Messrs Brown, Burkholder and Ms. Milton are quick with the hatchet (letters, Aug. 6) but slow on logic and facts. Evidently BDS (Bush-Derangement Syndrome) has morphed here on Bainbridge into ODS (Olsen-Derangement Syndrome).

So sorry Comrades, but I proudly stand by my dedicated and honorable military career, my staunch defense of the First Amendment and the very quaint notion that our kids should be educated, not indoctrinated.

Leaving the base plane of my critics, let’s talk about the real issue: Tale of Two Cities (bankrupt): COBI and Olympia. My Democrat opponent Ms. Rolfes’ claim to fame is her sterling service on COBI Council (2000-2006).

Incontrovertible fact: Her tenure on council was during the heyday of crazed COBI Council – spending on ill-conceived and abysmally executed pipe dreams such as Winslow Tomorrow (never), gargantuan public parking garages, land speculation, consultant-fee bloat, bad over-regulation and lawsuits, over-staffing ($3 million per year waste) and playing Santa Claus to every pet special-interest gang on the island ($500,000 to arts in 2006).

The seeds of our current COBI bankruptcy and government fiasco were tended well by Ms. Rolfes. A sustainable, functional city government was forsaken by a council seeing themselves as toga-draped Athenian Senators pondering their Acropolis and their empire.

Peter Principle was in full evidence as Ms. Rolfes rode the anti-Bush vote in 2006 and headed to Olympia to continue her pattern of big spending, taxes, new taxes and give-aways to public employee unions. Olympia is racked by the same overspending and lack of fiscal restraint that bankrupted COBI.

In the last legislative session, Ms. Rolfes giddily supported the betrayal of the people with the shredding of I-960 (two-thirds majority requirement for new taxes).

Before the Democratic party confetti fell to the floor, Rolfes and her Democrat majority passed 77 new tax bills for a whopping $800,000,000 in new taxes during a severe recession. Furthermore, Ms. Rolfes and her party have actively maneuvered for a full state income tax in clear disregard to the stated will of the people of Washington.

I am a fiscal conservative and I am not a career politician hawking the failed notion that Washington State’s economic stability will only come with more government, more taxes and more regulations.

I will go to Olympia and demonstrate not only the healing power of NO but the power of HELL NO to our failed Democrat Olympia shell game.

My advice to the Olsen-Derangement Syndrome critics: Deal with the issues of our impending $3,800,000,000 state budget shortfall and our 110,000 state public employees and the looming pension perfect storm. We need growth in the private sector, not only in the government sector.

I need your vote and support. Viva First Amendment. Let’s give our local incumbents the honest report card they deserve – F for failure – and vote them out.

James M. Olsen

Pos. 2 candidate for

Representative 23rd LD