As I imagine you know, there have been several problems with Boeing aircraft in the last six years. This has led to serious concerns about Boeing’s commitment to safety and quality in its manufacturing. There’s quite a bit of evidence that it’s been cutting corners to maximize profits. Among other things, several whistleblowers have come forward with solid evidence of Boeing management’s lack of concern about safety and quality. What you may not know is that two of those whistleblowers have died in the last two months in unusual circumstances that have raised questions about how far Boeing would go to cover up its culpability for the accidents with Boeing planes.

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You probably remember the Boeing 737 Max airliner crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people and the January 2024 Alaska Airlines 737 Max door plug blow out while in flight that left a gaping opening in the plane’s fuselage. There have been other incidents with Boeing planes that you may not have heard about including a jammed rudder on a 737 Max that caused a near miss in Newark in March, an emergency landing of a San Francisco to Boston flight after a report of a wing coming apart, and a malfunctioning de-icing system. Boeing has also failed 33 of 89 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) audits.

As a result of all this, Boeing is under intense scrutiny for its apparent lack of commitment to safety and willingness to cut corners to reduce costs and increase profits. Over the past 10 years, Boeing’s profits have allowed it to buyback $39 billion of its own stock and pay another $20 billion to its shareholders in dividends. Boeing spent $26.6 million on lobbying with 17 lobbying firms in 2021 and 2022. Since 2010, it’s spent over $200 million on lobbying. It’s also spent $30 million on campaign contributions since 2010. So, it’s not like Boeing is running on a shoe string and can’t afford to pay attention to quality and safety.

But there’s no way that Boeing would murder a prominent whistleblower or two, is there? This question was first raised in March 2024 when a Boeing whistleblower died of an apparent suicide that was a total shock and unbelievable to everyone who knew him. [1] Then, in early May, a second Boeing whistleblower died after a short and unusual illness. Meanwhile, serious and potentially very damaging  investigations of Boeing’s quality control and commitment to safety in building its aircraft are ongoing.

In the March case, John Barnett, who had worked at Boeing for 28 years when he retired in late 2016, was found dead of an apparent suicide. Friends and his lawyer find it impossible to believe that he committed suicide. Circumstances also make it incongruent. He had filed a whistleblower complaint against Boeing in 2017 asserting a lack of commitment to safety in the manufacturing of its 787 Dreamliner airplane. (What he saw was so bad that he now refuses to fly.) In March, the case was about to go to trial after seven years of work and there was every reason to believe his safety concerns would be substantiated. His lawyer stated, “He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him. We didn’t see any indication that he would take his own life. … No one can believe it.” [2] A family friend told a Charleston, SC, TV station reporter that Barnett had said to her that if he died it wouldn’t be suicide. [3]

He spent the last seven years of his Boeing career supervising 10 to 12 quality assurance inspectors at the North Carolina plant where final assembly of the 787 Dreamliner aircraft was done. Boeing had relocated the plant to North Carolina to avoid unionization. However, skilled machinists were not readily available, so insufficiently skilled workers were hired instead. Therefore, quality problems were frequent.

Boeing management made it clear that they felt that quality assurance was unnecessary. Barnett described how his quality assurance team was taken off the job after finding 300 defects on a fuselage section. He also described how Boeing managers allowed the use of parts that had been identified as defective. In 2014, he was reprimanded for documenting violations in writing, which violated Boeing’s policy of non-documentation. (Note: In the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation of the incident where a “door plug” blew out of an Alaska Airlines plane’s fuselage in flight, Boeing was accused of refusing to cooperate because it failed to produce requested documents. However, it stated it was cooperating but did not have the requested documents because it does not document the repairs and procedures about which the NTSB was asking.)

Barnett’s battles with Boeing management were so stressful that he retired early at 55 and filed a whistleblower complaint. What made Barnett a particularly effective whistleblower was that he had documentation of his concerns, totaling thousands of pages.

