Pro-rape votes. No, seriously.

A bill amendment in the senate was voted on to remove funding from Haliburton, Blackwater, and other companies contracting overseas if they require mandatory binding arbitration for absolutely  anything that goes wrong. No chance of litigation, trial, anything, just arbitration. Arbitration is already known to go very much in favor of the company, seeing as they pay the bills. It’s bad enough on civil suits, but this is applying it to criminal issues.

Like rape.

In fact that is, specifically, what brought this vote up.

Three years ago, because that’’s how long getting past the arbitration clause has taken, Jamie Leigh Jones was, allegedly, I still have to say allegedly legally but it’s kinda “fucking duh”, gang-raped by her co-workers at KBR/Haliburton, in Baghdad. Her contract declared this to be “personal injury arising in the workplace.” That includes the part where she was stuffed into a shipping crate afterwards.

Now that alone is pretty outrageous, and the fact they tried to say it was contractually bound to arbitration moreso. Not like Haliburton is considered a company of good guys, right? But it goes on from there.

Senator Al Franken (I love saying that) put in a bill to withdraw funding from companies with those clauses. The vote passed 70-28-2. Two abstentions, 70 yay, 28 nay.

28 people voted that what happened should never go to trial, effectively. That companies with mandatory arbitration clauses deserve government contracts, regardless of the truly serious crimes happening.

They voted that hey, if you’re raped, that’s too bad, and a company representative will decide what happens to you and the assailants. If anything. They can just fire the victim for false claims against the company without seeing any evidence either way, and they’re completely free of accountability. Isn’t that wonderful?

So, 28 senators, all men, all Republican, have voted that rape is just fine with them, because the free market said so. Notorious assholes John Ensign, Mitch McConnel, Jon Kyl, and David Vitter all are included on the list of nays.

How crazy is that? Michele Bachmann supported the amendment in the house. So out of touch, this is a real quote of hers. “I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours. We have people that are working two jobs.” Yet she realizes that mandatory arbitration is a bad idea.

But not these guys:

In the interest of fairness, ten Republican senators voted against rape:

All the rest of you, however, deserve a lifetime of being skullfucked by a kakapo.