30 Republican Senators Vote to Defend Gang Rape

[Magda Hassan]

It is stunning that 30 Republican members of the United States Senate would vote to protect a corporation, in this case Halliburton/KBR, over a woman who was gang raped. The details from Think Progress:

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job." (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

Offering Ms. Jones legal relief was Senator Al Franken of Minnesota who offered an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR "if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."

Seems simple enough. And yet, to GOP Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama allowing victims of sexual assault a day in court is tantamount to a "political attack" at Halliburton. That 29 others, all men, chose to join him in opposing the Franken amendment is simply mind-boggling.

Here are those who vote to protect a corporation over a victim of rape:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

In the debate, Senator Sessions maintained that Franken's amendment overreached into the private sector and suggested that it violated the due process clause of the Constitution.

To which, Senator Franken fired back quoting the Constitution. "Article 1 Section 8 of our Constitution gives Congress the right to spend money for the welfare of our citizens. Because of this, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, 'Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds and has repeatedly employed that power to further broad policy objectives,'" Franken said. "That is why Congress could pass laws cutting off highway funds to states that didn't raise their drinking age to 21. That's why this whole bill [the Defense Appropriations bill] is full of limitations on contractors -- what bonuses they can give and what kind of health care they can offer. The spending power is a broad power and my amendment is well within it."

God I love it when Senator Franken quotes the Constitution. Not every Republican was so clueless. Ten voted for the Franken amendment including the GOP's female contingent of Senators (Snowe, Collins, Hutchinson and Murkowski).

"We need to put assurances into the law that those kind of instances [the Jamie Leigh Jones case] are not capable of being repeated," said Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted in favor of Franken's amendment. "I want to make sure that a woman, any individual who is a victim of a terrible act, knows that they have got protections."

Murkowski said that she considered the arguments that Sessions made about the amendment being too expansive before she decided to vote for the legislation.

"I looked at it," said Murkowski. "And, I tell you, you look at some of the things we do and you have to say, 'OK, you have a specific instance we're trying to address and does this go above and beyond?' But when you have to err on the side of protecting an individual, I erred on the side of greater generosity, I guess."

Republican Sen. George LeMieux of Florida echoed some of Murkowski's sentiments.

"I can't see in any circumstance that a woman who was a victim of sexual assault shouldn't have her right to go to court," LeMieux said. "So, that is why I voted for it."

Although Franken chatted up LeMieux on the Senate floor before the vote, LeMieux said that he had already made his decision. But, LeMieux added, Franken's talk didn't hurt.

"I had decided to vote for it before I came here, but I was happy to hear his argument for it," LeMieux said. "He did what a senator should do, which was he was working it. He was working for his amendment." I'll add, Al Franken is everything a United States Senator should be.

As for Jamie Leigh Jones, she was nothing but elated and thankful. "It means the world to me," Jones said of the amendment's passage. "It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it."

And for the GOP, it is a new low.

More from the Minn Post.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/healthwell..._gang_rape

[David Guyatt]

Un-fookin-believable!

But then it just goes to show the power of big corps like Haliburton and also reflects the true measure of the political process today.

[Peter Lemkin]

Un-fookin-believable!

But then it just goes to show the power of big corps like Haliburton and also reflects the true measure of the political process today.

'Gang Rape' is quiet an apt term for what happens to most all of us every day by the corporate elites and their bankster friends....so I guess they see little difference in physical violation v. financial/democratic/freedom/privacy/et al. violations.....Corporations uber alles!

[Jan Klimkowski]

These scumbags can already kill with immunity.

It's a logical extention to give PMCs and other privatized parts of the military-multinational-mafia complex complete legal immunity for rape.

The more novel part is that this is gang rape of an American citizen.

Crime Sans Frontieres.

I note that John McCain is one of the supporters of immunity for these criminals.

For more on McCain, see here:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...d.php?t=16

[David Healy]

Imagine that, John Ensign (R-NV.)

