Corporate Supremacy and the Rape of a Human Girl

[Joanne98]

by Glenn W. Smith

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.

continued>>>
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/18-6

[Sinti]

1. "sovereign rights of corporations"

Sovereign is they key word. Our congressmen are working for what amount to foreign nations. These multi-national corporations are basically nations unto themselves - in wealth and power. They simply have no land. If they are not nations, they are pirates - pirates with huge amounts of booty crushing all of us.

[Uncle Joe]

2. But isn't that the Party that promotes "family values?"

"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."


Thanks for the thread, Joanne.

[sasquatch]

3. That's southern code for anti-black and anti-women

[Uncle Joe]

6. That's too simple of an answer; discounting millions of people that may have believed otherwise.

I'm not suggesting your answer doesn't have truth to it, but by it self only gives power to the people; you may despise by making it easier for them use divide and conquer.

[Democrats_win]

4. Obviously vigilantism is needed. Sooner or later.

In 2008 Americans voted. In 2009 nothing has changed.

[struggle4progress]

5. And let's just post their names again for good measure:

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)

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 111th Congress - 1st Session
as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate
Question: On the Amendment (Franken Amdt. No. 2588 )
Vote Number: 308 Vote Date: October 6, 2009, 04:37 PM
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00308

From the pro-rape gang, the following are up for re-election in 2010: Burr, Coburn, Crapo, DeMint, Isakson, McCain, Shelby, Thune, and Vitter. (Bond, Brownback, Bunning, and Gregg are apparently planning to retire rather than seek re-election)