The war on supervillainy just got a lot harder.

I don't hold any respect for weasels lining their coffers while making underlings suffer. I don't give a **** about the math. You lead by example or you lead not at all.

Off. With. Their. Heads.

Well....no. Little Debbie snack cakes and fruit pies can't stop a jaywalker, much less a super villain.

Still, I'd be thrilled if Little Debbie purchased Hostess and managed to reopen the factories and save most of the jobs.

Yea, I think one of the rules of bankrupcy is that all managemnt salary should be frozen or forced to be insanely lowered (to regular-management levels.)

I tend to have a bit of a thing about unions, they CAN be problematic and I have personally see them turn into mafia-like conglomerates that stand more for themselves than the good or interest of actual employees, but this here... this is too long running to be just an overly powerful's union job. This is just bad management.

For the good of these people (and our dear Twinkies) some one like Little Debbie (who already makes their own twinkie's called Cloud Cakes) may aquire them and reopen the plants if only to expand their market share.

Heck can you imagine if someone like Amazon bought them? Want Twinkies? The only way to get them is buying from Amazon! I'm sure Bezos would LOVE to exploit Twinkie addiction.

Alternatively the same applies to Wal-Mart. If you got the munchies, you MUST go to a Wal-Mart to get your Twinkies!

WoW! They make that much an hour?!

I have been working working in the armored car industry for 18 years where I risk my life constantly on a daily basis and I make less than that an hour.

Who do I complain to that a baker makes more than me?

Did you miss my "Sure, senior management needed to join in" comment?

The problem I have with the 99% crowd's attitude is that everything will be alright if we just take all the money (through taxation or paycuts) from those rich people. All social programs will be funded that the world will be a utopia. There isn't enough rich people to do that. NASA funding isn't all that large either, or the Dept of Education or NPR or foreign grants to other countries (to balance the argument).

In this case it's "those damn rich executives". In a way that's true since they couldn't seem to run the company in a profitable manner. But why? Were prices to high (compared to Little Debbie version yes). Were sales off due to fight against childhood obesity led by the First Lady? Maybe. If if sales are off you have to cut expenses. Reduce production but that works only so far since fix costs remain and I would hazard a guess that the union contracts didn't allow for reducing hours or shifts which would then put labor costs over into the fix cost part of the equation thus raising the cost per unit of each twinkie, cup cake, etc. which reduces profits. Raising prices may simply, in this tough economy, encourage people to switch brands or forgo them entirely which then also doesn't help being profitable.

It's a simple equation. There is a sweet spot in price and demand that makes the most sales revenue. You need to be able to meet that demand of product while spending less than that sales revenue, otherwise you go out of business. Yes the devil is in the details but that's what executives are paid to handle. I know it's easy to wonder what those guys in suits are doing in their offices, earning what they earn while not participating in the direct creation, sales or distribution of the product a company makes but they do have an important job to do. Yes in the case of Hostess it doesn't seem that they were doing a good job, at least not one where they would get bonuses for a job well done, but those bonuses weren't going to significantly change the company needed in labor concessions to keep the bill collectors off of the company's back.

If both sides what to keep the company open, stop playing chicken with freight trains, honestly look at the costs that need cutting and do what needs to be done.

Don't forget that the Teamsters of all people aren't all that pleased with the baker's union. From a CNN article;
Now the judge sent both sides to mediation. As well as several investor groups or other baking conglomerates looking to buy Hostess up so the great Twinkie shortage should be over sooner than later. Last I looked a box of 10 were selling for around $10-15 on eBay but most of those auctions are over now.

Your union.

Ah, the Tony Robbins "my millionaire friends and I don't have enough money to pay for everything" defense. It's nonsense. The top 400 richest people in America have more wealth among them than the bottom 180 million. Read those numbers again: four hundred versus one hundred and eighty MILLION. Where else do you propose the money comes from?

Cut a couple of those defense programs the Pentagon doesn't want, there's $1.2 trillion. End the massive entitlements to wealthy industries like Big Oil. Tax the rich and corporations for the rest. Since the 1% own 38% of the wealth and the bottom 50% own 1%, you ain't getting it from bakers and armored car drivers.

I'm not a fan of unions in most cases. I *am* a fan of history and I understand why they came into existence, but the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction and unions got greedy. But now it's swung back to the conditions that created the unions in the first place. If the rich people don't pony up -- and soon -- people will take the Occupy movement to 11. Warren Buffett is one of the 400 and can see where this is heading, and protecting the entitled upper class from the unwashed masses isn't the answer. Ask Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette how that went.

