The party of family values. And rape.
13th October 2009
by gordo
Sen. Al Franken makes pro-arbitration lobbyist Mark De Bernanrdo squirm
A lot of female private contractors in Iraq were raped by their fellow contractors. In many of those cases, the companies they worked for ignored complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault, and refused to punish the guilty parties. In some instances, these firms went so far as to sequester the victims, effectively placing them under house arrest, in order to prevent them from reporting sexual assaults.
Because the Bush administration extended legal immunity to contractors, the rapists and their employees could not be held legally accountable. And because the contracting companies required their employees to submit to legally binding arbitration, these firms could not be held accountable in civil court. In effect, men working for these firms were given license to rape their fellow employees.
This went on for years, until Senator Al Franken introduced a legislative amendment that would deny federal contracts to firms that require victims of sexual assault to submit to binding arbitration. Unsurprisingly, Franken’s amendment was opposed by some of the more vile members of the Republican Party:
On the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) spoke against the amendment, calling it “a political attack directed at Halliburton.” Franken responded, “This amendment does not single out a single contractor. This amendment would defund any contractor that refuses to give a victim of rape their day in court.”
The reason Sessions thinks that this amendment is an attack on Halliburton is that former Halliburton subsidiary KBR was by far the worst offender, which makes me wonder why Sessions has cast himself as the firm’s staunchest defender.
By the way, when I say that Franken’s amendment was opposed by some of the more vile Republicans, I mean it was opposed by the majority of the Republicans in the US Senate. Given the fact that the Republicans in congress have proven time and again that they don’t care much about the rights and well-being of women, and given the fact that they’ve proven time and again that they will do literally anything on behalf of companies with financial ties to the Republican Party, this shouldn’t surprise me. But I honestly didn’t think that the Senate Republicans would so brazenly defend rapists, at least not with the mid-term elections just a year away.
October 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Yep. Fwaken makes about as much sense as a law maker as he did as a comedian and
as the principal reason that Airhead America has fewer listeners than the Myrtice
Wildebanks speed crochet hour in Wedowee Alabama.
So a police sergeant feels up a female rookie. Let’s not stop with stripping him
of rank, fining and firing him-not in the liberal nitwit world we don’t.
Let’s cut all the funding for the police department!
Not to mention what should happen, with that kind of drool cup thinking, when a Democrat president forces an
intern to give him a blow job in the oval office.
Maybe we should stop all the funding for the…
Hey-wait at minute!!!….:+)
Just another reason why Minnesota should keep its’ hopeless clowns on late night comedy and
out of Senate chambers.
October 13th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
BRT, once again you are full of shit. If a cop committed sexual assault, the police department would not be able to require the female rookie to arbitrate the case (in secret) instead of pressing criminal charges. Corporations cannot use contracts to avoid compliance with the law. That is just a simple matter of justice.
But as usual the Republicans are kissing corporate ass and you are trying to convince everyone that such ass-kissing is all-American like apple pie and football. As I said, bullshit.
It is also not surprising that you just don’t understand rape. I guess the concept of consent is too complicated for your lizard brain.
October 13th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
BRT - really? You bring up the tired old story of a Democratic president (who never forced anyone to do anything in the oval office I can assure you) who messed around in response to this? What are you an old vinyl record with a scratch? Seriously, I have no love for Clinton…either of them for that matter…but WTF?
This is an obvious attempt, and a sad one at that, to cover up rape. That isn’t at all acceptable. Those rapist better hope they get tried by someone like me who despises the death penalty and other forms of capital punishment and not by their friends who are all for it!
October 14th, 2009 at 8:07 am
Shorter Bedrock: There shouldn’t have been female contractors in the first place.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Anyone who thinks a violent gang rape is even a little ok loses all credibility: this is not a partisan issue, it’s a basic human issue. Bedrocktruth is obviously a fucking neanderthal as are the rest of these assholes http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/meet-the-senators-who-vot_n_312976.html
It should have sailed through with 100% support, but I suppose this is a lesson to the rest in whose interests these lawmakers are really supporting.
Just disgusting. And frankly, flat out embarassing, as both a citizen of this “developed nation” and as a resident of one of the states duly represented by one of these champions of rape. Bravo, Mr. Cornyn.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Hey, I just posted that 3 hours in the past.
It’s just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right….
October 15th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Runaway…wait wait wait…Neanderthals were not nearly that short sighted nor that a-holish! Since there aren’t many Neanderthals around these days to defend themselves I thought I would have to stand up for them and say…don’t insult all Neanderthals like that man…they didn’t do it.
October 16th, 2009 at 7:09 am
My sincere apologies to our extinct hominid friends. Because they have understandably failed to respond to polls, we have no way of knowing for certain whether or not a typical Neanderthal would be in favor of this legislation. Scientific evidence suggests that their cranial capacity met or even exceeded that of modern humans, however, so I will flip-flop and say that they were actually intelligent enough to vote in favor of Franken’s bill. Oddly, Neanderthals do not appear to be advanced enough for other tasks, such as storing food and using throwing weapons. Republicans, on the other hand, seem to have mastered both storing food and using projectile weapons, which gives them an admitted physical advantage. The only conclusion that can be fairly drawn from this is that while Republicans can out-eat and out-kill Neanderthal Man, the Neanderthal is clearly the superior legislator.
October 16th, 2009 at 7:57 am
Okay, not sure the Anthropological data supports all of your ideas…it is good enough for Government work. So, since you are no longer associated a certain negatively based poster who haunts this site in league with the Neanderthals…I am now down with your assessment.