This guy has turned from the GOP's best shot for the 2112, 2116 OVAL office to "gutter-tripe".... What-a-low life shithead! :thefinger:'em

[Jan Klimkowski]

These scumbags want their own privatized justice system so that victims of assault, battery, vaginal and anal gang rape have no right of access to a country's legal system and courts:

Halliburton/KBR used a clause in Jones's contract requiring disputes to be settled by arbitration to block legal action, a policy her lawyer says has encouraged assaults by creating a climate of impunity.

Franken described it as a denial of justice. "Contractors are using fine print to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court," he said in a Senate debate. "They can't have mandatory arbitration on issues like assault and battery."

Full article here:

US defence firms face penalty over block on assault claims

Senate passes measure prompted by case of woman prevented from suing over alleged rape by Halliburton/KBR colleagues

Chris McGreal in Washington

US defence companies are to be barred from lucrative government contracts if they refuse to allow employees access to the courts, after a woman working for Halliburton in Iraq was prevented from taking legal action over an alleged gang rape by fellow employees.

Al Franken, the newest member of the Senate, has won an amendment to next year's defence appropriations bill prompted by the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, who alleges that she was drugged and raped by seven American contractors in Baghdad in 2005.

Jones, who was employed by a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, which was fighting oil fires, recounts a pattern of subsequent behaviour by the company, including locking her in a container under armed guard and the loss of crucial forensic evidence, that she says amounts to a cover-up.

Halliburton/KBR used a clause in Jones's contract requiring disputes to be settled by arbitration to block legal action, a policy her lawyer says has encouraged assaults by creating a climate of impunity.

Franken described it as a denial of justice. "Contractors are using fine print to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court," he said in a Senate debate. "They can't have mandatory arbitration on issues like assault and battery."

In legal papers Jones, who was 20 at the time, says she was fed a knockout drug while drinking with Halliburton/KBR firefighters.

"When she awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscles torn‚ which would later require reconstructive surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again," the papers say.

Jones was treated by a US army doctor who compiled forensic evidence and handed it to company officials. Jones says the firm placed her under guard in a shipping container and she was released only after calling her father in the US, who asked the American embassy to intervene. When the company handed over the forensic evidence to investigators two years later, crucial photographs and notes were missing.

Jones says she identified one of the men who attacked her after he confessed. But she says Halliburton/KBR prevented her from taking legal action against the man or the company by pointing to a clause in her contract requiring disputes to go to arbitration.

She told a Senate committee she was horrified to discover she could not seek redress in the courts. "I had no idea that the clause was part of the contract, what the clause actually meant, or that I would eventually end up in this horrible situation," she said.

Jones's lawyer, Todd Kerry, said that by forcing earlier assault cases to arbitration, Halliburton and other defence companies had created a climate of impunity in which some workers came to believe they could get away with sexual assaults and other crimes.

"I've received upwards of 40 calls to my office [about assault cases] in the past two years. A good number had been disposed of under arbitration," he said. "Had there been public scrutiny to prevent such things happening and these cases taken to court, they might not have been repeated. Instead one of the men who raped Jamie was so confident that nothing would happen that he was lying in bed next to her the morning after."

Halliburton and KBR divided into separate companies in April. Halliburton declined to comment on the case.

KBR has sought to discredit Jones's account by saying she was seen drinking and flirting with a firefighter before leaving the gathering with him, and that the man claims to have had consensual sex with Jones. The company also denies that Jones was held prisoner, saying that it put her in a living container for her own welfare.

KBR does not challenge the doctor's conclusion that Jones's injuries indicated she suffered serious sexual assault. It defends arbitration as a "fair process".

"Most large companies have a dispute resolution programme which is mandatory and is designed to address employee complaints quickly and efficiently. Under KBR's dispute resolution program 95% of all employee complaints are resolved quickly to the employees' satisfaction without a mediation or an arbitration at no cost to the employee," the company said.

Franken and Kerry have both challenged the assertion that arbitration is usually settled to the satisfaction of complainants, and other women have come forward to accuse the companies of not taking assault allegations seriously.

