Ballroom Blitz: Union Pacific donates to White House ballroom while proposing massive merger

Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, the largest rail yard in the world, handles roughly 14,000 rail cars every day. The railroad company, which is headquartered in Omaha, is already one of the country’s largest. Now, Union Pacific is seeking a merger that would give it control of more than 40% of rail freight traffic in the United States. Photo by Christopher Turley for the Flatwater Free Press

https://flatwaterfreepress.org/ballroom-blitz-union-pacific-donates-to-white-house-ballroom-while-proposing-massive-merger/

A merger with Norfolk Southern Railway – one of the dominant railroads in the eastern U.S. – would cement Union Pacific as the largest railroad in the United States.

By Joshua Shimkus Nov. 7

Union Pacific Railroad is the lone Nebraska-based company publicly known to have donated to the new White House ballroom championed by President Donald Trump. It’s also a Nebraska-based company that will soon need a federal regulator to approve a massive merger that, if green-lit, would give the company control of more than 40% of rail freight traffic in the United States.

Trump recently fired the most anti-merger board member of that federal regulator, the Surface Transportation Board, as he tries to exert unprecedented influence over ostensibly independent federal agencies.

Union Pacific is far from the only White House ballroom donor that may have reason to curry presidential favor. Many of the publicly known donors are massive companies or billionaires. A recent report by Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, says that 14 out of 24 known corporate donors to the ballroom are facing federal enforcement action or have had enforcement suspended this year by the Trump administration.

Anthony Hatch, a longtime Wall Street analyst of the railroad industry, said he doesn’t think Trump fired the board member because of the looming railroad merger. He termed the U.P. donation part of “playing the lobbying game.”

FULL story at link above.