The Hostess Company is bankrupt.  Their most famous product, the Twinkie, is getting all the press.  The Twinkie is no more!  Everyone seems to care about the damn Twinkies!  What about the Eighteen Thousand Hostess employees who are losing their jobs, just before Christmas 2012, because some greedy corporate bastards and vulture capitalist sucked the company dry of all its capital assets to make themselves richer at the expense of their employees and their customers?

A friend of mine, billy bob philly, published an article on Newsvine that was accidentally deleted by The Mod Squad, but here's the old title, and an excerpt from it ...

Twinkies » A Death In The Family — And The Question Is: Whodunit?

Business or Politics?

Since this is such an obvious case of Romneyesque/Bain Capitalism, I left this as Politics.

When Hostess was acquired in 2009, the new owners basically announced that the company was worth more dead than alive, and proceeded to load it it up with debt, that they can now write off due to the bankruptcy.  They never had any intention of keeping Hostess alive.

Vulture Capitalism 101.

billy bob's Newsvine article draws from this Jim Hightower article published on November 28th, 2012 12:00 am, on the website The National Memo 

The National Memo » A Death In The Family — And The Question Is: Whodunit?

A Death In The Family — And The Question Is: Whodunit?

Born in 1930 in Schiller Park, IL, the deceased was 82 years old at the time of passing, which ironically was the day before Thanksgiving.

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Remember the horrible murders in 1978 of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk? At the killer’s trial, his lawyer argued for leniency on the grounds that his client subsisted on a steady diet of junk food, which had addled his brain. This claim entered the annals of American jurisprudence as the “Twinkie Defense.”

Even less defensible is the campaign by Ripplewood financial manipulators to lay the death of Hostess at the feet of loyal, longtime employees who, after all, need the jobs. In fact, far from greedy, Hostess workers and their unions have been both modest and faithful. Their wages are decent but not at all excessive — only middle class. And the charge that unions would not make sacrifices to help the company is a flat-out lie, for they had previously given back $100 million in annual wages and benefits to help it survive.

The true perfidy in this drama is not in the union, but inside Ripplewood’s towering castle of high finance in New York City. After buying Hostess in a bankruptcy sale, these equity hucksters proceeded to feather their own nests, rather than modernize Hostess’s equipment and upgrade its products, as the unions had urged. For starters, these profiteers piled an unbearable debt load of $860 million on Hostess, thus diverting its revenues into nonproductive interest payments made to rich, absentee speculators. Also, they siphoned millions of dollars out of Hostess directly into their corporate pockets by charging “consulting and management fees” that did nothing to improve the snack-maker’s financial health.

But it was not until this year that their rank managerial incompetence and raw ethical depravity fully surfaced. While the Ripplewood honchos in charge of Hostess were demanding a new round of deep cuts in workers’ pay, health care, and pensions, they quietly jacked up their own pay. By a lot! The CEO’s paycheck, for example, rocketed from $750,000 a year to $2.5 million.

Like a character in a bad Agatha Christie whodunit, Ripplewood — the one so insistently pointing the finger of blame at others — turns out to be the one who killed the Twinkie. Along with the livelihoods of 18,500 workers.

So, the Twinkie is dead, not because of The Unions as so many conservative-leaning "job creator" liars would want you to believe.  The Hostess Company was executed on the Alter of Greed by the Gordon Gekkos of Vulture Capitalism.

The Twinkie is Dead!  Rest In Peace Hostess.

Sure, there are over a hundred possible buyers looking to buy The Hostess Brand Name and all that goes with it, but will that mean those Eighteen Thousand unemployed Hostess employees will get their jobs back?  Some of them might, but probably not all of them.  Those who do get their jobs back may have to take further job and benefit cuts.  Why!  Because that's the way American business works today.

American business in the TwentyFirst Century is NOT about job creation.  It's not about employer-employee symbiotic relationships and mutual respect.  Twenty-first  Century American business is all about the rich and powerful screwing over the less rich and not powerful to squeeze out all the money they can to make themselves richer at the expense of everyone else.  

But all companies in America are not like that.  In fact, there is at least one company, that makes a product almost exactly like The Twinkie and nearly the full line of other Hostess snack products, and they can do it while respecting their employees at the same time as they make and sell their products.

That company is The McKee Company, maker of, among other things, Little Debbie Cloud Cakes which are exactly like Twinkies in almost every respect.

How is The McKee Company different than Hostes? 

Just read these excerpts from The McKee Company corporate website:

 http://www.mckeefoods.com/about_us/default.htm

The McKee family is deeply committed to the company’s employees, and each year all eligible full-time and part-time employees receive a share of the company's profits. They live the belief that A Better Way … Begins with Me and expect it to be applied at every level of our organization. Our history of family ownership is one significant way we’re different from so many companies doing business today.

Guiding Values

People

Recognize the value and contribution of each individual, and demonstrate concern for the health, safety, and well-being of employees and their families.

Integrity

Conduct business ethically, honestly, and fairly, and treat everyone with respect.

Responsibility

Accept responsibility for our actions and act responsibly in our jobs and in our dealings with each other, our customers, and our communities.

Quality

Satisfy our customers with quality products and services, while providing the highest value.

Productivity

Maximize the use of our resources to maintain profitability and to support continued growth.

Innovation

Use creativity, teamwork, and continuous improvement to "find a better way."

 

McKee Company Statements

Family Statement

The McKee family acknowledges the providence of God in our continued success. We plan to remain privately owned, to continue our growth, and to give job security to those who work with us.

Mission Statement

We take pride in working together to provide great-tasting snack foods of outstanding value to delight customers throughout all of North America.

Vision Statement

To be the preeminent privately owned snack-food company in North America where employees:

• Know they are valued.
• Are trusted to make decisions.
• Enjoy their work.
• Strive for personal growth.
• Work together as a team.

 and then there is this....

The McKee family is deeply committed to the company’s employees, and each year all eligible full-time and part-time employees receive a share of the company's profits. They live the belief that A Better Way … Begins with Me and expect it to be applied at every level of our organization. Our history of family ownership is one significant way we’re different from so many companies doing business today.

Looks to me like McKee has it all over Hostess by a long shot!!!

So, I am saying this.

Rest In Peace Hostess and Twinkies!  Rest In Peace!  Your company and your products are dead.  The Vulture Capitalists have picked your bones clean.  There is nothing left to salvage.  The Hostess Company is gone.  Twinkie The Kid is Dead.  Let him rest in peace.

LONG LIVE Little Debbie!  New Queen of the Snack Food Realm.  Just eat a Cloud Cake instead!  Make it so!!!

Buy and eat Cloud Cakes.  Increase their sales so much that they can expand and hire all those former Hostess employees and produce a better product, while treating the former Hostess employees better than they were treated by the greedy bastards who destroyed their company, and their jobs!

Goodbye Twinkies.  Hello Cloud Cakes!  Hello Little Debbie!!!

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