David Karmol Pt 2 of his conversation with Fred

David Carmel is in the studio with us. David's running for Ohio House Representatives. District 43, the seat currently held by Michelle Grimm, who once told us she wanted to represent us on city council and then decided at the last minute. You know what? I think I'd like a better job. I think I can do more on the state level and decided to go up there. I was always against that move. I hate it when politicians say they want to represent you. You give them your votes. You give me your trust. And then in the middle of all of that, they decide, eh, I like another seat. Is that what you're going to do, David? No, sir. In fact, at my age... You promise not to go to the Ohio House of Representatives and then at some point say, you know what? I think I'd like to be a state senator instead. No, I absolutely promise if I'm elected, this will be the last office I ever hold. I will serve by term, maybe another one. I'm entitled to only three at this point with term limits, but I am not going to move on. It's interesting, you mentioned Ms. Grimm, because... Not only did she resign from council to go to the statehouse. Now she's injecting herself back into city politics, writing letters to the council, telling them how they should run the city. Yeah. And I just, I don't get that. I never liked it from either party. If you tell me that you want to represent me on city council, board of education, county commissioners, then serve out your term. You want to get another seat after that. You start from scratch. Dear Fred, here's a question for Dave. Is the Constitution the law of the land? It's written to keep the citizens in a free state. I believe that means a physical state of freedom as well as a geographical state. And then in capital letters, what say you? Well, of course, the Constitution is the basis of our government in the United States. And it sets up all the other structures that enact the day-to-day laws that we live under. So, yes, it is the law of the land. It's the basis for our entire system. But. And you actually take an oath to, you know, to follow it. As with any society, you have to have some rules. Yeah. I was in Baghdad for a year and saw what happens when you don't have rules and you don't have police. What was your position there? What was your position? Well, I was working for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. I was detailed by the U.S. Department of Commerce to help with standards development. But, you know, I had to be escorted all over Baghdad by Blackwater and 4th Infantry for safety reasons because unfortunately... You know, the U.S. when we first went in, dismantled their police. Yeah. Things went south. So how did you get...

What were you doing just before that that somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said, hey, we want to send you to Iraq as this? I was working as the VP for Government Affairs for the American National Standards Institute that coordinates standards in the United States. And the word came back through the embassy that they needed someone with expertise and standards to go to Baghdad during the middle of the war and help. in the reconstruction. And when we first got the request, we thought, well, We left because who would want to go to the middle of a world and work on standards. You're pretty much starting from scratch. I mean, everything's destroyed. It's anarchy. The police are nowhere to be found. Yeah, it wasn't so much there was physical destruction. It was that the government was kind of in shambles because we had dismantled it. Here's an example. Everyone was a member of the... Bath Party. Right. Because you had to be a member of the Bath Party to get a job. Yeah. Kind of like in... Toledo, you have to be a member of the Democrat Party to get a job. Oh, Dave Carmel just equated the Democrats to the Ba'ath Party. That's the headline. Just an analogy. But, you know, you had a lot of very good quality people in the Iraqi government, just like you do in the city of Toledo, which were not defined because of their party. They just were members of the party in order to have a job. Sure. We dismissed them all and started from scratch, so it made things much harder to get back to normal. How long were you over there? I was there for a year, and I was asked to... Were you able to accomplish what you went over for? Well, that's a darn good question. Again, I'm the host. Ironically, when I got over there, it wasn't entirely clear who or why they had asked me to be there. That was kind of the nature of the situation. I did a lot of good work. We managed to get a... project to build a children's hospital in the southern part of Iraq and Basra, up and running. Well, we didn't get it running while I was there, but we stopped the bleeding and we got it under construction again. You know, we did a lot of good work and we set them on a course where today Iraq is actually functioning quite well as a society and a government.

you know, with a government that's basically a representative system. It's not the same as, you know, the U.S. It's not us. And we're going to have to do the same when we're done in Iran. And probably did the same when we were done in Afghanistan. Maybe. Maybe. That's what happens when we go in. Too long of a, yeah, I don't think we ought to veer off into that. That's way out of my league and not my concern as a state representative. The other thing we're going to talk to Dave about is law enforcement because he's a former prosecutor, property taxes and seasoned citizens. So don't go anyplace.