The Republican challenger to a 16-term congressman called Norm Dicks' policies tantamount to "slavery" at a 2¬½-hour candidate forum in Port Angeles City Hall on Thursday.

Doug Cloud, a unabashedly conservative Gig Harbor attorney, attacked Congress -- where Dicks has represented the 6th District, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula, for 32 years -- as "disgusting" as well as "extreme, corrupt and out of touch."

"We have to confront this broken system," he added. "We need to elect new people."

Cloud charged that the $700 billion appropriated to save financial institutions "will find its way back to the incumbent Democratic members of Congress."

Cloud also said the answer to the country's financial woes is to eliminate what he called government manipulation.

He said the health care crisis started in 1965, when government interfered with the medical market by adopting Medicare.

Being forced to pay for your neighbor's medical bills, he said, is "a form of slavery."

The part played by salmon in Northwest culture "was far overstated," he said, but conservation programs were useful to attract tourists.

'I feel better with my .357'

Cloud said he had encountered bear and cougar in Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest.

"I can tell you that I feel better when I have my .357 with me," he said in answer to a question about a proposal to allow national park visitors to carry concealed weapons.

As for the U.S. Border Patrol -- against whom about a half-dozen protestors displayed signs outside City Hall prior to the forum -- Cloud said the Coast Guard and local law enforcement could fulfill the mission just as well.

Jim Casey 

Friday October, 17 2008

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