Who votes against rape? Thirty Republican senators that's who. This year, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment that would deny defense contracts to companies that ask employees to sign away the right to sue. The amendment passed, but with THIRTY votes against it. Sounds awful enough, but when you find out why the amendment was necessary, it makes you cringe.
The amendment came in response to a case where a Haliburton employee was gang raped. She was then harassed and had her case obstructed by her offenders and other Haliburton employees. According to the article linked below, the woman was "not allowed to sue KBR because her employment contract said that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration--a process that overwhelmingly favors corporations."
So the amendment is a good thing, right? Helps survivors seek justice, right? Well, I guess the interests of multi-billion dollar coporations are more important than women's safety or employee rights to these senators.
Go here to find out WHO these thirty senators are: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/meet-the-senators-who-vot_n_312976.html
Thankfully, our senators for Ohio are not on the list.
Here is the article from the Huffington Post by Alex Leo and below that is a clip from Jon Stewart who manages to present the horror of this situation in a humorous way.
In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her Halliburton/KBR co-workers while working in Iraq and locked in a shipping container for over a day to prevent her from reporting her attack. The rape occurred outside of U.S. criminal jurisdiction, but to add serious insult to serious injury she was not allowed to sue KBR because her employment contract said that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration--a process that overwhelmingly favors corporations.
This year, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment that would deny defense contracts to companies that ask employees to sign away the right to sue. It passed, but it wasn't the slam dunk Jon Stewart expected. Instead the amendment received 30 nay votes all from Republicans. "I understand we're a divided country, some disagreements on health care. How is ANYONE against this?" He asked.
He went on to show video of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) arguing that it's not the government's place to decide who the government does business with and juxtaposed that with Republican sentiment on how the government should deal with ACORN. "I guess it's an efficiency thing. You don't want to waste tax-payer money giving it to someone who advises fake prostitutes how to commit imaginary crimes, you want to give it to Halliburton because they're committing real gang rape."
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/jon-stewart-takes-on-30-r_n_321985.html
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