Station:      BlogTalkRadio.com (online)

Show:        Art’s Place, with Art Carlson

Guests:      Parker

Link:          http://www.blogtalkradio.com/artman51c/2012/11/03/arts-place

Date:         November 3, 2012

Topics:      EPA, Regulations, Government Overreach, Influence of Special Interests, 2010 Elections, Big Government, U.S. Department of Business, Commerce Department, Bureaucracy, History Education, Jobs, Economic Recovery, Poverty, Entitlements, Obama Phones, Gay Rights, Traditional Families, Judeo-Christian Philosophical Standards, Evolution of the US Constitution, Legal Recognition of Gay Relationships, Same Sex Benefits, Common Law Marriage and Heterosexual Marriage, Polygamy, Polyandry, Beastiality, Unintended Consequences of Civil Union Legislation, Obamacare Affordable Care Act, Dependency Among the Poor, 2012 Elections, Mitt Romney, Riots and Protests, Occupy Movement,

Click Here for Audio

 

HOST ART CARLSON:    Hello!  Welcome to Art’s Place!  You’re on the air.

COLORADO STATE REPRESENTATIVE CANDIDATE, JIM PARKER:  Hi, Art.

CARLSON:   Is this John Lyons?

PARKER:  No, it’s Jim Parker.

CARLSON:   Oh, hey, Jim!  How are you doing?

PARKER:  I’m doing well.

CARLSON:   Great.

PARKER:  I got your message a little while ago and I was having a little trouble with my computer.  It didn’t answer.

CARLSON:   [laughs]  All right.  For those of you out there in Radioland, this is Jim Parker.  He’s running for – tell us, Jim.  What are you running for?

PARKER:  I’m running for a seat in House District 36.  It’s a huge district – runs from Chambers east of Wadkins Road, from Colfax south to Aurora Reservoir, and then a bumpy line up coming back over to Jewell and then across to Chambers.  So it’s a huge area.  It covers all of Buckley Air Force Base and on down through the Plains Conservation Center. So, there’s a lot of room out there.

CARLSON:   That’s right.  And who are you running against?

PARKER:  Sue Ryden.

CARLSON:   And is she an incumbent?

PARKER:  Sue is an incumbent.  She’s completing her second term.

CARLSON:   Okay.  All right, and why are you running, Jim?

PARKER:  Well, I’m running because I think I have a lot to offer, just from my perspective in the state of Colorado.  I want to make sure that Republicans continue to control the House.  And I think we’ve got some things that need to be done.  We’re going to be facing a number of issues this year that could be interesting, depending on [the] court decision and where that goes involving our school funding.  And we’ve just got to get back to the drawing board and make Colorado stays ahead of the game.

CARLSON:   And I understand that Sue Ryden is on the Oil and Gas Commission?

PARKER:  Yeah, I don’t kno—I think she’s on the Ag Committee which – and the energy group, which does have some things to say about the fracking, etc.  And she’s opposed to it

CARLSON:   Right.

PARKER:  I think we need to address that issue head-on.  I was in Weld County for 19 years and served on the Weld County Board of Adjustment for eight of that.  And at this point, we just never really ran into big fracking problems in Weld County, despite the fact that we had hundreds, I guess now thousands, of wells up there.  I think it’s a problem waiting to happen, and I just think they’re making a far too big a deal out of the frack process.  That’s a person—

CARLSON:   I– I think you’re right, Jim.  I’m running, for those of you out there who don’t know, I am also running for State House in House District 41, and my opponent opposes drilling and mining altogether.  At the last candidate forum that I went to that was held by a lot of liberal groups, and in my closing arguments I talked about how I want Colorado to be the next North Dakota, because North Dakota, their unemployment rate is only 3.6%.  And in his closing arguments, he said he was opposed to that, saying it’ll ruin our beautiful state.  And I’m thinking, “Well, how are you going to pay for all your pet projects that you just spoke about during the committee?”  So, that was my take.  How many candidate forums have you gone to, Jim?

PARKER:  Oh, I think five.

CARLSON:   Wow. That’s more than I—

PARKER:  That’s not a lot but –

CARLSON:   Yeah

PARKER:  –but there haven’t been that many around.  And unfortunately, we—a couple of them happened to be the same night there were debates, which really cut the attendance down and they weren’t as effective as they could have been.

CARLSON:   Right.  Right.  So, —

PARKER:  The — back on the fracking issue—

CARLSON:   Right

PARKER:  I think the process has been pretty well done.  I mean, they really have engineered these things so they’re really relatively safe.  Now, I can understand if they get too close to a subdivision somewhere, that there are noise issues.

CARLSON:   Right.

PARKER:  But I think those can — I haven’t, in my past experience, run into too many oil companies that really are wanting to go out and make a lot of noise and disturb people.  That isn’t their intent. And with the way they can frack and then directionally lay those lines deep down in, you know, three or four thousand feet down in the ground that it’s becoming less and less a problem.  Now, I don’t know what they’ve run into actually in [the] Longmont area.  There seems to be huge concern.  And I know there’s some that have been drilled in the city of Greeley, but I haven’t heard much problem that’s resulted from those drilling operations.  There just hasn’t been a hue and cry.  I don’t know whether it’s real, or just people “not in my backyard” kind of thinking.

CARLSON:   I think it’s a little bit of that and plus the hypersensitivity that it’s oil and natural gas and liberals just don’t want us to get any of that.  Because the technology has come a long way to where the casing in the well is triple cased, where you have three tubes of stainless steel that are packed with cement down to about a thousand feet, which is well past any water table.  The water table is only several hundred feet, and once you get past that then you won’t have any problems with oil or any by-products getting into the water supply.  So, I—I–

PARKER:  Surely shouldn’t have.

