Pelosi too busy to debate the issues
Mainstream media in "lockdown"
October 20, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO -- Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi told San Francisco
constituents yesterday that she is too busy "serving her
constituents" to engage in a debate with candidates for the
8th Congressional District seat.
Pelosi announced her refusal to debate the issues yesterday in
a letter hand-delivered by Pelosi aide Dan Bernal to fellow candidates
Philip
Berg (Libertarian Party), Mike
DeNunzio (Republican Party) and Krissy
Keefer (Green Party).
Krissy Keefer, Mike DeNunzio and Philip Berg
The challengers received Pelosi's written response during a press
conference they convened outside the federal building to announce
Pelosi's unwillingness and inability to debate the issues.
"I am unable to accept your invitation because I will be
serving my constituents, as well as traveling the country working
to win a Democratic majority," Pelosi wrote in the letter
that reads more like a press release than a letter explaining
her reluctance to debate the issues.
The letter omits Pelosi's voting record showing her support
for the war in Iraq and her vote against the U.S. adoption
of the Kyoto Protocol.
"What Pelosi is really saying is that she is afraid to debate
because she knows she is vulnerable on the issues," Keefer
stated.
"The letter that she sent is just another one of her puff
pieces. She might just as well have sent us directions to Coit
Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge and included $25 off on a Chinese
dinner.
Krissy Keefer
"Pelosi's refusal to debate is a slap in the face to our
democracy and values, and disrespects the very constituents she
says she is serving.
"It is also clear that the mainstream media, by its absence
today, despite San Francisco's reputation as a politically active
community that values a proactive and hard charging media, is
in a collective political lockdown," added Keefer.
Philip Berg said of Pelosi's response, "Here we are in front
of the Phillip Burton Building and isn't it appropriate because
he (Burton) was the Congressman before Nancy Pelosi. Phillip Burton
coronated his wife, Sala Burton, and then she coronated Nancy
Pelosi. So the voters were never given a choice.
Philip Berg
"The establishment presented her as the choice and then
the media ratified that choice and even the brave efforts of Harry
Britt did not stop that establishment choice.
"This is a voting rights issue," Berg continued. "The
march of Martin Luther King, Jr. from Selma to Birmingham was
about voting rights. People would say you cannot compare the two
because the protesters in Birmingham were sprayed with tear gas
and beaten viciously by George Wallace's police on horses. But
almost more stifling than the tear gas is the cloud of complacency
that rises over San Francisco and the nation with the deafening
silence of meaningful debate."
"The bill of rights gives the media the protection of the
first amendment," said Republican candidate Mike DeNunzio.
Mike DeNunzio
"The job of the media is to represent the voice of the people,
and the media is absent today just like Mrs. Pelosi is absent.
The House of Representatives is not the House of Lords or the
House of Ladies. It's the people's house, created by its founders
to do the people's work.
"Representatives of the Republican Party, Libertarian Party,
and Green Party are here to do the people's work. Mrs. Pelosi
is not here. She fails to do the people's work. We call on Mrs.
Pelosi to join us in a debate on the great issues that face our
nation."
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