On his radio show this morning, Glenn Beck leveled attacks against Congressman Henry Waxman and his House Energy and Commerce committee's investigation of the BP oil spill. Beck proclaimed that “there's no investigation going on here” and stated that there was a “lack of honest questions” in the hearings. According to Beck, lawmakers should be investigating the grand conspiracy linking Obama's post-spill moratorium on deep-sea drilling to the Center for American Progress, George Soros, and Brazil.
From the broadcast:
BECK: I cannot take the testimony from Capitol Hill. I cannot take the lack of honest questions. That is the key. Thomas Jefferson: “Question with boldness even the very existence of God, for he must rather honest questions over blindfolded fear.” Honest questions. That means you're not in to set anybody up. You're not - we lie to ourselves, we lie to each other, and now we're accepting questions that are riddled with lies from Congress. Oh please, please call me to testify in front of Congress, because I can't wait to say 'Have you no shame.' These people are despicable, and it is not just the Democrats. Let me start with the Democrat. Nostril man himself, Waxman. Here he is.
WAXMAN: This is an investigation. That's what this committee is doing, it's an investigatory committee.
BECK: Stop just a second, stop just a second. No he's not. They're not investigating. They're making speeches on television. That's all they're doing. There is no investigation going on here. You want some things to investigate? I'll give you a few things to investigate. How about the Center for American Progress, and how the Wall Street Journal is reporting that they're leading the President's policies? Now, let's take that one step further. Who is the major contributor of Center for American Progress who set that up? That's George Soros. Let me take it one step further. George Soros stands to gain billions of dollars because he is a major investor in the Brazilian oil firm. Who is the main benefactor of all of the problems that are happening in the Gulf? The Brazilian oil company. $900 million investment from George Soros. Oh, and one more thing, guess who just signed a major loan over to the Brazilian oil firm for $2 billion for deep sea oil drilling, deeper than what we are doing in the Gulf? 2 billion dollars? Barack Obama. So you wanna do some investigation, we have some investigation. You wanna do some investigation, go out - send an investigator. You people in Washington, I don't even know what you do. What is your expertise, besides stealing from the American people?
It seems that Beck is less concerned that oil companies are woefully unprepared for oil spills than he is about a debunked conspiracy involving George Soros. As we noted earlier this week, a House Energy subcommittee reviewed the spill response plans of the five major oil companies in the Gulf and discovered that they were all working from essentially the same flawed “cookie cutter” plans.
Additionally, Waxman released documents on Monday that showed how BP “made a series of cost-conscious decisions that ran counter to the advice of key contractors in the days leading up to the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.”
Beck's allegation that “there is no investigation going on” is just false. While Congress may not be getting answers they'd like from BP's CEO, they are certainly uncovering important information from key documents and other oil executives.