Coburn talks Jackson, Bartlett, Bridenstine endorsements with Pat Campbell

Tulsa talk radio host Pat Campbell had former senator Tom Coburn on his program this morning to discuss Coburn's endorsements of Jarrin Jackson (2nd District), Dewey Bartlett (Tulsa mayor) and Jim Bridenstine (1st District).

The interview begins with the 2nd District race, and Coburn's reasoning on why he came out against incumbent Markwayne Mullin and supports his challenger, Jarrin Jackson.

Regarding Mullin, Coburn said, "Integrity is the only thing that really counts in politics. and when you tell somebody, you make a commitment to somebody that you're going to do something, and then you start wavering on that commitment, you have no standing with me at all after that." Coburn called Mullin after news broke that he was wavering on his term limits pledge, and Mullin still refused to say he would keep his pledge. In the interview, Coburn goes on to say "[Markwayne Mullin] doesn't have the integrity to keep his word, and to me that's the most important thing."

On Jarrin Jackson, Coburn said "He'll be another Jim Bridenstine if he's elected."

Campbell and Coburn talked about the Tulsa mayoral race. Coburn endorsed Dewey Bartlett in his first race, and supports him for reelection. Coburn appreciates Bartlett's business background and desire to serve Tulsa without making a career in politics. He went on to say "The criticisms I've heard of Dewey are minor in comparison to the risks of having some young guy with really no real world experience except politics - I mean, that's all there is, there's nothing there except politics - being the mayor of Tulsa."

When the conversation moved to the 1st District race, Coburn said "Bridenstine was the easiest endorsement I've ever done in my life. He votes right. Every time. I don't have to worry about how Jim Bridenstine votes, because he's going to look at the Constitution, he's going to look at limited government, he's going to vote that way. Every time, no matter what the rest of the Oklahoma delegation does."

Listen to the whole interview below:

In his own words: one-on-one with James Lankford (part 2)

I recently conducted a telephone interview with U.S. Senate candidate and 5th District Congressman James Lankford. This is the second half of the interview (read the first half here):

JF: The federal tax system is a mess. What do you propose to do to fix it?
JL: I’m a FairTax person. I would much rather prefer to have the FairTax. The problem we have is only about 60 people in the House of Representatives are supporters of the FairTax. You’ve got to have 218 people to be able to do anything, to move any set of ideas in the House. We don’t have the majority. The Flat Tax people are in the same spot. They don’t have near the number to be able to form a coalition large enough to be able to move the Flat Tax. And now we’re stuck with “what can we do?”

Dealing with deductions and rates. Our rates are too high, both for businesses and for individuals, and you’ve added in all these deductions over the years to try to fix a very high rate. It’s better to just lower the rate and to take out all those special treatments, so that we can simplify the code as much as we possibly can. The code should be neutral. The best thing that we can have is an IRS that is not looking over everyone’s shoulder trying to evaluate what they can do for free speech, or what they can do with their own group. It’s simpler just to be able to say, “how can we have an IRS, that is a clear code” and individuals know how to follow it, and remove all that interpretation as much as possible from the IRS. It removes the power of the IRS. That’s why I like the FairTax system, because it renders any kind of tax collection as simply that, and not an interpretation.

JF: Some grassroots conservatives have become disenchanted with Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate. Do you think it is time for Senate Republicans to look at having, perhaps, new leadership?
JL: I think I’d be saying that every group will look at both the House and the Senate, it has to be decided every time, but there’s two aspects that go into that. Number one is, who’s actually running for leadership? A lot of people talk about leadership issues, but they don’t actually run for leadership. It’s akin to someone saying, “we ought to have a new Congressman”, or “we ought to have a new Senator in this state”, and someone says “great, then why don’t you run?”, and they say “well, I don’t want to do it, I just think we ought to have somebody else do it”. We find that commonly in House leadership and Senate leadership as well. People complain about leadership, but no one else wants to actually run and do it and stick their neck out, and actually try to accomplish it. Now should the House, and should the Senate press leadership to be as conservative as possible? Actually, we should. One of the reasons I got engaged in House leadership was to be able to press our leadership as far to the right as we can get them. And there have been moments when, in closed door meetings, I’ve been able to plead my case why a more conservative move is better, and won the argument. The only way that you can do that is to actually get engaged and do it. You can’t do it from the outside. For me, it’s a big issue. I do want to make one thing clear, though. People try to make House leadership the problem. I can assure you – Harry Reid and Barack Obama are the bigger problem. The more that Republicans beat up on other Republicans the more we take the focus off where it should be, and that is Harry Reid and Barack Obama.

