Bean Votes Against Democracy (Again)
Rising Tide Campaign
Rising Tide Campaign
Bill Scheurer for Congress
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Bill Scheurer, Candidate
June 25, 2010 Scheur...@comcast.net
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Bean Votes Against Democracy (Again)
Once again serving the corporate interests who fund her campaigns, Rep. Melissa Bean (IL8-D) cast her vote against clean and fair elections – siding with the Republican opposition, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, the US Chamber of Commerce, and a litany of other corporate industry lobbyist groups.
Following her “Blue Dog Coalition” associates in the Congress, Bean voted against the DISCLOSE Act (H.R. 5175: Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act), which attempts to limit the damage to our democracy from the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that gave corporations a blank check for unlimited, secret funding of candidates in federal elections.
Besides voting against sunshine and accountability in federal election funding, Rep. Bean also voted against the other stated goals of the DISCLOSE Act “to prohibit foreign influence in Federal elections, to prohibit government contractors from making expenditures with respect to such elections.”
We have long known that Rep. Bean was a corporate candidate – voting with the Republicans on such issues as job-destroying foreign trade agreements, erosion of bankruptcy protections to make working people indentured servants to the credit card companies, the Bush/Cheney energy policies that brought us the BP oil disaster in the Gulf, repeal of progressive estate taxes (the so-called “death tax”), and a long list of other votes that consistently favor wealth over work in every aspect of our government.
Since only two Republicans voted for the DISCLOSE Act reform to bring sunshine and accountability to corporations’ political activities, ordinary citizens and hardworking taxpayers probably would not have fared any better if Republican challenger Joe Walsh was in office, despite his populist “Tea Party” mantle. Only Green Party challenger Bill Scheurer would have voted for the DISCLOSE Act.
Illinois 8th Congressional District voters are once again left with a choice between a Republican and a Republican-who-calls-herself-a-Democrat, except for the independent third-party challenger.