More recently, in early May, Joshua Dean, a 45-year-old former quality auditor at a Boeing supplier, Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, KS, died after a short and unusual illness. He had filed a complaint with the FAA alleging “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the [Boeing] 737 [Max] production line.” He was concerned about manufacturing defects in the construction of the planes. Dean was fired by the Boeing supplier last year and filed a complaint with the Labor Department alleging that his termination was retaliation for raising safety concerns. [4]

In April, another Boeing whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, testified before Congress that there was “no safety culture” at Boeing; that employees who raised safety concerns were “ignored, marginalized, threatened, sidelined and worse;” and that he feared “physical violence” after stating his concerns publicly.

I urge you to contact President Biden and urge him to order a thorough Department of Justice and FAA investigation into the quality and safety problems with Boeing’s aircraft and its culpability for them. Please tell him that any penalties need to be sufficient to deter such future behavior by Boeing (as well as by corporations in general). A slap on the wrist and penalties that can be considered a cost of doing business have not deterred corporate bad behavior in the past. You can email President Biden at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments or you can call the White House comment line at 202-456-1111 or the switchboard at 202-456-1414.

[1]      Tkacik, M., 3/14/24, “The strange death of a Boeing whistleblower,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/justice/2024-03-14-strange-death-boeing-whistleblower/)

[2]      Tkacik, M., 3/14/24, see above

[3]      Emerson, A., 3/14/24, “ ‘If anything happens, it’s not suicide’: Boeing whistleblower’s prediction before death,” ABC News 4, Charleston, SC (https://abcnews4.com/news/local/if-anything-happens-its-not-suicide-boeing-whistleblowers-prediction-before-death-south-carolina-abc-news-4-2024)

[4]      Rushe, D., 5/2/24, “Second Boeing whistleblower dies after short illness,” The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/02/second-boeing-whistleblower-dies)

Here are short takes on three important stories that have gotten little attention in the mainstream media. Each provides a quick summary of the story, a hint as to why it’s important, and a link to more information. They range from profitable corporations that pay their executives more than they pay in federal taxes to corporate profit enhancement through shrinkflation to over a billion dollars in fraud enabled by Walmart.

STORY #1: A recent study found that for the period from 2018 to 2022 thirty-five profitable U.S. corporations paid their five top executives more than they paid in federal taxes. They include Tesla, T-Mobile, Netflix, Ford, Darden Restaurants, and MetLife. An additional 29 corporations paid their executives more than they paid in taxes in at least two or those five years. [1] Over this 5-year period, these 64 corporations had profits of $657 billion, paid their executives over $15 billion, and paid only $18.4 billion in federal taxes, just 2.8% of their profits. For decades, corporate profits and executive pay have been rising dramatically, while the amount corporations pay in taxes has been steadily declining.

The effective U.S. corporate tax rate has fallen from roughly 50% in the 1950s to 17% in 2022. Dodging taxes whenever possible and lobbying to reduce taxes are easy ways for corporate executives to increase profits and returns to themselves and shareholders. The low taxes paid by big corporations mean that other taxpayers have to pay more or get less in public services. [2]

A Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act has been introduced in Congress and would increase taxes on corporations where CEO pay is over 50 times that of their typical employee. The Act would gradually increase a corporation’s tax rate if the ratio of its CEO’s pay to that of its median worker is over 50 with up to a five-percentage-point increase in the tax rate if the ratio is over 500. The typical CEO-to-worker pay ratio today is about 350. For example, at McDonald’s the ratio is 1,224 and under this legislation its taxes last year would have been increased by $92 million. [3] I urge you to contact your U.S. Representative and Senators to ask them to support the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act. You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

Exorbitant CEO pay and high corporate profits are key factors leading to the growing numbers and wealth of billionaires. Forbes magazine just released its updated worldwide billionaires list. The number of individuals with wealth of over $1 billion grew by 141 last year to 2,781. Together, they own combined wealth of over $14 trillion. Fourteen of them have wealth of over $100 billion. Many of them oppose fair taxation of themselves and their businesses, and many of them also oppose fair treatment of workers by opposing unionization and imposing low pay and poor working conditions. Elon Musk of Tesla and Jeff Bezos of Amazon are classic examples. [4]

