Pelosi and Serra: A Lesson in Integrity

Dear Representative Pelosi,

It all fell into place when I read in your hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, that you’re the richest member of the House Leadership, outstripping runner-up, Eric Cantor, the Republican Majority Leader by a factor of twenty. I knew your real estate mogul husband was rich, but $187 million! Holy Cow! Eric Cantor, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican capitalist with a Goldman Sachs vice-president wife who’s also chairman of the board of the Virginia Retirement System (all those interlocking relationships!), only has assets of $4 to $9.6 million, but here you and Paul are with $187 million! Does it make you a little uneasy that We the People might understand now why you’re willing to put Social Security and Medicare on the table for massive cuts after the election? Why you’re going along with your Republican “slash government spending” buddies who want to cut any government program that might benefit the not-rich? Well, duh! Once you understand that you’re part of the 1%, it all falls into place. You’re set for life: that $187 million dollar nest egg, your annual government salary of $193,400 plus benefits and a guaranteed government pension of more than $100,000 per year. Democrat, Republican, it doesn’t matter what label you give yourself, the thinking is the same: protect wealth, especially your own and fuck the rest of us. A few nights ago I heard Tony Serra, the legendary defense attorney (like you, a San Francisco resident) talk about how he took a vow of poverty early on and owns nothing, buys everything used, including his clothes, and does more than half his cases pro bono. He also started refusing to pay taxes during the Vietnam War as a protest against war and what he sees as a corrupt government. He’s gone to prison three times for refusing to pay taxes and expects to go again if he lives long enough. Once, when he got a judgment that earned him $75,000, he decided to keep it for his kids’ college education but the IRS seized it for back taxes. He calls his lifelong refusal to pay taxes his “little peanut protest.” I don’t call it a peanut protest at all, I call it a major statement of moral righteousness and integrity. And I see his life as a refutation of your sellout of We the People for power and wealth: your silent assent to torture in 2002; your blocking a move to impeach Bush in 2006; your insider trading last year; the list goes on. Tony Serra shames all of you who’ve made a Faustian bargain with the Devil, who don’t give a damn for the 99%, only for yourselves. I call your sellout a shameful act of moral cowardice, a despicable act of selfishness and greed, a loss of moral compass. Like the President, you have betrayed us, you have betrayed your country, you have betrayed democracy and justice for all. You should be impeached and removed from Congress. You bring shame to yourself and to America.