JF: What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment thus far in elected office?
JL: That’s a tough one, Jamison. I try to narrow it down to one thing or something to say this is the greatest accomplishment, but there’s just different directions that I’ve been able to focus on. Let me just throw a couple. I asked to be on the Budget Committee when I first went to Congress, because of the significant issue of how do we get on top of our budget. Four years in a row, of putting a budget on the floor, that actually takes steps to balance, is very significant. The move in the House is still this little bit of fear and trepidation about doing an aggressive budget to move us back toward balance. But, in the committee that I serve on, we’ve been able to push and say “We have to do this. We’ve got to get us back toward balance. We’ve got to show the American people there is a way to do this.”

I’ve been able to push very hard on the Administration in several areas of oversight. While a lot of people talk about these oversight hearings don’t accomplish anything - that’s not proven to be true. The Administration wasn’t doing permitting for the export of liquefied natural gas until I started pushing. And now they’re starting to permit the export of LNG, and this was before we dealt with the Ukraine issues, because I was pushing. The Administration snuck their rule on the social cost of carbon, and to change all the rulemaking on how we do power generation, on everything that uses electricity in America, and I was able to confront them, and they abandoned their rule change and backed off. So, oversight does work. You can push back and win on some of these issues.

I passed a bill called the Taxpayer Right to Know. That is a bill to combat our duplication in government, and one of the major issues we’ve dealt with for a long time is how do we get rid of the waste in government. That bill passed the House, Dr. Coburn has now picked it up in the Senate, and is running with it in the Senate. It is a real solution to get at our duplication in government that we have not had before. It may take a while to get that through.

The fourth thing on this list is the continual push to try to get things back to the states. We made a major change in our transportation bill, that came through two years ago, to give states more authority to make decisions on their highway dollars, and to keep that out of Washington D.C. That was a huge change that’s really made a difference on our construction in our state. I’m pushing the same thing with ObamaCare. The Healthcare Compact that I’m running in the House is starting to build some momentum, and if we can get people to wake up and look at it and say “the states can run healthcare issues far better than the federal government can”, it’s a bold idea that has never been picked up and run in the House on the federal side, and I’m picking it up and running with it. It’s just the right way to go.

JF: Why should voters elect you over your primary opponents?
JL: Well, I’m the only redhead, so, clearly that’s an advantage. I am a person that is really committed to doing my homework, studying the issues, and doing the work behind the scenes. That’s who I am. I’m really did not enter into the fray of the national battle three years ago because I wanted to do a political career. There are major issues that have to be resolved. I felt called in 2009 to run for Congress, and to do what I could to make a difference. I feel that same calling now to step into the Senate and do what I can to be able to serve God and the nation. So I’m gonna not just gripe about the fact that there are problems, and say we have gridlock, I’m gonna find a way to be able to move some of these ideas and move us toward the most conservative solutions, and to try to get some things actually done. What I’ve done in the House is what I’m going to continue to do in the Senate.

You can learn more about James Lankford and his campaign for U.S. Senate by visiting JamesLankford.com.

Once again, I'd like to thank James for doing this interview with me. I offered the same chance to T.W. Shannon, but he and his campaign refused to accept.

In his own words: one-on-one with James Lankford (part 1)

I recently conducted a telephone interview with U.S. Senate candidate and 5th District Congressman James Lankford. Due to the length of the interview, I am breaking it up into two parts.

