Do you have a source? I wonder if that covers all pensions or just public pensions? Or if that requirement is newer and didn't exist when the companies went under 50 or so years ago.
PBGC is “insurance” for pension plans.
Looks like their site says there was little protection for pensions before 1974. So it sounds like there wasn't any protection before that. Their wording around "insured pensions" also seems to indicate that some pensions may not be insured (no requirement to insure them).
One of the disadvantages to democracy that Thomas Paine actually highlighted in "Common Sense" is that when things are off the rails in a monarchy, the cause (and remedy) are obvious. In a democracy, far less so. When Americans elect bad leadership, they ultimately have nobody to blame but themselves, and that damages the public attitude; I suspect one of the reasons "stolen election" conspiracy theories are so popul…
>(One major difference between the antebellum period and now is it's a little harder to see precisely what the cleave-line is that has America's hands around its own throat. In hindsight, slavery was obvious. But the battle lines here are not so brightly drawn... Class? Faith-based conservatism vs. modern cosmopolitanism? Tech savviness vs. technophobia? Possibly enough of all three to make a crisis). It's two fundam…
This makes a great deal of sense. Coupling it with the classic American entitlement thought in a peer thread, I think I can even see why it's only manifesting as a problem recently in the United States (I would say mostly within the past decade or so, whereas the technology to enable cheap long-distance cross-national cultural and economic flow is decades older)... Americans hadn't had this problem previously because the global metacultural phenomenon had been heavily America-biased. People were concerned about McDonald's crapping up in Russia, but concerns about other people's ideas blending with the American way of doing things were dismissed mostly, I think, because a lot of Americans just assumed their way was the best way so it would dominate.
But that was never going to happen, and the cross-national mixing has been passing the inflection point where things that seem anti-American to those disconnected from the rest of the world seem perfectly natural to those deeply plugged in.
There is a framing in which they want the same thing, but each side wants to use a method to achieving that thing that is antithetical to the other. The left wants to achieve it by limiting the power of capital and corporations. The right wants to achieve it by limiting the power of democracy and restricting it to certain demographics. Each finds the other's method appalling.
That doesn't really align any more. Some of the largest, most powerful corporations are now led by ideological leftists, and right wing politicians aren't shy about attacking them.
The issue of climate change, among other issues, is being used to promote unity and one world government. But it doesn't follow that this approach is best to climate change or anything else. We need variation in policies and technologies in order to select the best approach (and not get locked in to a sub-optimal approach). One world government is bad because it will attract evil elements who use it to place all peop…
Currently, on climate change this variation is some countries doing nothing, others doing worse than nothing (e.g. encouraging mass deforestation, as in Brazil), and some countries doing a little more than nothing, but saying they are doing enough when compared to those who are doing nothing or worse, and that they can't afford to do more because it would put them at a disadvantage to the others. So this is less abou…
Problem is that, as I said, the architects of globalism are using this issue. They aren't motivated by the climate or any other of several, rotating concerns. They're motivated by a lust for power/wealth/prestige. You can't achieve difficult objectives unless you are really trying--and they aren't!
However you can ruin the efforts of others by demanding that their work serve a primary political agenda.
You break out a poll to cast a group as fringe. Other people bring up other polls (more recent ones) to counter that argument, and then you shift to a different line of evidence citing "historical trends." Please, take this advice to heart, you are clearly trying to justify a conclusion with whatever evidence you can grab at hand. Take a step back and ask yourself if tribal loyalty is clouding your judgement. We are…
The original point I was making, "republicans are a minority", is true, and the data shows that. This isn't a tribalism thing, it's a question of data analysis. Also, I take umbrage at your patronizing tone. Personally attacking me does not change the data.
Completely changing your post, after it's been replied to, without an indication it was edited, is dishonest. You are not arguing in good faith.
Those of us who have been around for awhile haven't respected the Presidency for far longer than Obama, nor trusted the institutions of government to work on behalf of the American citizen. Further, what is now called the "deep state" has been an issue for many decades, previously referred to as the administrative state. I worked for a company shortly before I retired that employed full time lobbyists. They would arrange meetings with various members of Congress to discuss pending legislation. Not once, in ten years, did the actual member of Congress attend the teleconference, always staff and agency personnel. Big Tech has become a tool for elitists to control the narrative. It's not necessarily a conspiracy. It's an artifact of a laughable public education system and political malice. One need only look at the hyperbolic reaction of liberals to Elon Musk buying Twitter and promising to allow "free speech", something Twitter certainly doesn't allow today. Or the "ministry of truth" established by Mayorkas. Or more broadly, the so-called "social credit" systems. The United States has been moving in a fascist direction for decades, interrupted only briefly by outsiders such as Trump. Many of the positions of today's Republican Party more closely resemble the Democrats of the 60s when I was growing up. The views of today's "progressive" Democrat Party more closely align with Marx and other communists. It's been trending for decades and I see little reason for optimism.
Could you explain precisely what you mean by a "female brain structure", and how you would determine that a male has such a brain structure?
From broad brain traits like sexual orientation down to smaller ones like spatial perception or emotional intelligence, a young brain has certain development windows in which a trait or ability can get more or less developed. You could even add in personality traits like competitevness or deference once you associate it with a gender role. With "female brain structure" i mean traits that are commonly overrepresented…
The latest research doesn't really show that though, more that there is so much overlap between what were previously considered typically male and female differences in structure, such that this whole "female brain in a male body" hypothesis doesn't have the evidence to support it.
Gender identity is more like an improper set of body-drivers in the brain. To use a comparison from computers, if you put AMD hardware in your computer, but install an nVidia driver, the video card likely will not work as intended since your computer is missing some of the information needed to use all its features. Similarly, the brains of trans people tend to have the wrong "drivers" for their body, which causes dy…
That analogy just comes across as trans propaganda. The brain is not separate from the body, it is part of the body. There's not any hardware/software divide like we have in computing, that could have this 'body drivers' concept make any biological sense.
You commented on another comment about transsexuality I wrote, and as with the other, I also disagree with this one. Saying that trans-people who don't undergo surgery are just people with a sexual fetish is very disrespectful, I think. Crossdressing and Transsexuality are not the same thing, as you sure know. There's also nothing wrong with people who crossdress, by the way.