Glass House, Meet Stone.
It could be the notion that he’s entitled to have big parts of his life kept private while running for President (like his tax returns before 2010) that keeps Mitt Romney from getting it. A presidential campaign is time spent within a glass house. And people who live in glass houses, you know, should think twice before throwing stones. None the less Team Romney just heaved a media buy brick at Barack Obama, on the topic of “Crony Capitalism”. That’s right Mitt Romney, Mr. Bain Capital himself, is now lecturing Barack Obama about the sin of money influencing policy. Like a movie teen who wanders off alone during a party at a dark haunted house, Romney could have exercised some caution, but no, he really went there. And guess who is lurking in the hall closet?
Well, there are legions of entities in that closet actually, but it only takes one to bite. Consider a guy stuffed there who is even richer than Romney; a billionaire by the mane of Harold Hamm, and that’s not even a stage name. You can look up Harold Hamm right on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.You’ll find him at number thirty six. Harold Hamm is CEO of Continental Resources Inc. (CLR). That’s an oil company in case you were wondering, and Hamm’s stake in Continental Resources is worth 11.2 billion dollars. One could safely call Harold Hamm a capitalist, but is he also a Romney crony?
As.a matter of fact he is. Mitt Romney thinks so highly of Harold Hamm that he asked Mr. Hamm to head up a crucial policy advisory group for him: as in people who advise Mitt Romney on what he should do after he gets elected President. The particular policy group that Harold Hamm now leads might not be hard to guess. You got it, it’s about energy and the policies a Romney Administration should embrace to guide our nation’s energy future. No conflict of interest there since Mr. Hamm is after all “an expert”.
That's not the only thing Harold Hamm is though. Hamm is also a large donor to a Super PAC that supports Mitt Romney, large to the tune of $985,000. But before anyone goes off accusing Mitt Romney of appointing a major donor to head one of his advisory groups you need to get your facts straight – and the facts refute that conclusion. Hamm forked over his high six figures donation (that can’t be called a million) toward the effort to elect Romney president a few weeks AFTER Romney made him a key policy adviser, keeping everything clean as a whistle. Cleaner than a whistle actually because the Super PAC Hamm donated to, Restore Our Future, is fully INDEPENDENT of the official Romney campaign. What could possibly be wrong with that? It’s not like there’s money to be made through influencing Romney’s policies.
Harold Hamm won’t be alone in advising Mitt Romney on energy issues, there are others on the task force also; except we can’t name any of them. Mitt Romney is keeping those names secret, kind of like his tax returns prior to 2010. Romney thinks revealing Harold Hamm’s name alone is enough information for the public to have about who Romney has planning our energy future, and how he conducts the public’s business. This time he could be right. The sound you’re about to hear is a glass house shattering.
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