CARLSON:   Right.  Mm-hmm.  And plus, they’re making a big deal about the chemicals that they use, and really, if you think about it, the chemicals that they use is basically dishwashing detergent.  You know?  Like Dawn.  And Dawn breaks up oil and it makes it easier for it to come to the surface.

PARKER:  Mmm-hmm.

CARLSON:    Yeah.  So,  I saw something on Facebook the other day.  Somebody figured out what Democrats mean when they say “all of the above” – when it comes to energy.  They really mean,  all of the above – above ground.

PARKER:  Oh!  That’s how it works

CARLSON:   Yeah.  Like solar and wind power.

PARKER:  Mmm-hmm.

CARLSON:   Mm-hmm.  Nothing underground.  They don’t want that nasty oil, or coal, or natural gas, or even uranium, which Colorado is just– has an abundant supply of it in this state.  And that’s what make the state so unique.  We have all of this stuff under our feet that we could get at if only the government would get the hell out of our way.

PARKER:  And I think that’s one of the key issues of this election, Art.  I’m convinced that people are tired of government being in the way, and maybe aren’t aware of quite how much government is in the way and keeping things from happening with too many, you know – just layers of regulations, rules, and anything to obstruct development, and whether it’s development of resources or development of our housing – whatever it is.  We’ve just gotten to the point where it’s almost gotten to be an obstructionist point of view.  And I think it’s hurting everything in our economy and bringing it down.

CARLSON:   Yeah, I think you’re right on that one.  And plus, the Democrats, they like to use diversionary tactics, which is this so-called “War on Women”.

[…]

PARKER:  Well, it’s a phony issue, in my opinion, and has been for the past 36 years.  It’s just been used as a wedge issue.  I mean, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.  I think most of that was settled a long time ago, but it only comes up in presidential elections when the Democrats have nothing else to talk about. And I’m really disappointed and somewhat distressed to see our Senate leader, Harry Reid, today, saying that he will cooperate over his dead body with anybody like Mitt Romney or the Republicans.  I mean, those are the people who are supposedly wanting to reach across the aisle and get things done.   But they’re the obstructionists, and Harry Reid has been sitting on stuff for how long now?  It’s not too bad in Colorado.  I think we’ve got a much more realistic approach to things, but it’s still a matter of how committees are set up and how the leadership decides to distribute the bills and what committees are going to hear them.  Because you can run a bill you don’t want through.  You send it to a committee that it just doesn’t do anything but put them on the pile and just, they never reach the floor to be heard.  And I think that’s too bad.  There’s some good legislation and of course, there’s bad.  But it –most of it needs to come to the floor and get to be heard.  Although I think overall, we probably have too much legislation getting passed every year and I want to make sure that those that do pass, that we really need and that they do some good.

CARLSON:   Right.  And we need to get rid of some of the old and outdated laws on the books, as well

PARKER:  I once kiddingly said – and I may regret it, that I would like to see,  every other year, at least,  if you’re going to carry five bills, you’ve got to find five things that we need to get removed from our law base, just because they’re – you know, we are cluttering it up.  If you multiply the number of bills – we seem to run somewhere in the range of seven to eight hundred a year.  Not all of them get to the floor.  Not all of them get passed.  But, like, I think last year, it was more than four hundred.  If you multiply it by ten, you get four thousand bills – new laws every ten years.  And I don’t think people are aware of most of them.  I mean, what are they all?

CARLSON:   Yeah.  That’s right.  They only hear about the ones that are really important to—like, to liberals. Like civil unions and gay marriage and stuff like that.

PARKER:  Yeah, and those are issues that are just hard to deal with.  I just don’t know that –personally, you know, I have — I’m a traditionalist as far as marriage is concerned.  I don’t think we should be extending it beyond what we traditionally have had.  I guess I’ll stand on that one.

CARLSON:   Yeah, I’m the same way.  I’m a little open when it comes to civil unions.  But I know that if we grant them civil unions, then they’ll say, “All right.  We got this.  We want marriage.”  [inaudible]  I’m just afraid that – Yeah, go ahead.

PARKER:  Well, and – I thought for the last – what, five to six thousand years that civilization has existed, you had the family name passed down by marriage, and the kids had a legitimate family circumstance.  And unfortunately, over that last fifty years we’ve seen the family under attack in every manner and form.  Our government tends to—by the way they pursue some of the rules on poverty and on the laws that were passed in the 60’s and since, that if dad’s around, they don’t get the benefit.  So, I think it’s made it almost a business of having kids out of wedlock and papa’s living somewhere else, or he’s cheating, living in the house and they’re just not married.  And I think it’s unfortunate for the kids.  We’ve developed a level of poverty as a result that is just tragic.  I know I address that somewhat in my website.  And I encourage people to go to electJimParker.com and check it out.

CARLSON:   All right.  Well, Jim, we’ve got another caller on the line.  Let’s bring him up.

PARKER:  Okay.

CARLSON:   We’ve got a caller, I believe he’s from Detroit.

PARKER:  Well, I don’t know whether you’ve put me back on mute, or what.  But I’ll be listening.

CARLSON:   Well, we can all have a discussion, here. Hey, is this Charlie Stewart?

[Charlie Stewart, disabled stand-up comedian, former Southern Baptist minister, and former colleague of Art Carlson from Lincoln Park, MI joins the conversation.  Topics include a continuation of Gay Rights and  traditional families, Judeo-Christian philosophical standards, and the evolution of the US Constitution, legal recognition of gay relationships, same sex benefits, common law marriage between heterosexual marriage, polygamy, polyandry, beastiality, unintended consequences of civil union legislation.   Jim Parker opines that Obama’s personal history of growing up and being educated in Indonesia makes him ignorant of American history and government/civics.]