Hostess Maneuver Deprived Pension (took workers' pension money to fund itself)

[Common Sense Party]

19. It's a lousy, crappy thing to do, but it's not "theft."

This story, as written, is misleading: "money taken out of workers' paychecks"...no, it wasn't.

I do not believe, based on other reports, that Hostess took employee 401(k) deductions out of their paychecks and then diverted that to company expenses. That would be a big time ERISA violation and they'd be in deep guano.

What they did was take corporate profits that had been set aside as future pension contributions and they diverted them to try to keep the company afloat. It's a lousy thing to do, especially since they probably had all the executive bonus money stashed away in a separate, golden lock-box ledger. But it's not criminal. Unethical, slimy, despicable? Yes. Criminal? It's be tough to find a judge that would say it was.