The following is a transcript of the phone interview, taken while Lankford was on the road in western Oklahoma:

JF: What are three things about your personal background that you think voters need to know?
JL: I would say, the first thing people need to know is that I’m happily married, dad of two beautiful daughters, and terribly normal. I didn’t come from a political background; I came from a ministry background, so my perspective is very different as I approach political issues. Being in the House of Representatives the last three years, it’s been fairly obvious the people that have been a decade or more in politics kinda think different, or they grew up in politics, and they think of the political issues as a sport, or as a direction to get to celebrity status rather than problem solving. So, for me, just the background is very different to have come from directing Falls Creek and working with thousands of people every single week, problem solving and trying to form solutions and actually help people long-term. Obviously, my perspective in ministry, and that I come from a Biblical Christian worldview, that’s who I am. That doesn’t change because I’m elected; that’s who I am at home, in office, and in my personal life.

JF: What do you think are the top three issues facing America?
JL: Budget is incredibly high. Whether these are all three co-equals or not, I couldn’t tell you. There’s a clear need to be able to get on top of our deficit. Our debt is not something you’re going to solve in a year. Anyone who tells you that it’s some simple thing that you just take out one agency or stop doing foreign aid, is trying to make an incredibly difficult solution over-simplified. Even if you removed all foreign aid, you’re not close to balancing the budget. In fact, you could remove every bit of our national defense, and still not balance the budget. It’s just not possible to do in a simple, straight-forward way. That is a major issue we have to deal with.

After that, we have to deal with the difference between federal control, and state and local control. Over the past several decades, there’s been a constant push from the states to the federal government, and the federal government is glad to have that, they’re glad to take power from people and states. We have to be able to find a way to push power back to the states. Some of the states don’t want that authority, obviously in Oklahoma we do, but those states say “we don’t want to mess with it”. They would rather have the federal government deal with it, because the federal government can add debt. So we have to solve that.

The third big issue is we have to resolve what the role of government is in our daily life. Not just states and federal government, but what is the role of government, at all. If we can’t resolve those simple principles, of how big our debt is, what is the role of the state, and what is the role of government at all in our daily lives, a lot of the other things aren’t going to matter.

JF: What is your position on term limits?
JL: I do believe in term limits. I’m a little more aggressive on this, I think, than some. I’m not meaning anything about other people in this race, I don’t know where they stand on it, but I believe we should have term limits on the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. We already have term limits on the executive branch. I think all three branches should have term limits. I think the judicial branch should be long, I think that follows the intent of the Constitution, but there’s no way you’re going to tell me the Founding Fathers assumed that someone would be 60 years on the bench or 50 years on the bench, because the life-span wasn’t as long in their time period. So I think there should be term limits on the judicial, should also be term limits on the legislative, as there are on the executive.

JF: What is your position on immigration reform?
JL: This is a very long question, so let me come at it a couple different ways. A lot of people are running from immigration reform, saying it’s too hard and too political. It’s easier just to talk about the problem and say there is a problem than it is to actually engage. It’s been one of my great frustrations in the House of Representatives, how many people are scared of this issue, and so they won’t actually engage and try to solve the problem. One of the things leaders need to do is lead. Now I have no optimism that this President, this Senate, are partners to actually get real immigration reform. They’re not. They’ll talk about it, but they don’t want to do anything. But we do have to lean in, as conservatives, that if we see a problem, you can’t just ignore a problem, you have to solve it.

I deal with several things in my worldview. Number one is, every person is created in the image of God. Every person has value, and what we do and how we speak about people should show that that person is created in the image of God and that they have value in the eyes of God. Second thing is, every person is under the law. There is no exception to that. Every person has rights and responsibilities in the country they’re from, that they’re a citizen of, and in every other country in the world they’re a guest. So, a person cannot walk into the United States and demand the rights of American citizens; they’re not an American, they’re a guest in our country. They’re not legal in our country. And so that’s pivotal in it. So for me it’s treat people with respect, but also honoring the law.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the interview. You can learn more about James Lankford and his campaign for U.S. Senate by visiting JamesLankford.com.

I'd like to thank James for taking the time out of his busy schedule to do this interview with me. I offered the same chance to T.W. Shannon, but after numerous contacts through several different means, he and his campaign refused to get back with me. He would have been asked the same questions as I asked Lankford.

KFAQ's Pat Campbell interviews Don Rumsfeld

 Tulsa talk radio host Pat Campbell landed a big interview for his show this morning. 1170 KFAQ's morning host was joined by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was on to talk about his new book (Known and Unknown), as well as the past and present situation in the Middle East.

