◼ The Twinkie: Will it return as a Mexican expat? - Patrik Jonsson/Christian Science Monitor
Who knew there were so many Twinkie diehards?
The announcement that Hostess Brands would shutter and liquidate its 33 bakeries – including its Twinkie-making plant in Illinois – sparked a fevered Boomer nostalgia ironically belied by the fact that it’s been years since most people have bit into that impossibly long-lasting and sticky-sweet miracle of artificial confectionery. (Today, about 12 percent of US households buy Twinkies, down from 15 percent in 2004.)
But news that Twinkie bars are now selling at gold bar prices on eBay hints at opportunity: In fact, global firms are already lining up to bid on the iconic brand names – Ding Dongs, Ho Ho’s, Wonder Bread, Drake’s – in order to prepare many, if not all, for reissue.
The brands “most likely will be purchased by a competitor that will bolt the additional sales to a more efficient delivery system,” David Pauker, a food industry restructuring specialist, tells Reuters. “The company itself won't survive.”
...For now, the future of 18,500 Hostess jobs are up in the air, and many may never return. As for the Twinkie? It looks like it actually is indestructible.
◼ Hostess Bankruptcy: What Role Did Policy Play? - Chris Edwards/Townhall
The demise of Hostess and Twinkies is not a national emergency, but it is certainly sad when a major business goes under and thousands of people lose their jobs.
If federal and state policymakers want to play a useful role here, they should study why Hostess couldn’t make a go of it. Were there tax or regulatory factors that stood in the way of the company earning a decent rate of return?
Unions were an important factor that pushed up the firm’s costs and reduced its operational efficiency. The policy reform here is obvious for people who appreciate market economics: repeal America’s coercive union laws. If policymakers don’t kill so-called collective bargaining, these rules will keep on killing companies....
◼ Who killed Hostess? - Thomas Lifson/AMERICAN THINKER
The left is madly spinning (aka, lying about) the impending demise of Hostess, trying to blame the free enterprise system, and even Mitt Romney's former firm, Bain Capital. This is a lie. It was inside job of the left, with a prominent Democrat helping himself to consulting fees and a hundred thousand dollars a year sinecure for his son.
Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO is in the lead on the disinformation campaign...
While the unions and their media allies like to cite executive salaries and consulting fees paid to executives as outrageous, they are ignoring left winger Dick Gephardt cashing in for himself, and more outrageously, for his son, who was appointed to the Hostess Board and paid one hundred thousand dollars a year.
Hostess has failed to reach agreement with the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, which, unlike the Teamsters Union, is unwilling to agree to givebacks in order to keep the company alive, triggering its liquidation and the loss of over 18,000 jobs. The Teamsters, notably, are not affiliated with the AFL-CIO , while the Bakers are part of the labor federation headed by Richard Trumka.
Trumka has a long and sordid history of selling out union workers for his personal political power and career advancement. Clarice Feldman described for our readers his sell-out of the mine workers when he headed the United Mine Workers of America, allying with President Obama, who has made clear his intent to close down coal mines and destroy mining jobs, sacrificing his members' livelihood, while his political sway earned him a promotion from his own union to head up the entire AFL-CIO and emerge as one of Obama's key allies.
It is time for conservatives to start employing some of the tactics of the left, and hound Trumka and Gephardt for their disgraceful roles in selling out the workers. Allowing the media and labor bosses to spin Hostess as the fault of Mitt Romney is simply ridiculous.
◼ Bitter end for Hostess OK’d in bankruptcy court - Market Watch
