Twinky Truth

Bottom line is the left is trying to place a moral responsibility on the company to do things the way the left wants. Truth is there is none. The responsibility is on the employee to do what is necessary to provide for themselves. the company has none. The reason is the decision to hire and be employed is an agreement between to two parties. If the two parties cannot come to an agreement then they can walk away from each other and go find other means.

 

And that's what they did, but the right is trying to place moral responsibility on the workers, because they ended it collectively, instead of individually. The company, supposedly, is supposed to provide for itself (don't we always say their only mandate is profit and survival?). But what is "itself"? Everyone apart of it. But what happens in practice is that the leaders use it for their own benefit and sap the institution, but the right justifies them and blames the workers for reacting.
The way this is framed is that there are two entities: "the company" and the individual worker, and apparently, the leaders (individual or all of them) are apart of the first group, and of course this institution is superior to an individual worker. But in reality, they are individuals too, and have to bear some of the blame for the demise of the institutions, especially when they in their position have greater power with their decisions, which carry greater negative effects when they do the wrong things. But the right has clearly made itself the defender of the institution and its leaders (as one entity, it seems). But as I said, this is really not much different than another kind of institution, one that is chartered as a "government" agency, and the right then complains about the imbalance of power seen with them.

 

It is night and day difference than a government agency. The government uses force to gain what they want. Private business does not. Any employee can somewhere else any time. It is a sad day when Americans believe they are owed anything by anyone else.This is why America is failing.

 

Again, you forget the job market. So the companies actually have a lot of power and can force things themselves. Their interests can even buy out political leaders, and thus can have a lot of control in the government. (Hence, the stuff Poncho keeps pointing out). So that's Americans of all classes, not just the lower ones. Just because one was able to climb up the ladder doesn't mean they're owed everything, and everyone else deserves nothing.

 

Yes the unions (who are just as crooked as anything else) never gain political power.

 

Never said they didn't, but it seems the corporate powers are always excused and all the blame for everything wrong shifted to everyone else.
It's a not either/or (as this hyperpolarised partisan rhetoric implies), all are sinful selfish humans.

 

It seems to me all the blame always goes the other way.

 

Uh, no; it depends on which side of the polarized climate you listen to. (Since I'm addressing conservatives, then I see blame always going downward, and since you're reacting to liberals, you always see blame going upward. The conservatives do seem to have the loudest voices, even if not the most numerous).

 

Yep that's the conventional wisdom. But is it any wonder? Have you looked at the people and corporations who make up all the think tanks that serve up this conventional wisdom on a daily basis?

It's not hard to see why people think like our good friend the Rev here when all they ever hear or read comes from one of these corporate think tanks. First it was the radio commercial "brought to you by XYZ Inc.". Then it was the tv commercial "brought to you by XYZ Inc." They worked great and turned citizens into consumers.

But now we have a dog of a whole different color. We have the corporate think tanks where everything in the mainstream mass media is "brought to us by" a conglomeration of XYZ transnational corporations. That have no loyalty to this country at all.

But they are the purveyors of all that is conventional wisdom today and control all the mass media outlets. So their word is gold. The working man can go pound rocks all day for a place to lay his head and a bowl of porridge if he's lucky. The conventional wisdomist wizards all tell us he should be happy to live on scraps from the corporito's table. So what else are people like the Rev supposed to believe?

The banksters and corporitos have been crowned king in the USA but on the bright side the working man is still free to choose between working for less and less and less or starvation.

Meet Our New Masters

Sounds like freedom and equality to me how about you?

 

Vulture capitalism — not unions — killed Twinkies

As Hostess moved to end its operations last week — a bankruptcy judge asked the company Monday to try mediation with its unions; those talks are scheduled to begin today — commentators were eager to blame the rigidity of unions.

But the story is far more complicated than that — and in some ways, the exact opposite of the tale pushed by those on the right. It’s the story of two bankruptcies, hundreds of millions of givebacks from Hostess unions and hundreds of millions of debt piled onto the company by venture capitalists. It’s a story of management that boosted its own salaries, while failing to make agreed payments into workers’ pension funds. And it’s a story of changing tastes and diets.

< snip >

As a result of management that still hadn’t really attempted to adapt itself to new market realities, the company earned profits in 2011 of $2.5 billion: That’s 11 percent less than in 2008, before Ripplewood took over. But thanks to debt approaching $1 billion, Hostess ended 2011 with a loss of $341 million. The CEO who led the company back into bankruptcy? He got a pay raise — while Hostess pushed a 30 percent salary and benefit cut onto its employees. (A previous failed chief executive, Brian J. Driscoll, was pushed out, but only after the board tripled his pay package to $2.55 million.)


That leaves the unions in one corner and the hedge funds and Hostess management in the other. Management ordered the company to stop contributing to the union pension funds, ignoring their obligations under collective bargaining agreements. They have demanded a new round of concessions, which would have doubled insurance premiums, negated all pension obligations, and slashed pay by 27 to 32 percent. Again, the 14-year Hostess bakery veteran: “Remember how I said I made $48,000 in 2005 and $34,000 last year? I would make $25,000 in five 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.”


CONTINUE . . .

Perhaps the Hostess veterans would like it better in a "right to work" state. They could easily pick up a job at General Mills through a temp agency and make $7.85 an hour. So what if it takes four people to pay the bills in a small two bedroom apartment when they all work for the same giant transnational corporation that makes billions in profit. By golly you got a right work! That's the new American way and if Americans don't accept it then the giant corporations will just move operations overseas.

Which do you prefer, slavery or starvation? The good news here as the Rev pointed out earlier is the giant corporations can't force you into slavery because they don't use force and because you always have the other option.

 

What's wrong is a system completely controlled by a corporate-financier oligarchy with financial, media, and industrial empires that span the globe. If we do not change the fact that we are helplessly dependent on these corporations that regulate every aspect of our nation politically, and every aspect of our lives personally, nothing else will ever change.

SOURCE