Forum Post: What is PBGC ?

If you’ve got a pension plan run by your employer, you should really care about the PBGC, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the federal government agency that guarantees that you will collect a pension even if your company goes bankrupt and cannot make good or doesn’t want to make good on its pension promises to you.
And you should care about who the director of the PBGC is & you absolutely must care about who appoints the director of the PBGC - of course, the president of the United States.

There may have been a lot of people working at American Airlines last year who didn’t know about the PBGC, but now they all do. And most of them now know about this man, Joshua Gotbaum, President Obama’s director of the PBGC, because he is now doing everything he possibly can to save the pensions that are being threatened by the American Airlines bankruptcy proceedings.
American Airlines announced today that it hopes to cut 13,000 jobs. Thats 16 percent of its workforce. And to terminate its workers pension plan, just end it, throw it out, and replace it eventually, when they get around to it, with a much lower cost plan, with much lower benefits.
Now, pilots retiring in the next couple years would probably lose something like 50 percent of the pension benefits that they’ve been counting on. Last month, American Airlines would have had to contribute 97 million dollars to its workers’ pension funds if it were not being protected by bankruptcy proceedings. Instead of fulfilling their 97 million dollar obligation to the pension fund, American Airlines contributed only 6.5 million dollars to the pension plans, less than what the Adelson’s contributed to Newt Gingrich’s campaign.
The president’s man at the PBGC, Joshua Gotbaum, saw what American Airlines did to its workers’ pensions. And he immediately put liens on 91 million dollars of American Airlines’ assets- none of the assets are part of the bankruptcy proceedings.

And you know who helps American Airlines do those things that they don’t need to do? Bain and Company, Mitt Romney’s old company. Bain is one of a group of high priced consultants and financial advisers who have been hired by American Airlines to help get through the bankruptcy process, by, of course, making the financial condition of the company much worse.

That’s what Bain does. Bain and the other consultants and lawyers working on the American Airlines bankruptcy are being paid 14 million dollars a month. That’s more than double what American Airlines put in its pension fund last month. Bain’s job is to advise American Airlines how to cut labor costs, something any company ought to be able to figure out on its own.
All the Bain blood suckers have done so far at American Airlines is increase the company’s costs.
But the president’s man at the PBGC, Joshua Gotbaum, is watching every move they make with only one objective in his mind every day, to preserve the pensions of those pilots who every day bear a more awesome responsibility than any other workers in our society. They have, in their hands, every hour that they’re in the air, the lives of hundreds of people sitting behind them. Joshua Gotbaum is fighting is to preserve the pensions of those mechanics, the unseen heroes with the awesome responsibility of making those glorious and infinitely complex machines fly, and fly safely. He’s fighting to preserve the pensions of those flight attendants, every one of whom knows how to save your life with the defibrillator on board every airplane. If you or someone you love has a heart attack in the air, it is that flight attendant, who annoyed you by ordering you to turn off your phone, who will be rushing to your seat to try to save your life.

The Bain guy in his First Class seat is not going to run back and save you
……………………………………………….. when you have a heart attack.
The Bain guy doesn’t know how to do that.
The Bain guy doesn’t know how to fly the plane.
The Bain guy doesn’t know how to land the plane.
The Bain guy is absolutely useless to that airline.
The Bain guy is only on the plane because he’s bleeding money from American Airlines to try make himself as rich as Mitt Romney. Or he’s on his way to some other city, where he can bleed some other company and try to get even richer than Mitt Romney.

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In November, you will have a chance to vote
for the person who appoints the director of the
Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.

And the choice you will be offered will be

President Barack Obama
or
the Bain guy

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………………………………………..from msnbc Lawrence ODonnell