Your Twinkies got Romneyed

[Atman]

How Vulture Capitalism Ate Your Twinkies

<snip>
Americans are being told that they won’t get their Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos because the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union ran the company into the ground.

But the union and the 5,600 Hostess workers represented by the union did not create the crisis that led the company’s incompetent managers to announce plans to shutter it.
<snip>
“Wall Street investors first came onto the scene with Hostess about a decade ago, purchasing the company and then loading it with debt. All the while, its executives talked of investments in new equipment, new research and new delivery trucks, but those improvements never materialized,” explains AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.

“Instead, the executives planned to give themselves bonuses and demanded pay cuts and benefit cuts from the workers, who haven’t had a raise in eight years,” said the AFL-CIO head. “In 2011, Hostess earned profits of more than $2.5 billion but ended the year with a loss of $341 million as it struggled to pay the interest on $1 billion in debt. This year, the company sought bankruptcy protection, the second time in eight years. Still, the CEO who brought on the latest bankruptcy got a raise while Hostess demanded that its workers accept a 30 percent pay and benefits cut.”
<snip>

http://www.thenation.com/blog/171331/vulture-capitalism-ate-your-twinkies?fb_source=feed_opengraph&ref=feed_open_graph&_ft_=src.19%3Asty.347%3Aactrs.563738234%3Apub_time.1353399135%3Afbid.10151156072633235%3As_obj.5%3As_edge.24%3As_prnt.28%3Aft_story_name.StreamStoryOpenGraphAction_og.likes_one2one%3Amf_objid.10151156072633235%3Aobject_id.10151156072633235%3Aobject_timeline_token_map.Array%3Aapp_id.192399944158735%3Aaction_type_id.305566156165682%3Amedia_type.1%3Aobject_type_name.article#

[Live and Learn]

1. I would not be surprised if Bain buys them out and Twinkies

are suddenly made in China.

[Atman]

4. Made with melamine flour...

...and creamy spackle filling.

But they'd still probably be better for you than are now!

[Live and Learn]

6. LOL nt

[Cha]

3. Damn Straight.. now, thanks to mitLies running for

President and the Obama Team educating the Public on Bain.. people can relate to what's goin' on here.

Thanks Atman

[merrily]

5. I'll thank you to leave my twinkies out of this!

Oh, you meant the cake-ish thingies.

Never mind.

Hostess-the cockroach of the baked goods world. Nothing makes them die out. They could probably survive destruction of the entire planet by nuclear bombs.

Please don't put them in your turmmy.

[HiPointDem]

7. It can't be said often enough: Bankruptcy is their business plan. It's

bankruptcy for profit. Management didn't screw up -- it deliberately took the company down.

And this isn't the only case. This practice has quite a history.

For example:

When Steve Miller, the vulture capitalist who drove Delphi into the ditch of America’s dreams, declared, “Bankruptcy is a growth industry,” he was smiling, but he wasn’t joking.

Bankruptcy in the US isn’t a sign of economic distress or mismanagement, it’s a business plan: calculated, cunning, and void of redeeming social value. American Airlines is the latest in a long line of financial obscenities that make vulture capitalists salivate.

American Airlines’ debt doesn’t outweigh it’s cash and assets. In fact, American Airlines is financing its own bankruptcy. That’s not distress, it’s brass knuckle union busting. The business press makes no bones about American Airlines' plan to profit off the broken backs of labor contracts. In fact, they crow about it.

American Airlines ordered 460 new planes from Boeing and Airbus less than five months ago at a cost of $38 billion. Those contracts will be honored even as American Airlines plans to dump pensions underfunded by about $10 billion for approximately 130,000 workers and retirees.

American Airlines doesn’t pretend to offer a business plan that promises better management. The only benefits American Airlines purports to extract from bankruptcy are pension evasion, and concessions from unions facing a court ordered firing squad...

US bankruptcy courts protect the assets of US corporations invested outside the United States from creditors. You can bet your mother's paycheck American Airlines' parent company, AMR Corp., has cash and assets stashed in ports all over the world.

http://autoworkersunderthegun.blogspot.com/2012_02_01_archive.html

[mnhtnbb]

8. Love your thread title.

Really unbelievable how MSM is just buying the talking points of this story
from management point of view.

[fasttense]

9. The vulture capitalists are merely harvesting Hostess.

Ten years ago, what they are doing would have been illegal. There would NOT have been any profit in it either. But today, thanks to RepubliCON deregulation, it's not only legal to destroy a business and pocket the value of its assets it's a common business model.

Free trade - devouring businesses all over America like a hungry little pac-men.

[tclambert]

10. I like that you're calling it "Romneyed."

I hope that terminology catches on.

[lonestarnot]

11. K & R!

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

12. Kick

[Fire Walk With Me]

13. "This time, it's personal."