Monday, January 7, 2013

Late Night Ladies - Rule 5

any female's thong appreciation thread - Page 2 - Forums

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Grupo Bimbo: Hostess' Wonder Bread May Soon Come From Mexican Billionaires

A photo of a loaf of Wonder Bread , made by I...

(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

Grupo Bimbo, the world’s largest breadmaker, is reportedly close to acquiring parts of bankrupt Hostess’ bread business, as Hostess winds down operations and sells assets.
Bimbo, as well as and Flowers Food, are in official talks, and Hostess may disclose the name of the bidders of the up-coming bankruptcy auction as soon as this week, according to The Wall Street Journal. That bread business—brands like Wonder Bread, Nature’s Pride and Butternut—could fetch around $350 million, a source familiar with the proceedings told The Journal. Meanwhile, the cake business, with iconic Hostess treats like Twinkies, is expected to be sold later this year.

Here’s how the sale of the bread business would work: As stalking-horse bidders, Bimbo and Flowers can make an initial bid for the assets. After that, others can make competing, larger bids, but stalking-horse bidders receive a break-up fee if they don’t wind up with the prize. The bread business would likely be split into two groups and sold that way, according to The Journal‘s source.
When the news that Hostess would liquidate, shutting down its 36 plants and selling its more than 30 brands, first broke, FORBES speculated that Bimbo would grow sweet on Hostess. Run by a Mexican billionaire family, Bimbo has flirted with Hostess in the past, and Bimbo’s acquisition of Sara Lee‘s U.S. bakery operations last year suggested that its appetite for U.S. expansion was hardly satiated. (Interestingly, soon after FORBES laid out that analysis, Hostess’ CEO made it a point to say that Bimbo was not a likely suitor.) Flowers Food also quickly surfaced as a candidate, as the company sought to find the necessary funding for an acquisition.

Wal-Mart and Kroger are also reportedly interested in the asset sale, though it’s unknown if they are interested in the bread or cake business. Each would likely make the brands available only in their stores. The sweets might make sense for other big packaged food companies, like Kraft Foods Group or Kellogg.

Abram Brown
Hat tip: Forbes.com

Girls With Guns

The Liar in Chief

Until my second term...

State Listings of EBT Fraud

Here’s a state-by-state listing of some EBT fraud stories:

Alabama: Not fraudulent, but are EBT cards becoming a status symbol? In Alabama, a place called the “Rose Supper Club” gives you $5 off the cover price if you show your EBT card. It’s a promotion called “Food Stamp Fridays.”
Arizona: A 15-month investigation found roughly $700-K in EBT fraud. 18 indictments.
California: $69 million in EBT funds withdrawn outside the state’s borders in recent years, including almost $12 million withdrawn in Las Vegas.
Colorado: EBT cards used at strip clubs, casinos. Denver Post editorializes that attempts to crack down on fraud might not be worth it.
Connecticut: 27 state workers fired, 10 others retire after investigation finds massive insider fraud by government bureaucrats.
Florida: Investigators find that sales of EBT cards at less than full value results in a $2-million swindle.

Georgia: Man pleads guilty to EBT card scam valued at $4.6 million, believed to be largest food stamp fraud ever in the state.
Illinois: Sting on “LINK” cards believed to have generated $40,000 monthly revenue for one of the families accused of participating in the alleged fraud ring.
Indiana: State worker accused of issuing EBT cards to fake recipients. Also, police arrest five in EBT scam believed to have netted $100-K.
Iowa: Grocer, a former City Council member, convicted of witness tampering during food stamp investigation and trial. In a separate story, Iowa inmates found to have been illegally receiving food stamp benefits while incarcerated.
Kansas: Authorities believe as many as 7,000 fraudulent users of EBT cards are costing the state $22-million.
Louisiana: Eight arrested in food stamp fraud. In late 2011, the state said it had 474 active investigations into possible EBT fraud/abuse.