You can listen to the entire segment here.

Some people hated the man during his tenure as Defense Secretary, but I always liked "Rummy". Especially when he dealt with the media, he brought a special kind of humor. Take this quote from his interview with Pat Campbell:

"Well, you know, I've lived a third of the history of our country (which is a breathtaking thought, that we have such a young country, or that I'm so old)."

That got me to thinking - surely it couldn't be a third!

Yes. Literally a third of America's history. 2011 minus 1776 equals 235 years. Don Rumsfeld was born in 1932, so he'll be 79 in July. 79 plus 78 plus 78 is 235. As crazy as it sounds, Rummy and others his age have seen one third of America's entire history!
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[On a different topic, but still from Pat Campbell, is a story about 'America's most injured soldier' returning to war. I recommend taking a look at it.]

Interview with David Dank on Property Tax Reform

One of the issues in the Legislature this year, besides the current fiscal crisis, is a debate regarding property tax reform. I was at the State Capitol this week, and had the chance to interview State Rep. David Dank (R-OKC), the chief proponent of reforming how the property tax is evaluated here in Oklahoma.

Here is an excerpt from my talk with Dank.

Jamison Faught: Now on the property tax bill...
David Dank: I have two: one that would freeze the seniors [property tax], and then actually the other one I had to sign over to Mike Jackson, and that was a ploy the Speaker did so that he could keep control of it. That was the 5% to 3% cap reduction. He wouldn't hear it if it were mine.
JF: Property tax. What exactly does the property tax fund?
DD: It is local, and it helps fund education, the county government, the career techs, the libraries, and that's pretty much it. Those four things - it contributes to their funding.
JF: A lot of the critics of the property tax cap reduction that you're in favor of say that it's going to hurt the counties, or education. What do you say to that?
DD: Well, I guess my main answer is, and I've got it in there [memo to Republican caucus], that a 3% increase is not a reduction. And it can't be called that. It's just going to slow the growth of government. These people are... here's one example. The property evaluation in OK County has gone from 3.9 billion dollars in 2005 to 5.1-something billion dollars in 2009. So, they'll be raising the homestead property at five percent per year, until they eventually catch up with the value of those homes, the market value. But they assess themselves, based on some complicated, convuluted formula that they have, so that it's just a never-ending deal, kinda like digging in sand - you're just not going to get there from here. They keep raising it, and keep raising it, and keep raising it. To some extent I think it drives seniors out of their homes; they can't afford it anymore. Because when your evaluation goes up on your house too, and a lot of people like some of our leadership didn't even consider this, whenever they say your home is worth $150,000 next year instead of $130,000 (which gives them the leeway to raise it the five percent the next several years), your insurance is going to go up - in fact, it's going to leapfrog ahead of the five percent, because the insurance has got to be the replacement cost. So it's actually going to go up more than the property tax. And then everything else is going up proportionally. You've got utilities going up, you've got the cost of living going up, and you've got people on fixed incomes. And now we've got a lot of people that don't have jobs, or who are underemployed.

I also obtained copies of three memos Dank sent out to the Republican caucus over the past two months. In the documents, he referred to Speaker Chris Benge as characterizing the proposals as "tax cuts" - something Dank vehemently denied, and instead labeled "tax restraints", since the property tax would still be increasing, just at a lower rate. He went on to state, "Those who believe that raising property taxes for seniors each year and boosting everyone's ad valorem taxes by five percent are usually called Democrats."

He called on his fellow caucus members to declare their independence from House leadership, and embrace the property tax measures. He emphasized the popularity of such legislation with the voters, and pointed out that the Democrats lost their majority in the legislature due to ignoring the needs and desires of their constituents - and that the same could very well happen to the Republicans.

The proposals were intended to be put on the ballot in November - Dank said that he has not ruled out using the initiative petition process, if the legislature does not approve the legislation. He has set aside his entire legislative salary throughout his tenure to be used for the purpose of funding the campaign to lowering and/or freeze the property tax for senior citizens.

Rep. David Dank (R-OKC) represents House District 85, and was first elected in 2006. He can be contacted at (405) 557-7392 or david.dank@okhouse.gov.