Companies' Announcements In Wake Of Tax Bill Passage Is Just More Sucking Up To Trump

I was sad to see that many people, including apparently Maddow, were duped by the announcements of some companies, firms that have important business before this administration, were "raising" wages and paying bonuses in the wake of this tax bill.

There were at least five companies that I noticed had made announcements yesterday - ATT, Boeing,Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bancorp, and Comcast. Kevin Drum has the scoop on ATT's announcement that it would be paying a $1,000 bonus to every employee. As part of a contract renewal agreement with the Communication Workers of America in mid-December, ATT promised a $1,000 sweetener to every member of the union if the contract was approved by mid-January, 2018. Drum rightly surmises that ATT planned to extend that bonus beyond just the union employees of ATT but to every worker and the passage of the tax plan simply allowed them to score points with Trump by making the announcement yesterday. ATT, of course, is in the middle of having their merger with Time Warner reviewed by Trump's Justice Department.

Boeing actually isn't giving any extra money to its workers. Instead, it announced that it would spend $300 million on "employee-related and charitable investments" because of the passage of the tax bill. In actuality, this is simply part of a decision Boeing made last summer to refocus its charitable giving on three specific areas it defines as Tomorrow's Innovators, Veterans and their Families, and Dynamic Communities. Again, the charitable commitment it announced today was probably long in the works before the passage of the tax bill. Boeing has been desperately working to stay on Trump's good side after his criticism of the cost of the Air Force One planes and currently is in the midst of a dispute with Canadian company Bombadier over illegal subsidies, a case in which the Commerce Department coincidentally decided to side with Boeing just yesterday.

Wells Fargo's announcement is even more of a joke. The company said it was raising its minimum wage to $15 in the wake of the tax bill's passage. But in January of 2017, Wells Fargo raised its per hour minimum wage scale to a range of $13.50 to $17.00. So the announcement yesterday actually set a minimum wage below its current median minimum wage. My guess would be that the number of workers this actually effects is trivial. Fifth Third Bancorp's announcement was in a similar vain. Fifth Third was always one of the worst paying banks but its announcement about the $15 minimum wage was also inside its existing range of pay for entry-level employees, which is still at the low-end in the banking industry. It should also be noted that a Goldman Sachs' analysis estimates that banks will see their bottom line grown by 14% on average because of this tax bill and, in the case of Wells Fargo specifically, that number will be 18%. Wells Fargo is currently being investigated for an over decade-long massive fraud that involved clear violations of the law by opening accounts and credit cards in the name of customers without permission simply to generate fees and profits for the bank.

Comcast announced a $1,000 bonus for every one of its 100,000 employees. Some as cynical as myself might think that $100 million payout was merely payback to the Trump administration for its ruling gutting net neutrality earlier this month. In fact, the announcement of these bonuses helped overshadow the earlier announcement that the company was raising its fees from $1 to $5 for its TV services. Fees for premium services will increase by over 10% as will the fees for set-top boxes. Earlier, the FCC struck down an Obama-era ruling on bringing competition to those set-top boxes, restoring the monopoly that cable companies like Comcast has on that hardware.

In summary, of the five companies that made a splash with their announcements supposedly in the wake of the passage of the tax bill, four had existing plans already in the works long before passage and the fifth was a recipient of greatly enhanced monopoly power only a week ago. This is exactly similar to all the "investments" that companies had already decided to make before Trump even became President being re-announced as something that Trump's election caused.

The disgusting, but not unusual, display of the Republican members of Congress and the administration standing at the White House and offering praise of their "dear leader" has more than a whiff of authoritarianism. And the CEOs who continue to pander in the same way to Trump are just as guilty of sycophancy and complicity in destroying our democracy, even if they rationalize their actions as merely benefitting their shareholders. And every single one of those CEOs is directly and massively benefitting from the legislation.