Just how would you expect a 1%er federal judge to judge his fellow 1%ers.

So the little people, the 99%ers, each were forced to pay about a $100 tribute to their masters for the fine job they did running the company into the ground. Now ain’t that america !

How to break a union when you’ve got a good brand:
(1) offer terrible, crappy, demeaning contract
(2) have union reject offer
(3) liquidate company
(4) sell well-known brand name to competitor with no union or “better” union contract
(5) put all cash from brand rights sale into an empty, giant swimming pool, and let former management roll around in it for hours as they yell “it worked, it worked!”

once one of hostess’s competitors buys those brands, we’ll see quite a few copycats here.

Former Hostess employees->meet your Greek brothers and sisters. You’re phsically miles apart but really in the same boat.

And this has nothing to do with Ben Bernanke’s love of printing money and keeping interest rates bizarrely low, eh?

With all due respect, I believe you may have overlooked the final step:

7) Loudly proclaim that the “bankrupting” of the company was solely & only due to the evil, money-grubbing, dastardly unions & the mooching 47%er workers, who are lazy good-for-nothing slackers looking for a “free ride,” and THIS, THIS I tells ya, is why we MUST get rid of the socialistCOMMIE free-loading Unions, stat! SEE: yet another fine US company brought down by freeloading lazy Union slackers!

Hostess brands will continue, the former employees will struggle to find work, and the private equity firm that wanted to drive this company into the ground from the beginning will liquidate, cash out, and make lots of money off of all that suffering.

Just another day in the neighborhood of the Libertarian – let’s pretend that the “Free Market” really operates “freely,” and not because the 1% has truly gamed the system for their sole benefit.

I suspect that nobody at FDL thought that there was any question the bonuses would be approved. Going through liquidation is so hard when you have put your company into that position. Oh, those poor executives; they took care of the workers as best they could.

“…a matter of management “feathering its nest…That is clearly not the case,” Judge Drain said. “This is difficult work that is well compensated, not as a handout,”

You bet, asshole. It’s just such “difficult work” to take a meat-axe to a company, drive it into bankruptcy, and then walk away with the spoils…

Yea and if the 18,500 workers had kept their $ 97 tribute towards exceptional american management, they would have spent it on necessities when they run out of money. So they just run out a little sooner but they had the experience of working for exceptional american management and that alone is worth a million bucks.

“He cautioned those in his courtroom not to view the bonuses . . . as a matter of management “feathering its nest. . . . That is clearly not the case,” Judge Drain said . . .”

That is exactly the case, or else there would be no need for Judge Drain (what an appropriate name) to “caution those in the courtroom” about how to correctly view the results of the proceedings. Apparently, Judge Drain likewise “caution[ed] those in the courtroom not to view” the white mess on his face as cumshot from “a group of the company’s top executives” but rather the delicious cream filling from a Hostess Twinkie.

“The answer to all this, by the way, is to end the tax preference for debt over equity.”

Yes. Indeed.

However, David, how might that “ending” come about?

By reason, through intent and honestly considered political and economic policy decisions?

Or will it require something else?

“Something” like total systemic failure and the collapse of civil society?

Consider, this is the Age of the Divine Right of Money, that is, money is all that “matters” … and HOW one gets “IT”, does not … this “philosophy” began operating, mostly, in the USA, but has long since “moved” elsewhere as US policy, “business” AND military (much the same “thing”, actually”) drives everyone off the same “cliff”, which the clever elite have cunningly contrived (and which will benefit THEM, oddly enough).

It would be a good thing were the “leaders” of this nation, to ponder, to think, to consider, and move toward sanity and sustainability … without disaster or wholesale and quite unnecessary destruction to the lives of the many.

However, nothing short of complete disaster or total destruction will suffice to entice conscience and reason to prevail.

Why is that?

Could it be that the political class, which includes the media, are too stupid to realize, in conjunction with the true and coming “crisis” of global climate change, that money is NOT all that matters, is it that the political class is complacent in the face of this looming consequence, or could it be that the political class, as a whole, simply does not care, does not give a damn what happens to human beings or the environment upon which human beings depend for their very existence?

