[Note to BfAZ readers: My IPS colleague, Josh Hoxie, teamed up on this piece for The American Prospect. I can’t post more than an intro here, but please click over to their site for the rest of it. Bob]
By Bob Lord and Josh Hoxie
Corporate public relations teams extol bonuses to pump up the Republican re-election effort, but many people will end up unemployed.
You don’t need to follow the president’s Twitter feed to read glowing accounts of the massive tax cuts he championed through Congress late last year. Simply skim the glitzy headlines and press releases coming out of corporate America these past couple months, where CEOs and public relations firms are working overtime to tell you about all the worker bonuses they’re doling out.
…
Underneath this PR spin is a much more sinister story: Many of these bonuses aren’t what they appear to be: Many of these companies, Walmart included, are actually laying off workers. One devious feature of tax cuts-equal-bonuses messaging is that new tax law isn’t even responsible for many of the bonuses—it could even make such bonuses less likely. The campaign is part of an effort to sway public opinion in favor of Republicans in 2018, so big corporations can take a huge tax cut and run.
Continue Reading at AmericanProspect.org