Mary Beth Kineston, who drove lorries in Iraq and survived a bloody ambush, has alleged that she was sacked by the company after complaining of sexual assaults by several fellow workers.

"At least if you got in trouble on a convoy, you could radio the army and they would come and help you out. But when I complained to KBR, they didn't do anything. I still have nightmares. They changed my life forever, and they got away with it," she told the New York Times last year.

Linda Lindsey, who worked for KBR in Iraq for three years, has said male supervisors regularly offered promotions and other benefits in exchange for sex. Lindsey said she filed complaints that were never acted on.

Last month Jones won a court ruling against Halliburton and KBR that the arbitration clause in her contract did not prevent them from being sued. But the legal battle to get the case heard is far from over. "Four years to fight to get in court is not a day in court," she said.

The legislation to end the bar on legal action passed the Senate with a clear majority but 30 Republican members voted against it, including the former presidential candidate John McCain. Among the objections were claims that the government had no business interfering in a private contract between a company and its workers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct...laim-block

The fine print will need to be very carefully examined.

It's clear that PMCs and their ilk want total immunity from oversight and prosecution. And plenty of lackey politicians are prepared to grant them such immunity.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Have You Signed Away Your Right to Sue?

More employees are being forced to sign mandatory-arbitration clauses. But is it legal?
—By Stephanie Mencimer

March/April 2008 Issue
Fonza Luke had worked as a nurse for Baptist Health System's Princeton Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama, for 26 years when the human resources department summoned her to a meeting about a new "dispute resolution program." Nurses, housekeepers, and lab techs crammed into a conference room where hospital administrators presented a form and told them to sign. Signing meant agreeing to submit any future employment-related complaints to an arbitrator hired by the hospital and waiving the right to sue in court. Refusing to sign meant they'd be fired.

Luke had known the arbitration agreement was coming, and she didn't like the idea one bit—"I just think it's unfair to be made to do something like that," she says. So before going to the conference room, she slipped away to a pay phone and called her lawyer. He said, "Don't sign it. You'll be signing your rights away," she recalls. Luke turned in the form without a signature in quiet protest. A few weeks later, the hospital again ordered her to sign, and again she refused. Despite repeated threats, the hospital didn't fire her, at least not then.

Three years later, Luke traveled to Atlanta for a continuing-education class recommended by her coworkers. When she returned, the hospital fired her for "insubordination" because she had been cleared to take just one day off, not two. For 30 years, Luke had been an exemplary employee. Her personnel file was full of praise for her performance; a review three weeks before the firing called her a "role model." Many of the younger, white nurses Luke worked with had taken unapproved leave, she observed, and kept their jobs. So Luke filed a race and age discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (eeoc), which conducted a lengthy investigation, upheld her complaint, and recommended that Luke file a civil rights suit in federal court, which she did in 2003.

That's when the surprise came: Baptist Health argued that Luke had given up her right to sue back in 1997 when the hospital presented the arbitration agreement—even though she'd refused to sign. Simply by continuing to show up for work, Baptist's lawyers said, she'd agreed to the terms. Acting contrary to established contract law, which requires both parties to consent to a contract before it becomes binding, a federal judge accepted the hospital's argument. Luke was forced to take her civil rights case before Baptist's hired arbitrator, who dismissed it in short order. She had no right to appeal. She'd lost not only her job but, because she hadn't yet reached retirement age, part of the pension she'd worked toward for most of her adult life. Now Luke works night shifts at two health care facilities to make up her lost salary.

Mandatory-arbitration provisions like the one forced upon Luke are not rare. In fact, agreements not to sue are becoming a ubiquitous facet of commercial life, governing everything from employment to used-car sales. On job-related matters alone, the National Employment Lawyers Association (nela) estimates that 30 million Americans, or roughly a fifth of the nonunion workforce, have been forced to sign away the right to bring civil claims before a judge or jury. (The practice had a moment in the spotlight recently when a kbr contractor named Jamie Leigh Jones, who said she'd been raped by coworkers in Iraq, had to take her sexual assault and harassment case to an arbitrator hired by her employer rather than a civil jury after the Justice Department failed to prosecute her alleged attackers.)

