Like many state and local officials across the country who are struggling against federal EPA regulations that are strangling their economies, Oklahoma Commissioner of Labor Mark Costello (shown) is frustrated — and fed up. “They are shutting down a perfectly good [Oklahoma] coal plant,” Commissioner Costello told The New American. “They’re shutting it down. Why? Because they want to give a sacrificial lamb to the feds, to say ‘We’ve shut this one down.’ It’s clean; the average cost of the energy input into that plant is 1.25 cents per kilowatt-hour. Steady, clean coal. And yet they want to shut it down, which will raise — double digits — the costs of all Oklahomans’ energy, including big business. Not good. Not good for Oklahoma. Not good that we have surrendered on a sue-to-settle basis our sovereign rights to the EPA.”
Commissioner Costello is one of a number of public officials, entrepreneurs, and constitutionalist leaders interviewed by The New American during a recent trip to the Sooner State. (See: Surgery Center of Oklahoma Leads the Way in Healthcare [Videos] and Brogdon Brings Constitutionalist Issues to Oklahoma’s Open Senate Race [Video].)
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In the video interview below, Mr. Costello explains that “the burden of regulation is overwhelming” and a major force that has been driving American jobs overseas.
“For every one law that comes out of our representatives in Congress, 56 ‘laws’ come out of the bureaucracy. Fifty-six to 1!”
Commissioner Costello, a Republican, is unsparing in his criticism of President Obama’s unconstitutional usurpations and use of executive orders to circumvent Congress. But he is no less critical of current Republicans in Congress and past Republican administrations, pointing out that it was Richard Nixon who gave us the EPA and George W. Bush who dramatically expanded Medicaid with “free meds.”
After a successful business career, Mark Costello was elected as Oklahoma’s commissioner of labor in 2010, defeating incumbent Democrat Lloyd Fields. Mr. Costello’s Facebook biography says:
Mark is a 4th generation Oklahoman born and raised in Bartlesville. After graduating from Bartlesville’s College High, Mark put himself through the University of Kansas by working summers on oilrigs…. Mark has been married for 28 years and has five children….
Mark started his first business in 1984. Realizing the direction American business was headed he founded American Computer & Telephone (AMCAT) in 1991 focusing on telephony software. His Oklahoma City based company developed, tested, and sold the software around the USA. Soon a European headquarters was opened in Manchester, England. AMCAT and its sister companies have generated over $200 million in revenue. AMCAT was sold in 2007, and today Mark serves as President of USA digital Communications, a telecommunications company he founded in 1997 that is licensed in 40 states.
On his Facebook page, Costello describes himself as “a common sense free market Constitutionalist, pro-life Christian and lifetime member of the NRA.”
Photo at top: Oklahoma Commissioner of Labor Mark Costello
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