Maine: “Tip of the iceberg” investigation nets five indictments.
Maryland: Believed to be No. 2 in the nation in EBT card fraud, with one in four card applications “showing evidence of fraud.”
Massachusetts: Stores accused of buying EBT cards at discounted prices, and hooking up EBT card users with crack cocaine dealers.
Missouri: Welfare cards being spent in such distant places as Florida and Hawaii.
New Hampshire: Report says 10 percent of all registered food stamp recipients live out of state.
Ohio: Audit finds 33,000 replacement EBT cards ordered in one year. “[M]ore than 1,500 people in Hamilton County have ordered 10 replacement cards or more since 2006.”

Texas: State faced $4 million in federal fines for errors in issuing food stamps.
Washington: Store owner sentenced to 21 months in prison: $170,000 in her bank account on the day of the raid.
Wisconsin: Nine county workers suspected in multi-year fraud that scammed $300-K or more.

EBT Fraud and Abuse
watchdog dot org ^ | 1-2013 | Shepherd

Posted on Sunday, January 06, 2013 1:39:05 PM by doug from upland

Massachusetts Spends $91 Million a Year on Unknown EBT Card Recipients

Massachusetts also provides postage paid return envelopes to Register Welfare recipients only.
The Democrats are sugar daddies to a kept welfare voting bloc.

The Story from the Boston Herald:

Anecdote — that’s Gov. Deval Patrick’s favorite word to describe any scandal involving EBT cards and his constituents. It doesn’t matter how solid the information is, how many law-enforcement agencies are involved in the take down, he always shrugs off the latest rip-off of the taxpayers.
Anecdote.

And now he’s looking at another 19,000 of them — that 4 percent of the welfare community that the Department of Transitional Assistance (a name that grows ever more preposterous) could not locate.

Those 19,000 MIA’s collect — based on an average of $400 a month — $91 million a year. That’s the estimate of Rep. Shauna O’Connell (R-Taunton). But the governor Friday went into his best pooh-pooh mode.
“That may not be indicative of a problem,” he said with a straight face. “We’ll know when we do the scrubbing.”

Scrubbing? More like a sponge bath would be my guess. This is a program that needs a good cold shower. But the governor, himself a former welfare recipient, recommends … nothing, basically. Call it professional courtesy.
Let’s not forget how the “scrubbing” began. Granny Warren’s daughter filed a lawsuit claiming the DTA hadn’t been proactive enough in registering the state’s assorted loafers and layabouts to vote for her carpetbagging fake-Indian mom. Then — bingo, the hacks located $274,000 for mailings, complete with post-paid envelopes for the gimme girls and guys to send back their voter registrations.
Have you ever gotten a post-paid envelope from the commonwealth? No, I didn’t think so. They’re not for taxpayers, just for the non-working classes to take part in a Democratic voter-registration drive.
The Patrick administration has known about these appalling EBT numbers for months now. They were only released after this newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Which is the same way it was revealed that Lt. Gov. Tim Murray was doing 108 mph when he mysteriously crashed his state vehicle in November 2011.
So much for transparency at the State House.

It takes months for a law-abiding citizen to get a gun permit in this state. But if you sign up for welfare with a fake name or address, no problemo. Nobody ever checks up, apparently.
When Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York in 1993, he insisted that all welfare recipients show up in person to renew their applications. A quarter of the “recipients” never appeared. It’s hard to respond to a letter if you don’t really exist.

I know, that’s just an “anecdote.” So here’s one more. Years ago when the transit cops in New York and New Jersey started busting fare-jumpers, they made an astounding discovery. A quarter — there’s that number again — of those arrested were carrying welfare cards from both New York and New Jersey. In other words, they were collecting in two states.
And now the Mass. welfare rolls will get a “scrubbing” — wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Here’s what really matters to Deval and his gang of plunderers. On Thursday, as soon as the successor to the outgoing watchdog of the Governor’s Council, Mary-Ellen Manning, was sworn in, the governor nominated Mary Beth Heffernan for a judgeship.

Yes, that Mary Beth Heffernan, probably the worst public-safety secretary in state history. Too incompetent to properly broom Tim Murray’s auto accident or Annie Dookhan or the Sheila Burgess bad-driving fiasco, so they give her early retirement on the bench for $130,000 a year.
Taking care of dodgy old hacks, that’s what Deval et al. are about, not cleaning up the disaster that is the welfare state.
By the way, I still haven’t heard back from Deval on my generous offer to provide him with one hour per month on my radio talk show to explain how wonderful he and his administration are.