The root of the arbitration trend is an obscure 1925 law called the Federal Arbitration Act. At the time of its passage, lawmakers stipulated that it only applied to "merchants" involved in contract disputes. But in 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had created a "national policy favoring arbitration," thus opening the door to far wider use. The decision prompted a dramatic increase in mandatory binding arbitration, which proponents claimed would help clear overcrowded judicial dockets and cut back on excessive legal expenses.

Since then, judges have used the Supreme Court ruling to legitimize and further expand the use of mandatory arbitration, even though, as Justice Hugo Black once observed, arbitrators can be "wholly unqualified" to oversee complicated cases. Indeed, private arbitrators aren't required to follow the law or established precedent, or even issue written decisions. Many have legal backgrounds, but there is no standard dictating that they be lawyers or credentialed in any way—yet their decisions can't be appealed.

In 1992, the California Supreme Court ruled that an arbitration decision can stand even if it is legally wrong and causes "substantial injustice." In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit declared that courts shouldn't review arbitrators' decisions even when they are "wacky." Also in 2006, the 11th Circuit appellate court went so far as to suggest that people who try to challenge arbitration awards in court ought to be sanctioned. Says Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco employment lawyer and cofounder of nela, "Courts have created the fiction that docket clearing is public policy."

Judges have another reason to love arbitration: The growth of private justice has created for them a new and lucrative job market. U.S. district court judges earn $165,200 a year, less than some second-year law firm associates. Private arbitrators can make $10,000 in a day. Some judges now even seek coaching on how best to tailor their résumés for future arbitration jobs. Lucie Barron, the founder of Action Dispute Resolution Services in California, encourages judges to keep lawyers' business cards for use in marketing their arbitration services to the legal community later on. The trend has become so pronounced that in December, a judge in California reportedly refused to accept a move from civil to criminal court because it would impact his ability to get a job as an arbitrator.

National arbitration companies recruit heavily among sitting judges, many of whom have at one time or another been called upon to rule in a challenge to an arbitration clause. In fact, the California Supreme Court justice who wrote the 1992 opinion allowing unjust arbitration decisions to stand now works as a private arbitrator charging $6,500 a day.

With little hope of progress in the courts, consumer advocates and employment lawyers have turned to Congress. They are banking on a bill introduced last July by Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) that would outlaw mandatory-arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts. In December, Fonza Luke flew to Washington to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Having once successfully petitioned the pope to intervene when she thought her daughter had been mistreated in Catholic school, Luke held her own on a witness panel dominated by lawyers and law professors. "I did everything I could to keep my right to go to federal court," she told the committee, "but the courthouse doors were closed when I got there."

Sitting down the table from Luke was Mark de Bernardo, an attorney representing employers who dubbed Feingold's measure a "mandatory-litigation bill." De Bernardo argued that doing away with forced arbitration would lead more people to choose court hearings and "impose a death penalty" on alternative dispute resolution in America. Yet to Feingold and others, that's exactly the point—people should be able to choose. As F. Paul Bland Jr., a staff lawyer with Public Justice in Washington, D.C., put it, "It is a pretty grim idea that the only way you could have arbitration is to force people into it."

You Can't Sue Us! Some of the companies that use arbitration clauses in contracts with employees or customers

Hooters • Applebee's • kfc • Friendly Ice Cream Corporation • Circuit City • Neiman Marcus • Nordstrom • Hallmark Cards • Merrill Lynch • Citigroup • First usa • Ameriquest • Discover • Blue Cross Blue Shield • Aetna • Kaiser Permanente • AT&T • Ford • Daimler AG • Toyota • Clear Channel • General Electric • Halliburton • Bechtel • Rent-a-Center

Stephanie Mencimer is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. For more of her stories, click here.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008...-right-sue

[Ed Jewett]

Thanks to all, and thanks to Jan for the MJ article naming US companies... I try not to do business with these types, and the military-industrial complex supporters, and the companies engaged in other odious stuff, but -- you know what? -- it's all becoming so pervasive and rhizomatous that it's hard not to give them some of your dollars and energy by default.

