nature of your response. There are many statements within it that either suggest wilful negligence on your part regarding the matters that constitute the very core of your duties as a United States' Senator, or, on the other hand, wilful obfuscation of the truth. Both possibilities are extremely troubling, but I can see no others.

In the second paragraph, for instance, regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, P.L.111-148) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (P.L.111-152), collectively known as health care reform, or more colloquially "ObamaCare," you state that "Under current law, insurance companies are required to offer preventive health coverage for certain services free of charge." It would seem that this statement is referring to the so-called "accommodation" suggested by President Obama in response to many Americans' objections to the Health and Human Services' (HHS) mandate that all employers (save a very few, of whom we shall speak of later), not insurance companies, provide coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations for their employees, and that all private citizens who do not have jobs must buy the same coverage. The "accommodation" that would have shifted the burden (only in theory, not in practice) to insurance providers, however, is nowhere found in the law as it currently stands. It was merely presented as a possibility in a press conference mere hours before Secretary Sebelius published the previously mentioned mandate "without change." Thus, this statement is nothing more than an untruth. And, even if the aforementioned "accommodation" had been written into the law, it would be idiocy to believe that the economics of insurance companies would actually make it possible for them to provide any of their coverage "free of charge" to the consumer. Thus, I cannot help but believe one of two things about why you have written this. Either you are 1) both negligent of the very basics of economics as they relate to insurance and of the current status of the legislation that you yourself helped to pass (which strongly suggests to me that you are either overworked to the point of exhaustion or that you have a general disregard for the specifics of those things which most immediately pertain to your position and thus, either out of a concern for your health or concern over your job performance—well, both, really—you should be replaced at the next election), or 2) you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts in an attempt to confuse or mislead me (which again strongly suggests that you need to be replaced at the next election). Either way, the blatant falsehood here is most disconcerting.

The next problematic statement entails an incorrect remark regarding the same matter. In the fifth paragraph, you write, "In response, the administration worked with concerned groups and forged a compromise to allay their concerns." In this case, I would call this statement more of a... slight of words (worthy of President William Clinton) than an outright lie. Firstly, to state that the administration "worked with concerned groups" is a bit of a stretch since the most concerned group, namely the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), was never consulted but rather told that negotiations of any kind were completely "off the table"1, though they were cordially invited to the White House in order to personally receive this proverbial slap in the face from President Obama, so I suppose some might call that "work[ing] with concerned groups." Secondly, as stated above, the administration presented a hypothetical "compromise"—a compromise, I might add, that in no way allayed the concerns of the USCCB or any other truly concerned group of American citizens—but then at nearly the same moment published the HHS mandate "without change." Thus, in order to assume here that you did not intend to lie, I am forced instead to assume that you meant a play on the word "forged" insinuating to the naïve reader that a compromise had indeed been "created" (one definition of "forged") when in fact you meant that a compromise had been "faked" (a second definition of "forged"; i.e. "created a falsehood with no actual value or truth behind it"). This is thus, at best an ignorance of the truth, and at worst a deliberate twisting of it. Unfortunately, either reading is distressing, given your responsibility to your constituents. Either we are to believe that you lied, telling us that a compromise that actually addresses the concerns of the USCCB and millions of other religious and non-religious Americans has been entered into law where none such has, or we are to believe that you feel that some sort of nefarious slight of hand on the part of the administration (and now on your own part) in order to deceive us is nothing to be concerned about (given the generally accepting tone of your letter in relation to this "forgery"). Again, either interpretation is very distressing and, again, suggests an attitude vastly unbecoming of a United States Senator.

Thus ends the obfuscation, but, not the distressing implications regarding your attitude toward your responsibilities to the American People and the Constitution of these United States of America. In the seventh paragraph, you finally address the amendment which was the actual subject of my initial correspondence with you, saying, "Senator Blunt's amendment would go far beyond nullifying the administration's rule to implement the provisions contained in the ACA requiring access to some preventative services at no cost." When you say that the Blunt amendment "would go far beyond nullifying the administration's rule," you are absolutely correct, since the administrations rule went far beyond the scope of the government's power under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Yet you seem to think that thusly safeguarding the freedoms granted to Americans under the Constitution is a bad thing. The "administration's rule," aka "the HHS mandate," restricted the power of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to a smaller sphere than had ever been considered before in the history of this country: essentially granting it only to those Americans who in no way allow the exercise of their religion to inform any portion of their life. This is an absurd and appalling interpretation of the First Amendment, especially when one considers that the man who apparently conceived of it, President Barack Obama, was trained as a Constitutional lawyer! Anyone with even the most basic understanding of the Constitution and its history knows that the Bill of Rights was never meant to be limited by the very government that it was written to limit such that the American People would no longer be protected by it. So, you're absolutely right that the Blunt amendment "would go far beyond" the administration's unprecedented and wildly unconstitutional mandate; that is merely because the administration, in issuing it, went far beyond its authority under the bounds of the very Constitution that brought that administration into existence. The Blunt amendment actually dared to reinstate, with the force of law, the First Freedom of all Americans as guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Frankly, I am appalled to find that that kind of faithful adherence to the founding documents of this great nation is somehow repugnant to you, a man whose very livelihood depends very directly on that same Constitution which you apparently disregard so flippantly!

