U.S. Senate - Greg Parke
Lieutenant Colonel Greg Parke graduated from the University of New Hampshire Whittemore School of Business and Economics and received his commission in 1977. He retired from the Air Force in January of 2000 and moved back to Rutland with his wife and two children, and now works as a charter pilot flying executive business jets.
“When I returned home to Vermont after serving in the U.S. Air Force for 22 years, I found a very different Vermont than what I grew up in,” Parke said. “I am dedicated to restoring the traditional Vermont values of community, family, hard work, rugged independence, and disdain for government intrusion into people’s lives.”
Parke’s strongest quality as a candidate for the U.S. Senate is a direct and forthright manner. He is clear about his positions and unafraid to state them without qualification. Unfortunately, many of his positions have little or no basis in fact.
Choice
Parke did not state specific support for or against access to abortion in our interview, which was conducted via email because he was out of the country, but he has been previously described as anti-choice. He did say that he supports bans on “partial-birth abortions,” writing that, “every doctor I have spoken with agrees that this procedure is never an appropriate treatment to protect the health of the mother.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, however, disagrees. Their policy statement called such legislative bans “inappropriate, ill-advised, and dangerous,” noting that it “may be the best and most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman, and only the doctor, in consultation with the patient, based upon the woman’s particular circumstances, can make that decision.”
Parke also supports parental notification, calling it “simply ludicrous that a school nurse can’t give a child an aspirin without parental consent, yet is allowed to take a child to have a life-threatening procedure without parental notification. Typical objections for incest-related cases are easily handled through judicial involvement.”
It is disingenuous, however, to describe abortion as a “life-threatening procedure” unless one is also willing to apply that term to giving birth. The risk of death from childbirth is in fact 12 times higher with than that from abortion, according to The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. There is also no law in Vermont requiring parental permission for receiving aspirin at school.
Parke also claimed that “it is now coming to light that as many as 60 percent of abortions are coerced by boyfriends, husbands, or family. And it is becoming apparent after many years there are significant long-term post-abortion negative mental health consequences that are not being disclosed.” He failed, however, to provide any statistical evidence for either claim. Vermont Woman could locate no peer-reviewed study proving that two-thirds of American abortions are coerced. As for long-term mental health impacts, according to Abortion in Women’s Lives, published this year by the Guttmacher Institute, repeated studies since the early 1980s have concluded that abortion does not pose a hazard to a woman’s mental health.
About over-the-counter access to emergency contraception for women 16 and older, Parke said, “I would consider it inappropriate and dangerous for a child to have access without parental involvement.” When questioned about federal funding of abstinence-only sexual education programs, he said that “only a small portion of federal funding in sex ed goes to abstinence programs [and] the interesting thing about abstinence is that it is the only birth control method that is 100 percent effective.”
Again, Parke’s answer does not hold up to examination. The Bush Administration requested $170 million for abstinence-only sexual education programs in 2005, more than twice the amount spent in 2001, compared with an estimated $130 million spent annually on providing contraceptive services to teenagers under Title X and Medicaid, according the U.S. General Accounting Office. And a December 2004 report by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) found that the most popular federally funded abstinence-only programs contained false statements about contraceptive rates, HIV transmissions, sexually transmitted diseases, and abortion.
“If choice is the law, then let’s have real informed choice, with real options with real disclosure of consequences and work together so that not only women but all of society can benefit,” Parke said. However, Parke’s own campaign is doing little to further that purported goal.
Energy & Environment
Parke also supports the Bush Administration’s attempts to roll back the Clean Air Act. “The current administration apparently feels the cost outweighs the benefits during this difficult time of high oil prices,” he wrote. “Shouldn’t the proponents of increasingly restrictive regulations be required to prove the benefit before forcing their viewpoints on the taxpayer?”
One of those proponents is the senator that Parke seeks to replace, Jim Jeffords, a principal author of the Clean Air Act of 1990, who noted in a statement to the EPA that particulate matter kills more people than HIV/AIDS and more people than drunk driving. Jeffords also objected to other calls for a cost/benefit analysis, saying. “Consider this: If cost benefit analysis is used to set the [standards], and the compliance costs of a standard are estimated at $1 billion, the EPA would be required to set a standard that would allow up to $1 billion worth of people to die from air pollution. So just how do we measure $1 billion in human life? Setting the [standards] in that way is unconscionable.”
