A Letter to Colorado Senator Cory Gardner

Buck Heroux
4 min readFeb 2, 2017

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Dear Senator Gardner,

My name is Buck Heroux and I am a Colorado native raised in Colorado’s Second District. There are a few issues I would like to discuss with you in this letter in addition to the voicemail I left at your Washington DC number of 202–224–5941. I would like to ask you to consider some issues that I believe to be tantamount to the safety of Colorado communities as well as the integrity of our nation.

First I ask you to oppose the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.

During her confirmation hearing, Senator Al Franken questioned her on what her thoughts of growth versus proficiency and it was clear that she does not have a grasp on either concept and certainly not enough of an understanding to form an educated opinion. The failure to understand these basic and important concepts in education calls her competency to lead our nation’s schools into question.

Considering the history of school related gun violence in Colorado, I would hope you understand that any issue involving schools and guns is a complex one. Her claims of allowing guns in schools for protection from wildlife again shows a shallow knowledge of a deep issue and is not a sound excuse to allow guns into Colorado schools. I attended Middle Park High School in Grand County which is largely a mountain community and wildlife was never a threat to any students, however our school suffered from multiple gun related fatalities to my former classmates.

The growing cost of our higher education is saddling a generation of American’s with decades of debt. Ms. DeVos would be taking on this issue front and center, but as a billionaire herself has no experience with student loan debt in any form and the weight it can carry on a citizen’s livelihood. As a University of Colorado alumni, I hope you uphold our alma mater’s spirit of merit and oppose her appointment.

I oppose many other of this administration’s appointments and hope you can take these thoughts into account when voting on cabinet confirmations.

  • Scott Pruitt for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is currently suing the EPA, which he will be in charge of.
  • Rick Perry for Energy Secretary has campaigned to end the Energy Department with the credentials of a degree in Animal Husbandry. The previous two secretaries have been renowned physicists.
  • Jeff Sessions for Attorney General is against immigration and has been plagued with accusations of bigotry throughout his career.
  • Linda McMahon for Small Business Administrator cofounded World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) which has effectively become a monopoly by muscling out smaller wrestling productions.
  • Steve Bannon as Chief Strategy preaches national division and not unity with his extreme partisanship statements like the following from 2014 addressing liberals, “Darkness is good, Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”
  • Jared Kushner is in line for a Senior Advisor role and is Trump’s son-in-law which is blatant nepotism.
  • Michael Flynn for National Security Advisor has close Russian ties and fueled the widely debunked “pizzagate” conspiracy.
  • Carl Icahn who specializes in hostile company takeovers demonstrates his conflict of interests as the Senior Advisor on Regulatory Reform.
  • Andrew Pudzer for Labor Secretary is the CEO of Carl’s Junior and directly opposes worker protections and any federal minimum wage.

I would like to commend your thoughtful statement opposing the blanket travel ban on foreign nationals. As you are aware, the ban undermines a core value of our country and is a domestic attack on legal immigrant’s freedoms. I am relieved to hear your explicit opinion on the matter and that you have aligned yourself with many other proud Coloradans.

I ask you to apply pressure to remove Steve Bannon from the National Security Council.

Please support other elected Colorado officials and members of your party such as John McCain to do your part in provoking dissent for the inclusion of Steve Bannon on the National Security Council. The White House claiming his credentials as a former naval officer pales in comparison to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joseph Dunford who is to be denied permanent status on the committee with Director of National Intelligence to make room for Mr. Bannon. Bannon is a self styled “Leninist” and has explicitly stated his goals in this 2014 statement:

“Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too, I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment”.

The dangers of allowing someone with these goals in mind to project influence over matters of national security are self-evident. His rumored involvement in the current immigration ban with regards to the inclusion of permanent residences in the ban already demonstrates his incendiary nature.

Thank you for your thoughtful reading of this letter and expect many more from myself and other concerned Coloradans.

Sincerely,

— Buck Heroux

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