Remembering Oklahoma Labor Commissioner Mark Costello

During the 2010 Oklahoma elections, ROPE supported Mark Costello for Labor Commissioner because Mark was a small business entrepreneur, having founded American Computer and Telephone (AMCAT) in 1991, which he sold in 2007, after which he started USA Digital Communications. Mark knew business and understood labor issues. Who else better to run the Department of Labor?

Following the election, Julia, Lynn and I would often run into Mark while at the Capitol lobbying or at a Republican event and we grew to know him personally. I laugh because, for probably the first year we knew him, he knew me as 'Janet'. He'd come across the room sometimes with a big smile on his face, hand extended, to say, "Hello Janet!" I'll never forget that. I'd correct him with a laugh, he'd laugh with me, and we'd assure one another that one day he'd get it right'. I loved that about him - he was just a regular guy - a regular guy who seemed happy to see you and enjoy the company of others.

Often, we'd see Mark someplace we were speaking about Common Core and eventually we began to have conversations about the issue. Not only as Labor Commissioner, but as an employer, Mark had become genuinely concerned that Common Core was not 'OK' for the future of Oklahoma businesses. As an entrepreneur himself, I believe he really understood the necessity for students to get an education well-rounded enough to allow them to develop their creativity - creativity which can easily become initiative; a foundation of entrepreneurial spirit. An education not dictated by a 'common' set of educational standards, but one that would help foster the individuality of all kids.

Last year, as the fight against Common Core was coming to a crescendo, Mark penned an op-ed against Common Core read by many thousands of people, that we all believe helped turn the tide in our favor. In it, he penned the following paragraph

Common Core is to education what Obamacare is to health, a centralized government process that strips local control away from parents, teachers, and school boards. Why the push by large non-profits to establish national education standards? Some have asserted the concept of “mass production” will lower per unit costs. In other words, the God given individual qualities and talents of each child will be restructured by a nationalized production process guided from a top down political structure.

He didn't write these words because we asked him to, he wrote them because he believed them. 

After having had the sheer pleasure of knowing Mark socially for the past five years, I can attest that he was not only a true conservative - one who didn't simply spout the dictionary definition, but possessed a real working understanding of the concept - but an unapologetic Christian as well. When he spoke out for school choice and against Common Core, it wasn't simply out of a concern that Oklahoma would squelch the entrepreneurial spirit in our youngest citizens, but that students would not be allowed to follow their God-given talents and abilities to the best degree without the broadest form of educational possibility. 

Words cannot possibly give due the sadness we all feel at Mark's passing. He was a wonderful man of whom we have many fond memories, but he was also a boundless force for good in this state. He will be missed many times over throughout many circles, countless groups and among many individuals all across Oklahoma.

Our continued and constant thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Cathy and all their children for peace at this tragic time. 

Thank you Mark Costello for your life, your service, your leadership, your tireless fight for right and your friendship to so many. From what I knew of Mark, the words of Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2) would be appreciated here and so I will close:

We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be.

I Can Bring Home the Bacon...

I sort of had a mental breakdown when I read Brandon Dutcher’s post this morning.

I can't possibly articulate the number of times I have thought of the movie Logan's Run lately myself - not only in terms of public education today - but the way in which our federal government has usurped nearly every aspect of our lives. We are not people anymore, we are numbers – numbers on a computer screen for health care and insurance companies, and public schools from elementary to college – and we have allowed ourselves to become just that.

Why do very few people today understand that ‘numbering’ people has been done before? Please, ask a Jew who has survived Auschwitz. They’ll tell you what it’s like to be a number and how easy it is for those doing the numbering to completely dehumanize every individual numbered.

I wish these kinds of posts (thoughts) would truly waken people to the fact that children are a gift from a God that expected PARENTS to raise them for Him without pawning them off onto public schools or the mall or - where ever with whom ever – so you could go to work or struggle to survive.

I truly FEAR that until we start seeing kids as gifts from God we will never truly decide to throw off our 'worldly' trappings in order to create two parent families with mothers who take up the mantle of protector, tutor and disciplinarian (note I didn't say, 'scheduler of activities' here) things in this country cannot change.

I don't say that lightly, either. Nor am I attempting to wage the war of hypocrisy among my fellow parents.

It is a fact that until I began homeschooling our oldest son this year I had not understood this in totality. Before my son became MY FULL AND COMPLETE RESPONSIBILITY during EACH AND EVERY DAY, I had developed a really great double-speak about the necessity of parents to get their kids out of public school and be actual parents - not guardians - of their children.

Once my son became my actual responsbility, I became absolutely and completely convicted of the kind of mother I had been to my children in their previous years. I don’t think I ever realized how content I was when I could simply drop them off at our ‘safe’ public elementary school every day and go about my regular routine of criticizing our public school administration and elected officials. I was, after all, ‘at home’. I didn’t work ‘outside’ my home. I was ‘here’ for my kids.

I find it sad but true, that since the beginning of the women’s movement in the 60’s and the following “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never, let you forget you’re a man” mantra from the early 1980’s, American women have allowed a wholly ungodly group of individuals to tell us supposedly Godly women how to behave – what was and wasn’t important in our lives.

Obviously, Enjolie thought that working outside the home while reading to your kids before you put them in bed to ‘service’ your husband was appropriate and we bought it. The real problem became that once we figured we could ‘do it ourselves’, what did we need men for? We could take our kids and leave that boring (unattractive, not earning enough money…whatever…) man and make it on our own. Too bad the commercial didn’t tell us that by simply taking care of ourselves, not only would our kids suffer, but the communist and socialist sympathizers had plans for them when we finally created that selfish lifestyle advertisers sold us – plans to make them Godless, automatons who prayed to the “environment” and “social justice”.

Now, we’re seeing their plans played out in schools everywhere across the country, yet most American women are Enjolie women who haven’t awakened from their ‘80’s “me” coma yet.

Now, I fear, the only thing that will wake them is social collapse – and that, make no mistake, is coming and coming fast.

My only hope lies in Christ and the absolute fact that God is sovereign and knows all things and works all things for good for those who follow His word.

I pray for a spiritual awakening to take hold in this country (particularly mothers) every day…looking around, I’m afraid we’re vastly overdue…