Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Mike Osborn's Constitutional Confusion



WE FIND IT HARD TO BELIEVE THAT AN
ATTORNEY KNOWS SO LITTLE ABOUT THE STATES CONSTITUTION
By the Watchman

Since the Oklahoma Legislature is responsible for writing laws that affect everyone in the State of Oklahoma including those who visit here, one would think that an attorney would be very familiar with the States Constitution. Apparently this Representative either doesn't care about the State's Constitution or just decided to ignore it. He is one of several Representatives tied for being the worse members of the House as far as following the Constitution goes.

We began our research by going to his campaign web site here About — Osburn Representative. There are two items on this site that cause us to question his commitment to the Republican Party and to the people he was elected to serve. The first item we noticed is that his banner fails to identify his political party that he affiliates with. This is a tactic we have noticed that is prevalent in the Democratic Party. That raises the question of Party Loyalty. The second is no where were we able to find where he stood on any of the subjects that mattered to the citizens of this state and his district. By doing this he was able to tailor his campaign speeches to the audience without breaking one of his campaign promises. We call that cowardly.

The next article of interest we found was this Osburn announces candidacy for District 81 | News | edmondsun.com. This is the announcement to run for the office. He chose to run at this time because the incumbent decided not to run for re-election. He had been the incumbents finance manager prior to his run for office. We cannot fault him for taking the advantage of an opening when it became available.

We next went to his official web site at www.ok.gov to see what information was available. Here is what we found Representative Mike Osburn - Oklahoma House of Representatives. Here we find that he has been assigned to the A&B Judiciary Committee as Vice Chair. We can understand putting an attorney on the judiciary committee, but placing him as the Vice-Chair while he serves his first session of his first term is outrageous. It raises the question as to how many votes he had to promise to the Speaker to be placed into that seat. Was he in that much of a hurry to leave his mark on Oklahoma History?

The next article of interest we found was this Mike Osburn - Ballotpedia. This article contains more about his personal information than his official web site does. It also contains the history of votes received during his election to the office he now holds. He did win his seat by a substantial margin. Is this just a case of blindly following leadership down a sinking path?

We next went to www.votesmart.org to see what information was available there. We started by going to the Political Summary here Mike Osburn's Political Summary - The Voter's Self Defense System - Vote Smart. This article gave us our first truly disappointing look at this undocumented Democrats political leanings. Everything listed is a vote against the people and for big business.

We next went to his biography page, but there was less information there than what we found on an earlier referenced pages.

We then took a look at his voting record here Mike Osburn's Voting Records - The Voter's Self Defense System - Vote Smart. Does he really think he can get away with listing only four of the pieces of legislation that he voted on here? I've already obtained nineteen additional votes that he's made and we know there are more. Once again this will be corrected by us.
We next went to the Rating and Endorsements page here Mike Osburn's Ratings and Endorsements - The Voter's Self Defense System - Vote Smart. As he is a Freshman Representative we didn't anticipate finding much here. This is what we found.

Business and Consumers
2017 Research Institute for Economic Development 95%

Guns
2016 National Rifle Association Candidates Position on Gun Rights 86%

We next went to the Campaign Finance report section here Mike Osburn's Campaign Finances - The Voter's Self Defense System - Vote Smart. We did find numerous individual donations to his campaign. With him being an Attorney we were not surprised to see donations from fellow attorneys either. The fact that he worked at the State Capital and then accepted donations from lobbyist though not surprising is disappointing. It indicates that he's already sold his votes to special interest groups.

We went to the www.guadrion.ok.gov to further investigate his campaign finances. We found entries that indicated donations from the GOP. Those entries were not actually from the state party but from various local GOP groups. That explains why he received party donations while most did not. We also found donations from most of the leading corporations that keep the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce in operation as well as Unions and other special interest groups.

We next went to the 2017 RINO index to see how well he did on voting on items that directly affect the citizens of Oklahoma. Here is what we found.

HB 1427 Out of State Tax Collection, Voted Yea, Liberal vote, 0%
HB 1449 Electric Vehicle Tax, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote, 0%
HB 1837 Lottery % Raid, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 1845 Real ID, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2131 10% Sales Tax Rebate Scheme, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2348 Deduction Freeze, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2351 Tax Incentive Credit, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2356 Franchise Tax Date Move, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote, 0%
HB 2367 Tax Collector Claw Back, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2372 $1.50 Cigarette Tax Increase Bill, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2387 OJA Bonds, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2389 Health Department Bonds, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2403 Tax Deduction Limit Bill, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2414 Log Rolling 3 Tax Bills, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
HB 2433 Car Sales Tax, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
SB 38 Fee Increases, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
SB 120 Aerospace Tax Credit Extension, Voted Yea, 0%
SB 170 Income Tax Cut Rate Reversal, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%
SB 786 Soft on Crime Bill, Voted Yea, Liberal Bill 0%
SB 845 Smoking Fee, Voted Yea, Liberal Vote 0%

It is very obvious by his votes on these twenty bills that he cares little how they would affect the normal citizen of the state of Oklahoma. It is also very clear that he really has no idea as to how the budget is made. Neither of these faults are acceptable to the citizens of his district or the state of Oklahoma. In addition, as an Attorney who has worked at the Capital before, he should be well aware of the statute that makes log rolling bills in Oklahoma un-Constitutional. He voted for it anyway. That's just an open invitation to a court challenge and it has been challenged.

The next article of interest we found was this Mike Osburn - Oklahoma Legislature - Open States. This is a piece designed to fool the voters. It fails to include a majority of his votes during the last session. This gives you a good idea about how much of a cover up they try to do about how they actually vote. They seem to fail to recognize that the votes are public record.

Now we have seen a lot of really dumb moves made by politicians who are seeking to either get into office or to remain in office over the years, but nothing compares to this Edmond politician tries to write off $82.56 in dry cleaning expenses… | The Lost Ogle. This is an attempt to violate campaign laws just for a photo shoot. We aren't buying the excuse he gives in this story.

The next article we found of interest was this Oklahoma House passes measure calling for $6,000 teacher pay raise | KFOR.com. If anyone has any doubts, there is only one reason the House passed this bill, to get votes. They passed a bill without funding it so they could tell the teachers unions that they tried. Now I don't know of any teacher that is dumb enough to not see through this joke of a bill. They passed this bill simply because they had promised the teachers a pay raise this year. Instead of a pay raise they protected their people who finance their campaigns with tax credits.

We find it incredible to believe that as much time as he spent working in the capital before being elected that he hadn't learned more about writing and passing good legislation than he has shown. His efforts to date, even considering it was his first session, rank him among the worse politicians the State of Oklahoma has ever produced. He has willingly violated his oath of office and his duties as a member of the Oklahoma Bar. We would recommend that the Oklahoma Bar Association take a look at his discretion and violations of the law.

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