Nationalise Twinkies petition

 For Twinkies fans, the news just got better. At a Bankruptcy Court hearing Monday where the company sought permission to start shutting down, the company and the Unions were told to consider mediation. Both agreed to try to make an attempt, possibly preserving more than 18,000 jobs.

The mediation effort starts on Tuesday, but the case is due before the court again on Wednesday if this fails to get an agreement.

Elsewhere in the article though, it was mentioned that an online petition had been launched urging the President to nationalize, possibly the whole of Hostess, but definitely the Twinkies part of the operation:

An online petition asking President Obama to nationalize the Twinkies operation and "prevent our nation from losing her creamy center" hopes to garner 25,000 signatures by mid-December. Fewer than 4,000 people have signed it. 

"Our heart is breaking," tweeted convenience store chain AM/PM, a major seller of Hostess snacks. "#LongLiveTheTwinkie!”

For all of you wanting government flavored Twinkies, the petition can be found here: 

While the auto bailout established some sort of precedent for such an action, Twinkies consumers should not get their hopes up too much.  Were the White House to oblige, it has to be remembered that the First Family is on a health kick, which will probably result in the sponge being replaced with rye bread and the cream with a less delicious broccoli filling.

 A quick glance around the White House’s hilariously named “We the People” section though, gives the impression that not all of these petitions are meant to be taken seriously.  One for example, calls for the Transfer funds from the drug war to fund the research and development of the genetic engineering of domestic cat girls.

First impressions are that the author is just taking the piss out on the site.  With deeper analysis though, there is a significant economic argument in favor of the proposal if the ‘Find out more’ button is clicked, which raises the possibility that Paul Krugman is the initiator:

We believe that the genetic engineering of cat girls could be potentially beneficial for the economy and an effective for use as domestic house servant. The money being used to fight the drug war is effectively pointless. We could be using this money to fund other much more important things such as the genetic engineering of cat girls for domestic use. The government could then sell these genetic household workers to boost the economy and try to further decrease the national debt. They could be used around the house so that the homeowners could pursue jobs to also boost the economy.