Oh, Suzy Q! Don't Be A Ding Dong And Believe The Ho Hos!

As the gentle reader most likely knows by now, the executives of Hostess has decided that they sucked all the money they could out of the company and the workers and shut down all of their operations immediately.

Just like that, more than 18,000 were put out of work.

The failure of a CEO, Gregory F. Rayburn, immediately blamed the unions in his announcement of the shutdown.

The corporate media ran with it. Radio squawkers parroted this. The echo chamber mindlessly repeated it as gospel truth.

Of course it was easier for those without critical thinking skills to repeat the talking points that unions are bad instead of actually looking at the facts for themselves. That might lead to some inconvenient and uncomfortable truths.

Things like the unions were not the only problem, or even the primary one:

The company, founded in 1930, was fighting battles beyond labor costs. Competition is increasing in the snack space and Americans are increasingly conscious about healthy eating. Hostess also makes Dolly Madison, Drake’s and Nature’s Pride snacks.

Click to embiggen

Of course, while union members were being told - not even asked, but told - to make even greater concessions than they already had made, the executives were completely blameless. Well, not really:

Over the past eight years since the first Hostess bankruptcy, BCTGM members have watched as money from previous concessions that was supposed to go towards capital investment, product development, plant improvement and new equipment, was squandered in executive bonuses, payouts to Wall Street investors and payments to high-priced attorneys and consultants.

BCTGM members are well aware that as the company was preparing to file for bankruptcy earlier this year, the then CEO of Hostess was awarded a 300 percent raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000) and at least nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises. One such executive received a pay increase from $500,000 to $900,000 and another received one taking his salary from $375,000 to $656,256.

Over the past 15 months, Hostess workers have seen the company unilaterally end contractually-obligated payments to their pension plan. Despite saving more than $160 million with this action, the company continues to fall deeper and deeper into debt. A mountain of debt and gross mismanagement by a string of failed CEO's with no true experience in the wholesale baking business have left this company unable to compete or survive.

The clearest story of the real course of events comes from who else but a worker that lived through this nightmare roller coaster:

The company of course used it's 'oops' letter to justify asking for concessions from the Union. We gave nothing and gained nothing that year after a 45 minute strike. The status quo continued and I proudly joined the middle class for the first time in my life. I made $14 an hour and had insurance. I even went on vacations for the first time. I had great pride in my job, and the products. We bought a new car for the first and only time in my life. In 2003 I transferred to the Lenexa, KS bakery.

In 2005 it was another contract year and this time there was no way out of concessions. The Union negotiated a deal that would save the company $150 million a year in labor. It was a tough internal battle to get people to vote for it. We turned it down twice. Finally the Union told us it was in our best interest and something had to give. So many of us, including myself, changed our votes and took the offer. Remember that next time you see CEO Rayburn on tv stating that we haven't sacrificed for this company. The company then emerged from bankruptcy. In 2005 before concessions I made $48,000, last year I made $34,000. My pay changed dramatically but at least I was still contributing to my self-funded pension.

In July of 2011 we received a letter from the company. It said that the $3+ per hour that we as a Union contribute to the pension was going to be 'borrowed' by the company until they could be profitable again. Then they would pay it all back. The Union was notified of this the same time and method as the individual members. No contact from the company to the Union on a national level.

This money will never be paid back. The company filed for bankruptcy and the judge ruled that the $3+ per hour was a debt the company couldn't repay. The Union continued to work despite this theft of our self-funded pension contributions for over a year. I consider this money stolen. No other word in the English language describes what they have done to this money.

After securing our hourly cash from the bankruptcy judge they set out on getting approval to force a new contract on us. They had already refused to negotiate outside of court. They received approval from the judge to impose the contract then turned it over to the Union for a vote. You read that right, they got it approved by the judge before ever showing to the Union.

What was this last/best/final offer? You'd never know by watching the main stream media tell the story. So here you go...
1) 8% hourly pay cut in year 1 with additional cuts totaling 27% over 5 years. Currently, I make $16.12 an hour at TOP rate of pay in the bakery. I would drop to $11.26 in 5 years.
2) They get to keep our $3+ an hour forever.
3) Doubling of weekly insurance premium.
4) Lowering of overall quality of insurance plan.
5) TOTAL withdrawal from ALL pensions. If you don't have it now then you never will.

Remember how I said I made $48,000 in 2005 and $34,000 last year? I would make $25,000 in 5 years if I took their offer.
It will be hard to replace the job I had, but it will be easy to replace the job they were trying to give me.
That $3+ per hour they steal totaled $50 million last year that they never paid us. They sold $2.5 BILLION in product last year. If they can't make this profitable without stealing my money then good riddance.

I keep hearing how this strike forced them to liquidate. How we should just take it and be glad to have a job. What an unpatriotic view point. The reason these jobs provided me with a middle class opportunity is because people like my father in law and his father fought for my Union rights. I received that pay and those benefits because previous Union members fought for them. I won't sell them, or my coworkers, out.

The story of Hostess is nothing but an example of capitol vultures pulling a Bain job on the company and its workers, then blaming the unions for their treachery and theft.

This is the kind of life that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan was promoting and Scott Walker is still pushing. This is their idea of being successful and being business friendly.

Hostess would have shut down whether the unions capitulated or not. In fact, it was only the huge concessions the unions had already made that kept it around as long as this. Without those concessions, the executives would have taken the money and ran years ago.

