This Is Just So Wrong

United Airlines is bailing out on their pension plans—with the Federal Government picking up the tab using our tax dollars.

“United Airlines, which is operating in bankruptcy protection, received court permission yesterday to terminate its four employee pension plans, setting off the largest pension default in the three decades that the government has guaranteed pensions.

The ruling by Judge Eugene R. Wedoff of Federal Bankruptcy Court came after a lengthy hearing in a crowded Chicago courtroom, near where United is based.

Despite pleas by union lawyers, Judge Wedoff sided with United, which had insisted that it could not emerge from bankruptcy protection with its pension plans in place.

The ruling releases United, a unit of the UAL Corporation, from $3.2 billion in pension obligations over the next five years. The federal agency that guarantees pensions, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, will assume responsibility for the plans, which cover about 134,000 people.”

We should all be mad at Bush and Gore and Clinton and Regan and Carter and Nixon and Ford and every other politician, Democrat and Republican, for allowing our government to get involved in matters like this. They create the playing field, meddle in the process of the free market, then bail out the corporations when everything goes south.

I’m not saying that the retiree’s deserve to suffer and sweep French fries out of the floor at McDonalds under the Golden Arches in their “Golden years,” but we’re talking $3,200,000,000 here. That’s Billion with a “B.”

OUCH!

We should also be angry at the Unions and the mindless employees that are members of same. Don’t they remember an old airline called EASTERN that suffered the same fate in the late 1980’s?

When you actively participate in killing the company that you work for as these union employees are doing, I have a hard time having any sympathy for you.