[Ed Jewett]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-oc.../rape-nuts

Also, see Senator Al Franken in action on this issue here: [URL="http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/47064"]
[/URL]
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/47064 (embedded 10-minute video)

[Ed Jewett]

Corporate Supremacy and the Rape of a Human Girl

By Glenn W. Smith

October 18, 2009 "FireDogLake" -- We are fast approaching the time of the next great battle over evolution. The Neo-creationists will be corporations, and they will argue that they could not possibly be descended from human beings. This isn't science fiction. Just the other day 30 Republicans voted in the U.S. Senate to deny justice to a human victim of rape in order to protect the so-called sovereign rights of corporations.
I'm not much for slippery slope arguments, but when we're buried in mud at the bottom of a slope, it might be prudent to see what we slipped on. In this case, as Thom Hartmann and others have pointed out, it was a court reporter's memo attached to an obscure 1886 Supreme Court case. The memo summarized the court's alleged opinion that the 14th Amendment applied to corporations. Corporations were people, too.
The rape case of Jamie Leigh Jones was just a logical step forward in the long-standing Republican effort to lock Americans out of the nation's courthouses, an effort undertaken on behalf of corporate supremacy. A woman is gang-raped by her fellow employees at government contractor KBR. The company says her contract prohibits her from seeking justice in court.
Thirty Republican U.S. senators voted to safeguard corporations from lawsuits in rape cases. You read that right the first time. The amendment they voted against, by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, would withhold government contracts from corporations that block employees from going to court when raped or sexually assaulted on the job.
The case - and the vote - stirred a little outrage, but not enough.
Jones, of Houston, was drugged and gang raped while working in Baghdad for KBR/Halliburton. She was locked in a shipping container by the company and warned to keep quiet. She didn't keep quiet. Franken and Senate Democrats took up her cause.
The crimes of the rapists and their protectors in the Republican Party reveal "tort reform" as one of the great political cons in U.S. history. Tort reform is the not-missing link in the evolution of corporate supremacy and human inferiority.
The decades-long GOP campaign against civil justice was just part of the effort to place corporations above the law and corporatist elected officials out of the reach of voters. Republican voter suppression was another front in the war on popular democracy.
This is the populist issue of our time. Well, it was the populist issue of bygone times, too, but too damn few took up the cause and the GOP ran away with a victory built on fake field goals, double-reverses, stolen signals and rigged referees.
It sickens me that Republicans could generate faux-populist resentment of wealthy lawyers to seal the public out of the public sphere so corporatists could steal, maim and kill with impunity.
Also, too many progressive organizations stood idly by as the values at the core of democracy were attacked. Where were environmentalists, civil rights groups, women's groups, consumer associations, and campaign finance reformers when Republicans campaigned to give corporations greater legal rights than people? They were sealed away in their silos, their consciences eased by their single-mind focus on their particular issues. It didn't seem to matter to them that their ability to actually achieve anything was being undermined by the attack on democratic institutions and core American values.
Now that we have reached the point where Republicans can argue with a straight face that rape should be overlooked in favor of corporate protectionism maybe this will change.
I think American businesses are waking up to the excesses of the extremist assault on democracy. When all the courthouses are closed, they can't get their business-to-business contracts enforced.
I fear, though, that in many places progressives and their allies are stuck in old habits and personal grudge matches. Moderate business Democrats should finally understand that lawyers did not cause any of the policy problems they care most about: the collapse of public education, support for higher education, a safe environment, a predictable regulatory environment. Progressive advocacy groups should wake up, too. When the public is sealed out of courthouses and capitols, all their earnest work for the environment, civil rights and health care will come to nothing.
It is a sign of our moral confusion that we are forced to have a conversation about whether a woman who has been gang-raped can go to court against her assailants. It is altogether disagreeable that we have to have it with inhuman entities that want us to grant them legal superiority in laws meant for humans.
© 2009 FireDogLake