STORY #2: As if price gouging under the guise of “inflation” hadn’t boosted profits enough, corporations have also been engaging in another form of profit maximization at consumers’ expense: shrinkflation. First, corporations increased prices using their monopolistic power, blaming it on Covid-related “inflation” – but they’re not dropping prices now even though all the rationales for this “inflation” have dissipated. Now, they’re shrinking the amount of food or goods, such as snacks and paper products, in packages without reducing prices. For example, paper towels and toilet paper are 34.9% more expensive than in January 2019 and almost a third of that increase is due to shrinkage in the amount of product in packages. As a result, corporate profits are skyrocketing. [5] [6]

The Biden administration is attacking the monopoly power that lets corporations engage in consumer price gouging. It’s suing meat processors for price fixing and it’s blocking the merger of two huge grocery store chains, Kroger and Albertson’s. Biden and members of Congress are promoting the Shrinkflation Protection Act and the Price Gouging Protection Act. Both bills would empower the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumers from these unfair and deceptive corporate practices. I encourage you to contact President Biden and your Members of Congress to let them know you support these bills.

STORY #3: Since 1999, Walmart has been expanding its business into financial services. However, over the last decade, its gift card and money transfer services have enabled over $1 billion in fraud. Walmart has pushed back against efforts to require improvements in its oversight and fraud prevention, has failed to perform necessary employee training, and has failed to live up to promises made to regulators and business partners to prevent fraud.

Walmart has a financial incentive not to crack down on this fraud because it earns fees on each transaction – every Walmart gift card used, every sale of another company’s gift card, and every money transfer. These activities produce hundreds of millions of dollars in annual profits. [7]

In 2017, for example, the New York and Pennsylvania attorneys general investigated Walmart for profiting off gift card fraud. As a result, Walmart promised to ban or restrict the purchase of other companies’ gift cards with Walmart gift cards, a favorite scheme of scammers. However, it let the practice continue until 2022, even though it knew millions of dollars of fraud were occurring. At least 28 people have been convicted in state or federal courts of stealing tens of millions of dollars through gift card transactions at Walmart stores.

Walmart has ignored repeated warnings that up to 75% of the money transfers at some of its stores were fraudulent. Its money transfer partner, MoneyGram, reported at one point that of all the partners it worked with nationally Walmart stores were all of its top 20 fraud locations. In one week in March 2017, there were 610 complaints of money transfer fraud at Walmart, far more than anywhere else. (CVS was second with 47 complaints.) In 2022, the Federal Trade Commission sued Walmart for ignoring fraud in its money transfer service while it made millions in fees. In public statements, Walmart touts its anti-fraud efforts while in private filings in court cases it claims it has “no responsibility to protect against the criminal conduct of third parties.”

Despite these problems, Walmart continues to expand its financial services.

[1]      Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness, March 2024, “More for them, less of us,” (https://ips-dc.org/report-corporations-that-pay-their-executives-more-than-uncle-sam/)

[2]      Johnson, J., 3/13/24, “Report exposes US corporations that pay their execs more than they pay in taxes,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/ceo-pay-taxes)

[3]      Johnson, J., 6/22/24, “Progressive lawmakers unveil bill to attack ‘disease’ of corporate greed,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/sanders-corporate-tax)

[4]      Conley, J., 4/2/24, “Forbes billionaires list shows ‘utterly unconscionable’ wealth growth of world’s richest,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/forbes-list-billionaires)

[5]      Reich, R., 3/30/24, “Record corporate profits from your thinning wallet,” Robert Reich’s daily blog (https://robertreich.substack.com/p/record-corporate-profits-coming-from)

[6]      McCloskey, E., 2/22/24, “You’re not imagining it,” Patriotic Millionaires (https://patrioticmillionaires.org/2024/02/22/youre-not-imagining-it/)

[7]      Silverman, C., & Elkind, P., 1/17/24, “How Walmart’s financial services became a fraud magnet,” ProPublica (https://www.propublica.org/article/walmart-financial-services-became-fraud-magnet-gift-cards-money-laundering)