I feel bad for the 18,000+ workers that are now without work, just before the holidays. But I don't blame them. People have to draw the line somewhere. It's just sad that there are so many so-called "patriots" that are still willing to sell out their fellow Americans for this and blame them for standing up for themselves.

For those 18,000 plus that got screwed over by the excessive greed of the executives, know that we still love you and support you:

Mitt's Harvest!

H/T David Corn and Mother Jones!

Here is Mitt talking about his plan for Bain Capitol, to "harvest companies(and jobs)":

Campaigning for the presidency, Mitt Romney has pointed to his stint as the founder and manager of Bain Capital, a private equity firm, as proof he can rev up the US economy and create jobs at a faster clip than President Barack Obama. Last year, while stumping in Florida, Romney declared, "You'd have a president who has spent his life in business—small business, big business—and who knows something about how jobs are created and how we compete around the world." His campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, has said that Romney's Bain days afford him more expertise than Obama to "focus on job creation and turn around our nation's faltering economy." Romney has even claimed that during his tenure at Bain, "we were able to help create over 100,000 jobs." In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, Romney smacked Obama for having "almost no experience working in a business" and tied that to the sluggish recovery.

But at Bain, Romney's top priority wasn't to boost employment. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, creating jobs "wasn't the aim of Bain or other private-equity firms, which measure success by returns produced for investors." And, the newspaper reported, Romney's 100,000-jobs claim is tough to evaluate

Romney Edits Reality!

Here is the real quote from President Obama

If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be ‘cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

 Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.

Yet as Greg Sargent Points out, Romney is out with a HEAVILY edited video. After the reality of who Mitt is as a person started to hit home, the republicans only chance is to alter reality.  Here is their attempt and its failing!     

As for what President Obama said, not only is he correct, he is not the first person to say so! Benjamin Franklin understood it at the birth of our Constitutionally limited democratic republic:

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

 Abe Lincoln echoed Franklin:

  "Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men, as I have, in part, stated them ours began, by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant, wiser; and all better, and happier together."³ 

Thom Hartmann ties it all up nicely here:

Mitt's So Bain!

We wrote about how Mitt not only got Booed at the NAACP convention, but that is exactly what he wanted to happen!

Despite being caught red-handed in a serious lie, Mitt instead of owning up to his dishonesty(what republican ever takes personal responsibility) instead Mitt doubled down.  Not only did he not clear things up, Romney demanded an apology from President Obama.  The President and his team came out with one of the better political ads I have seen! 

                                 

As for calling out Mitt for his despicable actions of the last few days, Matt Taibi from Rolling Stone was incredibly harsher than I was:  

Romney really showed us something in his luridly self-congratulating N.A.A.C.P. gambit, followed by the awesomely disgusting "free stuff" post-mortem speech he delivered the next night in front of friendlier audiences. The twin appearances revealed the candidate to be not merely unlikable, and not merely a fatuous, unoriginal hack of politician, but also a genuinely repugnant human being, a grasping corporate hypocrite with so little feel for how to get along with people that he has to dream up elaborate schemes just to try to pander to the mob.

Taibi also took umbrage for Mitt's speech the next night implying that the african american audience only wanted "free  stuff":

So now this is the message: I tried to reason with the blacks, I really did, but it turns out they just want a free lunch.

How’s that for bridging the racial divide? Time to wake up the Nobel committee in Oslo!

As far as free lunches go, we of course just witnessed the biggest government handout in history, one that Romney himself endorsed. Four and a half trillion dollars in bailout money already disbursed, trillions more still at risk in guarantees and loans, sixteen trillion dollars in emergency lending from the Federal Reserve, two trillion in quantitative easing, etc. etc. All of this money went to Romney’s pals in the Wall Street banks that for years helped Romney take over companies with mountains of borrowed cash. Now, after these banks crashed, executives at those same firms used those public funds to pay themselves massive salaries, which is exactly the opposite of “helping those who need help,” if you’re keeping score.

That set of facts alone made the “free stuff” speech shockingly offensive. But the problem isn’t just that Romney’s wrong, and a hypocrite, and cynically furthering dangerous and irresponsible stereotypes in order to advance some harebrained electoral ploy involving white conservative voters. What makes it gross is the way he did it.

 Also one last typical story from Mitt Romney is he recently attended a fundraiser, where Dick  "13% approval rating" Cheney endorsed him.  What is funny is, that everyone knows that Dick Cheney is Coyote Ugly!  In fact Dick Cheney is so politically ugly and unpopular that Mitt forbid anyone from taking a picture of the two of them together! 

The Evidence!

Mitt Rmoney is out with a new ad claiming that President Obama is lying about his record. It turns out, that there is plenty of evidence:

Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time.

Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

As Capper says, "wait there's more":

According to a statement issued by Bain Wednesday, “Mitt Romney retired from Bain Capital in February 1999. He has had no involvement in the management or investment activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies, since that time.”

A former SEC commissioner told the Globe that the SEC documents listing Romney as Bain’s chief executive between 1999 and 2002 cannot be dismissed so easily. “You can’t say statements filed with the SEC are meaningless. This is a fact in an SEC filing,” said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School.

It turns out that the evidence that Mitt Romney was in charge of Bain Capital long after he said he was not is just that. When Mitt talks, the truth is nowhere to be seen.

Lying on Federal Documents, makes impersonating a police officer pale in comparison!

You're So Bain

This is awesome....