Blogger Howie Klein’s “Down with Tyranny” takes 8th congressional district United States Representative Melissa Bean to task in his article,
I also spent some time on the phone today with progressive, grassroots anti-war candidate Randi Scheuer who is primarying Blue Dog Melissa Bean. Randi will be the Blue America guest October 13. Bean’s voting record isn’t progressive; it’s kind of moderate on some issues and reactionary on others. She tends to support corporate power over the interests of workers and consumers. She could easily be a moderate Republican. In fact on Iraq, she could easily be described as a Bush rubber stamp. While taking significant contributions from lobbyists and Republican-leaning corporate front groups, she has been an aggressive supporter of Bush’s hideous trade agreements which have been devastating for ordinary Americans and for our country. She cast the deciding vote on CAFTA, reason enough to vote her out of office. She has also supported the Bush agenda in many other ways:
* for the credit industry’s Republican bankruptcy bill
* for Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy
* for repealing the estate tax
* against net neutrality
* for the Patriot Act
* for the Military Commissions Act (pro-torture.anti habeas corpus)
* for the Republican Terri Schiavo bill
* for a Flag Desecration Amendment
* huge supporter of wasting taxpayer dollars on Big Oil subsidiesYou get the picture? Whether it comes to insurance companies, medical care, immigration, the military-industrial complex, Melissa Bean almost always votes with the Republicans. Randi’s positions are the polar opposite of Bean’s on every single issue above.
Included below the original post is a description of how a Congressional Quarterly article described her last Friday. Bean was “the only Democrat to vote against the $607 billion 2008 Labor-HHS appropriations bill,” the introduction revealed.
One commenter below the article said,
“Bean reminds me of Judy Barr Topinka with the red hair. What is she thinking?”