Could it be that the “bright” and “pragmatic” political class care about nothing but themselves and the even more wealthy whom they assiduously serve?

Your suggestion, DDay, is thoroughly and completely appropriate, in fact necessary to survival, on any number of levels, so the big question is why is it not seized and acted upon?

As always, your grasp of the economic reality is profound and seriously spot-on, and therefore very much appreciated, at least by some of us …

DW

The workers certainly got their money’s worth.

“The answer to all this, by the way, is to end the tax preference for debt over equity. This would drive a stake through the heart of the Bain Capital-style business model that loads up the companies they purchase with debt and courts disaster, only to strip the assets and make lots of money, win or lose.”
Because this brand is so well known, everyone has heard about it. This may be a great educational moment in time. Getting everyone to understand how the job destroyers do what they do is so important. Then all that needs to happen is get the polititians to do the right thing……never mind

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. This IS American capitalism v.2000. THis IS what the new millennium hasd brough us thanks to the Bain Capitals of the world.

KUdos to you and David as always.

Me thinks we are in quite a pickle.

Right. Don’t mistake the watery substance falling from the sky as rain. Gotta LOVE that.

Getting everyone to understand how the job destroyers do what they do is so important.

A real teachable moment here. I agree.

Then all that needs to happen is get the polititians to do the right thing……never mind

A-yep.

This is exactly what W Bush & his cronies, including not-dead (imo) Kenny-boy Lay, did. At the time, when it came out how W ran several businesses into the ground, I thought W was just an incompetant asshole. Well, W IS an incompetant asshole, but running those businesses into the ground was THE PLAN, after all. Made a lotta money for W & his cronies. Too bad about the proles who lost everything, including their pensions & their jobs… after all, the workers were just LAZY mofo slackers looking for a hand-out, whilst W & Lay, etc, “worked so hard” blah blah blah…

lather, rinse, repeat…

This may be a great educational moment in time. Getting everyone to understand how the job destroyers do what they do is so important.

I’m *hoping* that more citizens are starting to “get” the picture, but I won’t hold my breath. I’ve been discussing this issue for years with little success of really getting other citizens – no matter how they vote – to really “get” how the 1% has truly GAMED the system & RIPPED OFF US citizens for decades now. It’s a tough slog, esp bc US citizens have been thoroughly brainwashed into believing that, if you’re RICH, it’s because you DESERVE to be bc you “work so hard” blah blah blah….

and so on. would be nice if a significant segment of the 99% finally realizes what a CON JOB all this has been.

I understand the company had been thru bankruptcy twice before in the last 10 years
Great management. why don’t progressive hold pressers giving the history of this company for the last decade to highlight:
How lousy and self serving management has been.
How phony and empty free market retoric is.
I award myself a bonus for not cursing…….

The same way a pro slavery Judge would deny constitutional protection to a man, for the benefit of another………

This may be a great educational moment in time. Getting everyone to understand how the job destroyers do what they do is so important.

Look how long it has taken to hold Tobacco accountable, (?) for their outright lies misrepresentations and the death’s of millions of Americans? Speaking of destroyers, of life?

That judge was an absolute putz. 1) if the company was in such awful shape that it couldn’t afford to pay back its pensions that it stole then it sure as Hades shouldn’t be in decent enough shape to dole out million dollar bonuses. 2) The idea that anyone would view these execs as assuring AFTER they ran the brand into the ground by doubling its debt is even more absurd. Quite frankly, I’d be more inclined to not buy based on anything these idiots said UNLESS I believed that they ran the company into the ground purposely(which they say that they supposedly did not.)

Anyway, the ruling wasn’t surprising though. Contracts for the six figure set are sanctified, it’s only the working set that can have everything they were promised tossed out the windows.

If I were the bakers union I’d make sure any contract I signed from here on concentrated on payment that was not deferred since it has now seen how companies treat their deferred obligations.

Apparently, Judge Drain likewise “caution[ed] those in the courtroom not to view” the white mess on his face as cumshot from “a group of the company’s top executives” but rather the delicious cream filling from a Hostess Twinkie.

I’m sure a future edition of Hustler (no pun intended) will contain a cartoon that illustrates your description perfectly … :)