I looooove this country

Alright, so according to the AP, United Airlines is going to be allowed to default on its pension payments as part of its plan to dig out of bankruptcy. This will leave the federal government to pick up the tab, which as you might could guess will not be able to pay all of what was guaranteed to the retirees. This was a defined-benefit pension, much like the current social security system. Now instead of getting what they were promised over the 30 or so years that they worked, retirees will now receive some reduced amount, totally screwing whatever retirement plans they might have had.

This settlement comes less than a month after President Bush signed the bankruptcy reform legislation into law. That law makes it impossible for anyone who makes more than the median income in their state to have their debt cleared by filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, even if the cause of their debt was a medical emergency or divorce. What does it say about our political culture when a huge corporation can renege on pension payments to loyal workers, but a family can't get insane medical expenses dropped because they were caught between insurance companies?

Robert