Joke petition on White House website: It’s time to nationalize Twinkies

You know, if Hostess had gone belly up a week before the election, I think O might have considered it. What better “gift” could he have given America to earn votes than the gift of sugar and fat encased in a bland spongy tube? Michelle would have been steamed, but whatever. She’d have four more years to get over it. And the beauty of it is, Twinkies are so simple that not even our vast federal bureaucracy could screw them up. They’d still taste more or less the same. They’d just cost six dollars a pop or whatever from now on, once O eventually caved to demands from the bakers’ union:

Hostess management said work rules from existing labor agreements made it hard to improve productivity and spend money efficiently. For example, some rules required different workers to deliver bread and cakes, the company said.

Unions had made concessions during Hostess’s first bankruptcy, accepting lower wages and changing delivery systems that saved the company $80 million a year. The second go round, the unions initially balked at further steep cuts.

Hostess’s investors plowed another $60 million into Hostess last year but wouldn’t provide more without new labor givebacks. Investors lost money as a result of Hostess’s fall, according to people close to the investment firms.

Top Obama crony Richard Trumka had a characteristically sober take on the bankruptcy today, blaming “Bain-style Wall Street vultures” — evidently, his press release was written before the election — but read this piece from John Carney at CNBC for a comprehensive take. The company’s been in and out of bankruptcy for years; the hedge funds that rescued it last time couldn’t make the numbers add up given the recession, growing health consciousness among Americans, and, yes, union demands. (MKH had a nice run-through of the subplot between the Teamsters and the bakers’ union earlier.) Result: Twinkies, RIP?

Well, no, not really. Here’s the CEO of Hostess talking about the bankruptcy and the value of the company’s brands. Someone’s obviously going to buy the rights to Twinkies and start making them again, especially with nostalgia-fests like this now populating newspapers to goose demand once they return. (As I said earlier in the Greenroom, I had a craving for one today for the first time in years.) They’re the indestructible food. They’ll be back. Exit question: Twinkies or Chocodiles?

• Bobby Jindal: Paternalistic, big-government liberalism is the biggest loser here
• Chris Christie: “I’ll be here to welcome” Obama when he comes to tour the NJ coast again next week
• MSNBC consensus: Obama’s speech was historic, amazing, “one of the best of his presidency”

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