Wall Street’s Border Wall: How Five Firms Stand to Benefit Financially from Anti-Immigrant Policy

“An examination of Sterling Construction Company, the only publicly-traded company to receive a contract to build a border wall prototype, reveals that Trump-connected Wall Street investors from across the political spectrum stand to benefit financially from the wall.2 Investors in Sterling include far-right funder Robert Mercer and his firm Renaissance Technologies, as well as BlackRock and JP Morgan Chase, led by Democratic donors Larry Fink and Jamie Dimon, respectively. Sterling’s prototype contract appears to already be benefiting its shareholders by helping to drive up its share price to the highest levels in years.”  More …

Ex-Con Coal Baron Don Blankenship Is Running for U.S. Senate

“Blankenship’s candidacy is big news in West Virginia, where he is a well-known and deeply polarizing figure who spent decades as a ruthless advocate for the coal industry. If people in the rest of the country know Blankenship, it’s likely because of his 2015 conviction for conspiring to break mine-safety laws, leading to the 2010 disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine. Twenty-nine men died in an explosion there, but Blankenship refused to shoulder any of the blame. While in prison, he wrote a 67-page booklet in which he claimed to be an “American political prisoner” and arguing that the deadliest mine disaster in four decades was caused by natural factors.”  More …

The Republican Plan Is the Opposite of Tax Reform

“A well-designed tax reform would take multiple times as long to write as the Republicans are allotting themselves. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 began two years earlier. The Republicans are rushing their plan through Congress in weeks, in part to avoid the potential loss of a Senate vote in Alabama, and in part because they understand that extended public debate and scrutiny of their already-unpopular plan would only subject them to more public backlash.”  More …