As for our energy future, Parke said that “energy policy must be balanced with its associated social, environmental, and national security cost and consequences.” He believes that a significant portion of the increased cost of gasoline stems from a failure by the nation to build new efficient refineries in the last three decades, and supports opening the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for drilling and production, claiming that it could, “completely eliminate our entire importation of oil from Saudi Arabia.” According to the 1998 U.S. Geological Survey study, however, the average estimate of economically recoverable oil in ANWR is only 3.2-5.2 billion barrels, equivalent to six months of U.S. consumption, and according to the Congressional Research Service, it would take ten years or longer for that amount to come on line.
Even using the Bush Administration’s much higher figure of 10.4 billion barrels, which is the estimated amount of “technically” as opposed to “economically” recoverable oil, ANWR would provide less than one year of oil for the United States. And according to a March 12, 2001 report by the Energy Information Administration, ANWR would reduce the net share of foreign oil used in the U.S. in 2020 by just two percent.
Parke believes that Vermont has benefited from nuclear power both economically and environmentally, but added that “one of the best things government could do is set an energy policy that levels the playing field so that each type of energy could compete on its own merits free from ideological partisanship and the market distortions and inefficiencies caused by government interference.”
Congressional Balance of Powers
In keeping with his almost unwavering support of actions by the Bush Administration, Parke takes no issue with the National Security Administration’s (NSA) warrantless wiretapping program or financial records tracking, or Republican characterizations of press coverage of these programs as unpatriotic and damaging to the “war on terror.”
“It is my understanding there is no disagreement that the programs were entirely legal. In the past, during WWII, irresponsible behavior like [the news coverage] would have been prosecuted as treason,” he said.
However, in January the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, found multiple discrepancies between the administration’s legal arguments and existing U.S. laws, particularly the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), saying that, “FISA reflects Congress’ view that it has the authority to regulate the president’s use of any inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless surveillance [and] did not intend for FISA’s warrant exceptions to be expansive.”
And, we would argue, World War II also saw the creation of Japanese internment camps in the name of national security, and thus should hardly be used as a role model or justification for similar civil rights abuses today.
As for Senator Russ Feingold’s (D-WI) call to censure the President over the NSA spying program, Parke called it, “a childish and inappropriate demonstration of political partisanship over philosophical differences in policy in the War on Terror.”
Iraq and the “War on Terror”
Parke highlights his more than two decades of active service in the Air Force as essential qualities for a candidate at this time.
“I have been blessed with a unique set of qualifications and life experiences at a time when the percentage of people with military experience is at a near all-time low in Congress. With four years experience as a diplomat and commander in the Middle East and three years working Middle East policy issues at the Pentagon, I feel it is my duty to use those qualifications and bring a first hand perspective to the grave issues facing us today,” he said.
Parke opposes removing troops from Iraq until we “finish the job and help Iraq become a successful market economy and democracy.” As for the decision to invade Iraq, Parke did not say specifically if he supported or opposed it (then or now), but wrote, “This president has pursued a bold policy of planting the seed of liberty which has succeeded everywhere it has been allowed to grow,” adding, “We are engaged in a war unlike anything we have faced before. If we do not meet this challenge we may soon see terrorism on our doorstep.”
Conclusion
Parke’s primary campaign argument is the alternative prospect of electing Congressman Bernie Sanders, whom Parke describes as having “a history of zero influence in Congress and considered by most of his colleagues, including many Democrats, to be a farce.” He also believes that “the most significant issue facing this country today is the assault on western culture by radical Islamofacism. The finest social programs in the world mean nothing if there are barbarians at the gate. Make no mistake, this has the potential to become an epic struggle between good and evil if we allow it to fester.
Whatever one’s opinion of Sanders’ ultimate effectiveness in the House, or potentially in the Senate, it is difficult to foresee a more effective Senator Parke, given the inaccuracies apparent in this email exchange alone. In his speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this spring, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert said, “I give people the truth unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the no-fact zone.” While we believe Parke is sincere, we also think he treads dangerously close to Colbert’s ostensibly ironic world; it’s a temperament better suited to cable television than U.S. Congress.
Visit these links to each candidate's interview:
U.S. Senate: Greg Parke (above), Bernie Sanders, Richard Tarrant
U.S. House: Martha Rainville, Mark Shepard, Peter Welch
Governor: Jim Douglas, Scudder Parker
Lt. Governor: Marvin Malek, Brian Dubie, Matt Dunne, John Tracy