Finally, you state, with supreme (and apparently blind) irony, that "Congress took a bold and historic step by passing healthcare reform in 2010." Again, I must wholeheartedly agree with your words, while completely disagreeing with the salutatory tone in which you write them. Congress did indeed take a bold and historic step: for the first time in history, by passing a law with virtually no specifics yet written into it upon passage, you gave the administration the apparent power to override the United States Constitution in a way that curtails the very freedoms upon which this great nation was founded. The fact that you either are incapable of seeing this reality, or see it as a good thing is utterly astounding. That you hold the Constitution, and the Liberties for which generations of self-sacrificing Americans have given their lives, with so little regard deeply grieves me.

Frankly, Senator, everything in your letter gives me great pause, and it is for this reason that I have taken so long to respond to it: I wished to give it due and careful consideration. What I find most troubling is that I can see only two possible causes for the blatant falsehoods and misrepresentations of the truth found in your letter. One the one hand, it is possible that you are truly ignorant of the facts of these tmatters. On the other hand, assuming the first option is false, one is left to assume that you are deliberately lying to myself and the rest of your constituency (since I know that this is a form letter because my wife received an identical one). It is my fervent wish to give you the benefit of the doubt by assuming the very best I can of you. However, with these choices, I do not know which option casts the most favorable light upon you. In the first case, I am left to believe that you are ignorant of the very things that your position, as a U.S. Senator, requires you to deal with day in and day out. It is these very facts and others like them upon which you are called to make judgements every day on the floor of Congress. So, if I assume that you believe that the things you have said are true, then you are negligent in the fulfillment of your duties, and not merely negligent but egregiously so, given the ease with which I, a common citizen, am able to find out the error in them. In the second case, the assumption is that you are doing your due diligence as you act on the Congressional floor, but you are deliberately lying to your constituents about doing so. This is, to me, just as egregious as the first option, since you have merely replaced one unconscionable form of disrespect for the duty that the American people have entrusted you with for another form of disrespect. In the first case, you disrespect us by not doing due diligence in the first place; in the second, you disrespect us by implicitly stating by these falsehoods that you believe we, whose servant you claim to be, are either unworthy of knowing the truth about that which we ask you to do on our behalf, or incapable of understanding it as you do. Put another, more crass, way, either you think we're too stupid to realize that you aren't bothering to do your job as well as we expect you to do, or you think we're too stupid to understand the complexities of it and so we should stop bothering you with our pathetic and ignorant attempts to explain our views on the issues you deal with because we can't possibly know what's best for ourselves and our country. Again, I want to believe the best about you; I do not want to believe that you are mishandling the trust placed in you by the people of Michigan. However, neither of these options—the only two options which seem supportable by the letter you sent to us—allows me to do that. Both suggest that you have little to no regard for the citizens of Michigan who voted you into office, who pay your paycheck, and who are immediately effected by everything you do in office. And that, sir, is a profoundly unacceptable attitude, no matter how you look at it.

In the past, I have chosen to vote against your re-election because I believed that we merely disagreed on policies and other issues and thus other candidates would better represent me in the Senate. But in the future, I must vote—and much more than that, I must and shall loudly and profusely advocate—against your re-election based on the now blatant fact that you have little or no regard for the hearts, minds, and lives of your constituency, and that you likewise have little or no regard for the very principles and documents upon which this country in general, and your elected position much more specifically, are founded. As such, I no longer consider you merely a Senator with whom I disagree, but rather a man who is not fit to be a Senator because he has lost sight of the profound gravity and responsibility inherent in that position.

    
Disappointedly, your constituent and fellow American,
    
    
Jackford R. Macarius B. Kolk

1. March 3 Letter from Cardinal Dolan to Members of the USCCB, page 3, http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/upload/Dolan-to-all-bishops-HHS.pdf, Accessed April 20, 2012.