Romney a Lock - You Can Put it On the Board YESSSS!!

Can't wait until Romney does the Philly Cheesesteak thing.

"What are you doing to that meat?"
"I'm chopping it up."
"Why would you do that? And what's with the onions?"
"Huh?"
"Don't you have some rye bread? Perhaps a seven-grain roll?" Oh my gracious, that cheese looks disgusting. You're wrecking the meat."

 

Even if he has to do it himself, Mitt Romney wants to lay some pipe ... line.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/romney-build-keystone-pipeline/story?id=16183744#.T5JACtmKWSp

 

And he got rich that way because the only thing he gives the engines is a "Really Useful" title. He doesn't pay them in coal.

 

Those aren't "bold" pants. Those are "go to hell" pants favored by old money preppies and their imitators.

 

I can assure you that the people who thought those pensions were going to provide their retirement money would think the dissolution of their "promised pensions" were a bit more than "an uncomfortable issue."

 

I said that because it's uncomfortable to me. Nevertheless, pension obligations fall -- and always have fallen -- into the realm of unsecured obligations. Which is another reason why I am much more in favor of "defined contribution" than "defined benefit" retirement plans. No company should make that kind of a promise.

 

But nobody has a pension anymore, haven't you heard? So what if you negotiated and sacrificed other compensation and benefits to get that pension. We need to cut costs to cover our big new debt load and make this company "healthy" again!

 

"Let the little people work off the leveraged-buyout debt"

-- Innumerable Assholes, Throughout Recent History

 

Machine workers at local Lockheed-Martin plant are striking over two things: 1) changes in health-care plan (really pretty austere, particularly, I would suspect, compared to what they had); and 2) switch from defined benefit to defined contribution plan for new workers. I guess I can see striking over the first. I can't see striking over the second. Might as well strike for the right to divide by zero.

 

Doesn't surprise me a bit. Smart unions don't let management split them. Why would you sell out the people who are going to be working next to you next month or the month after that? These are the same people you will eventually rely on to protect your pension when you retire.

 

This will probably devolve into a thread-jack, and I don't want to do that. My point is that defined-benefit plans are, and have been for awhile, gone. The days of companies doing that are over. That is, IMO, entirely as it should be. Defined benefit plans are dishonest ... no company can make that kind of promise. Whether private equity firms are out there or not, pension obligations are unsecured and can be swiped away should circumstances warrant. That's the way it is, and no amount of collective bargaining can make it not that way.