Yeah but in order to change it, the masses have to get it together. As long as the masses are occupied with fighting each other, then the 1% sure as hell will supply the fuel if it means the mass isnt focused on the real matter at hand and can keep on gaining more power that the masses give them.

Seems more people rather fight over what they think about Kim Kardashian and what she is wearing at the moment than actual stuff that can and will affect them in their lives.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

This.

And, as long as we've gone this far down the rabbit hole, I'd like to point out this: anyone who claims our current president is a redistributive socialist who will take everything - on economic issues, Barack Obama is arguably to the right of Richard M. Nixon.

Yeah, I went there.

The Democratic party, on broad economic issues, is very conservative. The GOP has just reduced its economic platform to an unsustainable anti-tax, anti-union free-for-all, with bonus hagiography of the one percent.

I'd like to see an actual left-wing (on economic issues) public figure. These days, merely defending the idea of a social contract gets you labelled a communist by the right.

Why do we want to see the one percent taxed? Because they have most of the money.

See now you are talking wealth, not income. They are two entirely different things.

The Buffet's and Gate's and Job's of the world may be ridiculously rich on paper but a lot of that money is just that, on paper or in assets that aren't easily liquidated. The actual wealth is tied up in stocks, real estate, bonds and not Scrooge McDuck vaults full of cash, jewels and precious metals. A Ferrari, a thousand shares of stock in Apple or a classic work of art isn't going to be able to fund a homeless shelter or soup kitchen if they aren't converted into cash first. And you can't do that if there aren't anyone around anymore who could do so.

As for the military, I would rather see us spend money on force multiplier weapon systems than resort back to WWII level requirements of service for the 18-35 crowd. You think five to 10 thousand US deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan were tragic, and they are, but in WWII we had what would be nearly a million deaths today or 85 thousand from Vietnam, both of which were shorter wars. Wars aren't a planned expense, we wouldn't borrow the money we use to prosecute a war for regular programs. It would be like "hey the furnace didn't break this year so lets all get new clothes with that money we weren't forced to spend." There is no such thing as a peace dividend beyond not having young men and women die on foreign shores.

If the tax laws weren't so complex that only the wealthy and large companies could afford people who could figure out ways to minimize their taxes you wouldn't have examples of the very rich paying a lower effective percentage in income tax. However 10% of a million dollars is a lot more than 20% of forty thousand. In my case I've recently paid off my condo after 25 years, on paper I'm now "wealthy" but if I sell it I may be considered rich but I wouldn't have a place to live either.

Really? Cause when I look at the figures in that first article I don't see a major shift.

I was born in the early 1960s. According to Table 3 the 1% had 31.8% of the wealth in 1962 and in 2007 it grew to a whopping 34.6%. And again, this is wealth, we tax income nationally and wealth, at least property such as homes, cars and boots, locally. At least where I live.

What I find interesting is Table 1. In 1983 the 1% had 42.9% of non home wealth, in 2010 it's 42.1%. Yes the poorest 80% had their wealth reduced from 8.7% to 4.7% but that went to the 19% in between, not the 1%. But let's look at 1995, 1st term of Bill Clinton. The 1% had 47.2% of non home wealth and it was the middle 19% that lost out.

As for income Table 6 shows that in 2006 the top 1% had 21.3% of total income, the next 19% had 40.1% and the bottom 80% had only 38.6%.

Actually the only point I take away from the UCSC article is the obvious conclusion that you only accumulate wealth when your income exceeds your basic needs. The more money you earn, the wealthier you become.

Of course I never take a single source to draw conclusions from so lets look at the CBO report on 2007 and 2009 income tax distribution. From this we have in 2007 the top 1% having only 18.7% of income yet pay 26.7% of all income tax. The next 19% account for 35.9% of all income and paid 41.1% of all income tax while the remaining 80% had 45.4% of all income and paid 32.2% of all income tax. Sadly that paper doesn't list where the income break is between quintiles (20% groupings of equal number of members) or the breakdown within the top one, just the average income within each.

My point is when people say "we're only out to get the 1%", they actually mean the 20% and if you and your SO have been out of college for 10 years each with an employable degree, or you are in a successful trade, you are likely in that 20%.

The problem is that that 10% of a million hits that owner far less than 20% of 40k.

I've been saying that exact thing for years. Are we friends on Facebook or something?

