"Of course" Mitt Romney is connected in some way to Barclays Bank. Who is surprised?
The Washington lobbyist for Barclays Bank, Patrick Durkin, is Mitt Romney's biggest bundler. Unlike President Obama, Mitt Romney has refused to reveal who his bundlers are, but FEC filings require disclosure of bundlers who are lobbyists.
Yet Romney has not identified all of his so-called fundraising "bundlers" who have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, even after President Barack Obama's re-election campaign released the names of his top fundraisers.
Patrick Durkin has raised
nearly a million dollars for the Romney campaign.
Patrick Durkin, who advocates [i.e. lobbies] in Washington for Barclays, is Romney’s top lobbyist bundler, according to a list the campaign filed with the U.S. Federal Election Commission. Durkin had collected $927,160 for the campaign through the end of May.
Barclays Bank has been in the news recently because of the LIBOR interest fixing scandal, though hardly enough outrage is being generated. Barclays CEO, 'Barclay Bob' Diamond, first said he was foregoing his $4 million bonus, then had to resign in disgrace.
On Tuesday, Diamond resigned from Barclays after his bank was fined more than $450 million by British and U.S. authorities for attempting to manipulate the Libor rate (London interbank offered rate), a key global metric used to set everything from credit card to mortgage interest rates.
Diamond resigned amid political pressure the London-based bank faced after it admitted to rigging global interest rates.
Furthermore, he then had to step down from hosting the $75,000 plate fundraiser in London that will coincide with Romney's Olympic visit to London.
WASHINGTON -- A disgraced London banker has rescinded an offer to co-host a high-dollar fundraiser for Mitt Romney, sparing the GOP hopeful the difficulty of appearing at a lavish event with a man embroiled in scandal.
Romney's plan to hold a fundraiser in London this summer with Barclays CEO Robert Diamond was reported June 28 by the London Telegraph. The cost of the dinner seemed to shock the British paper, which noted that "the price of invitations dwarfs the amounts paid for such fund-raisers in British politics."
The July 27 Romney fundraising dinner, scheduled for a day when Romney is in town for the Olympics, will proceed without Diamond.
News reports have attempted to draw the false equivalency between the Obama and Romney campaigns by pointing out hedgefund managers and other financial industry titans that have donated to President Obama's campaign. The difference, at least one of them, is that President Obama is not associated with the biggest financial scandal in decades. Yet the media is yawning. And Romney's haul dwarfs that of President Obama's.
Supporters in the investment and securities industry contributed about $9.4 million to Romney’s campaign through the end of May, compared with at least $3.4 million that President Barack Obama has raised from them, according to the Washington- based Center for Responsive Politics.
So there should be
little doubt that the captains of finance have made their beds solidly with Romney.
These 15 men are leaders of what might be called Romney’s K Street army. They are key players in the mobilization of Washington’s $3.5 billion lobbying industry in support of his candidacy. Romney, more than anyone else who is running, is the favorite of the capital’s influence-wielding establishment.
All 15 are active fundraisers for Romney. Patrick J. Durkin, who lobbies for Barclays, for example, raised $254,825, according to reports filed by the Romney campaign. Robert Grand, of the lobbying firm Barnes & Thornberg, raised $110,050; William Mark Simmons and David Beightol, both of the Dutko Group, raised $69,260 and $54,200 respectively; Wayne Berman and Drew Maloney, both in the Ogilvy Government Affairs firm, raised $101,600 and $56,750, respectively. The list goes on.
Nor should the importance of the breakdown of campaign finance reform and the influence of money be downplayed.
The open participation of lobbyists in the current campaign is one more element in the collapse of campaign-finance reform. Two waves of reform — the first in the post-Watergate era of the mid-1970s and the second culminating in 2002 with the passage of the McCain-Feingold act, which sought to end the use of “soft money” in campaigns — are essentially moot.
But these reforms have been gutted by Supreme Court decisions, especially the Jan. 21, 2010 decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and by a lax Federal Election Commission
There is little doubt that the meager crumbs thrown to the 99% in the form of the ACA or the Frank Dodd are far too intolerable to the 1% even in this day of record corporate profits, and they will do whatever possible to get their tool into office.