October 16th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Of course, if you are a Republican of the Young Earth “Creashonist” stripe, Neanderthals died out some time between 6,000 years ago and Noah’s Flood, or maybe they survived the flood and Andre the Giant was one of the last survivors.
October 16th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Actually, according to the Anthropological record, it is more likely that Robin Williams is a better representation for a Neanderthal than Andre…Neanderthals were never tall…which is rather amusing seeing the name…never mind that.
Moreover, 6000 years ago to the flood eh? Yeah…okay. Silly count the generations to figure out how much time has happened. By the way, no where in the Bible does it tell you to count the generations and in addition no place will it tell you this is a complete history. Oh and I have yet to be told by any Rabbi (regardless of branch of Judaism) that any Jews take THEIR book to be an accurate history or a time counting device. Just so you know.
October 16th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Yeah, I know all that. I was merely parodying what some people believe. But not so fast on Judaism. One of my former co-workers was a Lubavitcher, and from what I gleaned from him, he was pretty much a YEC.
October 16th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Idiots!
Nincompoops!
Liberals! (excuse the redundancy)
It’s not about the crime morons-even those bad old “lizard brained” conservatives are as solidly against rape as
you numb nuts claim to be in your witless yammering for several days now.
It’s about the damned flaky liberal(redundant) version of PUNISHMENT!
So a rape, or rapes, weren’t punished by Halliburton, Black Water or other contractors. So liberal nitwits like
Al Fwaken and the moon bat chorus here think the solution for that is to deny them funding.
Let’s see. Wonder how many rapes haven’t been properly punished by city, state and the federal governments?
With “Hey did you hear the one about?” Al’s ludicrous precedent in place even the dumbest liberal(redundant)
ambulance chaser will have no problem at all advising clients to deny funding (paying taxes) to organizations (city, state and federal governments) who’re derelict in their duties in that regard.
I can almost hear them citing Crazy Al in the court papers now.
Short Circuit and the other chowder heads here too…
October 16th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
It is funny how law and order wingnuts lose their appetite for criminal justice when it comes to corporate illegality. Who’s the moral relativist?
Try to follow the logic, lizard brain: the law requires companies that receive federal funding to prosecute, not arbitrate, sexual violence. Companies that receive these billion dollar contracts can say “Oh, well, we’ll take our business elsewhere” or they can change their policies. Gosh! I wonder which option they’ll choose? Same logic as environmental regulation. Make the cost of the crime high enough that corporations will change their behavior because it is in their interest to do so. (Conservatives love to defend capital punishment using this same logic applied to individuals.)
The GOP argument here is that we can’t make these companies follow the law because we need them too much. I think it is generous to say that that argument entirely misses the point.
And by the way, the argument that because other rapes go unpunished we should not require corporations to let rape victims have their day in court is exceedingly stupid. If we let one go we have to let them all go? What, are you seven years old?
October 16th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
At least the old tired story about a former President was not mentioned in his…wait, it wasn’t really a rebuttal, it seemed more of a name calling tirade and then some obviously misguided and more or less confused comments. Well, in any case, no we don’t need any company enough to allow them to arbitrate rape. Regardless of how many cases of any kind go unknown, untried or unpunished when you have the evidence you proceed to trial and attempt to get justice for those who have been abused.
Is crazy Al supposed to be Senator Franken? If so, let me first state, I don’t really think I ever found Franken funny as a comedian and I don’t know if he pulled the biggest joke of his career on us by winning an amazingly close election or not. However, he is a Senator and I have no evidence that he is derelict in his duties, is off his rocker or anything. To the best of the reporting about this and other issues since he has taken office he has been serious about his job and serving his people. So…perhaps BRT should consider actually having facts and issues to talk about and not resort to name calling as his only way to try to get a point across. Whatever the hell his point was…
October 16th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Timothy Shortell, Ph.D.–
Actually, the law requires even less of these companies. All they have to do is follow the same rules as companies all over the US follow. You either put policies in place to discourage sexual violence and harassment, or you fight the lawsuits that you generate in court. In other words, all they have to do is take elementary precautions and discipline guilty parties, so that they can demonstrate a lack of negligence when they get sued.
In the case of KBR, the company ignored repeated complaints from female employees, and went so far as to place a woman under house arrest so that she couldn’t speak to the media or to Army officials about the gang rape that she suffered at the hands of her fellow employees. The reason KBR required employees to submit to binding arbitration is that they knew that any reasonable judge or jury would find that they had gone beyond negligence and actively protected the rapists, which would probably have resulted in a multi-million dollar judgement.
October 19th, 2009 at 6:25 am
http://runawaylawyer.blogspot.com/2009/10/i-know-no-one-will-read-it-but.html
October 19th, 2009 at 7:57 am
Shorter Bedrock: Because Al Franken supports it, I’m against it.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:28 am
Runaway–
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, the link in your name is misdirected.
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Not really Tommy; at least not for that reason alone.
Left wing nitwits like Shortchange who can’t even read; let alone deliver a reasonable response
to a simple statement unless it involves fog brained academic tummy thumping and some hair brained excuse for wretched excess is more than enough for me.
Read the goddamned statement foggy and try to connect two simple dots concerning “crime and punishment”
Than talk to me.
One second thought-don’t. Just go screw up Portugal or something…
October 25th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Thanks. Fixed…at least from now on.