My brother -- who has become increasingly Tea Party-like insane over the past decade -- sent me the video of Obama's speech in front of the Constitution where he talked about creating a legal framework for permanent detention, as if that somehow "proved" something evil about Obama. My response was that I have been saying for the past 4 years Obama's policies are to the right of Nixon's (he knows this) and, oh look!, that video is more evidence. I haven't a response from him on that in nearly two weeks, which is an eternity for him.

He hates it when I'm right.

I was at a fundraiser last weekend with a bunch of dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, one of whom literally shouted that we're going to have socialized medicine now. I told her that was good, because then we could finally start saving money as a country, spending $100 per uninsured person versus the $300 we spend now. I said if I have to pay for schools, police and firefighters -- none of which do jack for me -- then she can help pay for medicine I might need. Fair is fair.

I have been a registered Independent for the entirety of my 30-year voting career. As a fiscal conservative ("Don't buy what you can't pay for") and a social liberal ("All humans are equal"), neither party really caters to my point of view. Despite the compromises he made in policy (such as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"), Bill Clinton is the first President in my adulthood that has lined up with my core beliefs. If we could change the Constitution, I would vote for him again in a heartbeat. If he had just kept his pants zipped, he would've been considered one of our best Presidents. This is the first election I voted a straight Democratic ticket, because the GOP has gone around the bend, riding the crazy train to la-la land.

If you start pulling at that thread, you'll soon find the veil lifted from your eyes.

ALL wealth is fiction. Yours, mine, theirs. The debt and deficit are entirely imaginary. But here's the thing: just like a movie which requires rigorous internal consistency to allow us to suspend our willing suspension of disbelief, we have to all participate in the fiction or it falls apart. So if we owe ourselves and our creditors imaginary money, and some people control more of that imaginary money than other people, then it is beholden upon the people to contribute more of their imaginary money (i.e. "wealth") to maintaining the fiction. That's the only way this thing works.

While it's true that 10% of a million is more than 20% of forty thousand, when the average car costs $30,303 and a house costs $272,000, the millionaire can still buy both of those things while the middle class person can't. The millionaire can afford to give 60% without feeling the pinch, and if he's genuinely concerned about the long-term affects of the national debt, he would. But people are greedy and selfish and therefore don't do such things.

How many times have you gone bankrupt? Zero, probably. If you had, do you think a bank would loan you money to buy a house? Go look at how many times Donald Trump has declared bankruptcy. Look up how many billions of dollars the banks have given him afterwards, only to lose it all again.

The system is rigged against guys like you and in favor of men like Trump. If you refuse to hold them accountable, then they are going to continue to screw you over.

So what. The Teamsters have union members working at UPS that get paid $29. bucks an hour, yet the Teamsters union chose to keep Hostess employees employed because they understood that a pay cut and steady work is right before Christmas is better than unemployment, no Christmas, and struggling to make ends meet.

...Actually, for some Unemployment would net them MORE money than the pay-cut.

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

So what?!?! *facepalm

So what? So its obviously possible to have a profitable company and still pay workers decent wages.

So what? So why stop at $17/hr? So why not cut their wages to $5/hr and make the company look really profitable? Or so you can give the CEO an even bigger raise.... so the company can go bankrupt anyway.

So what? Really?

It's a sad thing when the people side with the corporation which couldn't give a crap about you, and turn their backs on their fellow man. The workers already made concessions and hit the point where they decided to fight. Instead of backing them... you want them to give up more?

Anyway.... if you want a Twinkie.... Canada would be happy to sell you some....... LOL!

*Oh, and the Teamsters? They only agreed to pay cuts on the basis that management would take cuts as well. Which.... they didn't. (See the giant raises?) Surprise! The management did not keep up their end of the bargain.

True, but for how long? And how easy will it be for those people to get new jobs in this economy? Especially since everyone knows the members of the bakers union tanked 18,000+ jobs so they could get a chance at a few more dollars in their pockets. I wouldn't hire any of them.

Right. It wasn't the teamsters that put 18,000+ coworkers out of work by being stubborn greedy pancakes. But you keep telling yourself the bakers union are innocent victims. Everyone else sees them for what they really are.

Oh and if Vachon wants to expand their Canadian manufacturing and sell Twinkies to the US market, I say good for them. They'll be doing it without employing any of the people in the bakers union that worked for Hostess.

I guess that explains the emails I've been getting saying I can get "cheap, Canadian Tw1nki3s" from them.

Don't those come with a higher percentage of alcohol, just like their beers?

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.