Jun. 09, 2005 - 17:55MDT

GET BY WITH IT

This is essentially an entry I tried to make yesterday and managed to goof up twice and lose the whole shebang, including my good disposition.

An article that showed up in the Rocky Mountain News yesterday morning by Glen Johnson of the Associated Press. Here in full:

WASHINGTON -- "Lax reporting rules created by Congress, and corporate America's eagerness to take advantage of them, have triggered a spike in underfunded pension plans largely unknown to millions of workers and retirees, the Senate Finance Committee was told Tuesday."

"United Airlines may have set an unsavory example for others in the airline industry, committee members were told during a hearing on Capitol Hill. The airline won court approval last month to shed $9 billion in pension obligations -- shifting responsibility to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp."

"That has contributed to a $23.3 billion deficit at the agency, which insures private pension plans, and triggered fears of another massive taxpayer bailout similar to the 1980s S&L crisis. The agency's head told senators the number of pension plans that are more than $50 million short of promised benefit levels has risen from 221 in 2000 to 1,108 in 2004. Those funds have an average of just 69 percent of promised benefits on hand."

"The law represents the floor of acceptable behavior, not the desired state," David Walker, head of the nonpartisan Government Accountabililty Office, told the committee. "Unfortunately, when it comes to pension funding, too many high-risk companies do what is legally permissible, -- rather than what is right -- when deciding how much money to put into their pension plans."

"About 34 million people expect to receive payments from their employers through defined benefit plans. The risk those workers face was high-lighted by the United ruling, in which the PBGC assumed responsibility for paying pensions to 120,000 current and former employees."

"A PGBC report released Tuesday showed that pension rules allowed United to underfund its plan without notifying employees, paying extyra insurance premiums or accelerating its pension payments."

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Boggles a person's mind that this is apparent news to the Senate. United's fight to slide under the law and dump their pension plans by playing poor mouth and saying they will be out of business, going bankrupt, if they have to pay what they have promised -- so what's the deal, don't the senators read the paper or keep up with the news ?

And how in the heck can a corporation as big as United run any kind of business profitably if they have promised more than they can pay ? ? ? ?

And then years of concession after concession from United's employees on wages and benefits, then United still reneging on what they promised their employees for years of service.

It mentions in the article "defined benefit plans" which I believe are what we once knew as covering something called "vested pensions," Which made us think the money was there for us on our retirement.

Not mentioned in this article is that PBGC (A private corporation ? ? ? ?) will not pay the full pensions of retired folks, only a percentage of their pensions. Enough of a cut in pensions to put a crimp in the plans of people who have worked hard for a heck of a bunch of years.

Sort of indicates the ethics of those in the driver's seats of the big outfits.

It is also indicative to me that our courts are NOT on the side of Joe Q. Public.

Of course the folks who lost it all in the Enron type scandle don't have to worry about that, do they ? Their security disappeared in one fell swoop -- while the biggies lived on the one swell foop . . . . . . . .

The press has been talking about this for a long time, our administrative arms of the government have apparently been deaf.

The Wondering Jew wonders just how the biggies GET BY WITH IT . . . . . . . . . . . .

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