Glenn Beck Tries To Vilify Wall Street Protests, Fails To Disclose His Coordination With Bank Lobbyists And Oil Barons

By Lee Fang/Think Progress

Since Fox News kicked Glenn Beck to the curb a few months ago, the largely forgotten radio blowhard has tried to shore up his radio listenership with a steady stream of authoritarian rhetoric. Increasingly, he is spending more and more time smearing the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as a “shameless display ofmoral depravity.”

As Beck plays defense for billionaires and big banks, he conceals quite a bit to his listeners. Beck in fact works hand in hand with the same corporate lobbyists and plutocrats responsible for corrupting our political system:

– Glenn Beck Secretly Met With Koch Brothers And Right-Wing Corporate Executives In An Election Planning Event In 2010: In June 2010, Glenn Beck was the guest of honor at a major fundraising retreat convened by the billionaires Charles and David Koch. The meeting, which included hedge fund managers Cliff Asness, Steve Schwarzman, and Ken Griffin, as well as executives from Bank of America, JLM Investment, Allied Capital Corp, Amway, Bechtel, and other leading firms. The twice annual secret Koch gatherings discuss efforts to finance Tea Party front groups, like Americans for Prosperity. At the last such gathering, partipants discussed how Americans for Prosperity has been “designed” to elect Republican candidates.

– Glenn Beck Officially Partners With FreedomWorks, A Group Run By Lobbyist Dick Armey: In May 2010, Beck announced an official partnership with thelobbyist-run group FreedomWorks. Beck would help recruit for the organization, and in exchange the organization sponsored his show. In touting the priorities of FreedomWorks, Beck never disclosed that the group has a long history of generating fake support for Wall Street privatization schemes. Over the years, FreedomWorks has promoted the interests of the same Wall Street firms paying Armey as a lobbyist. As ThinkProgress has documented, FreedomWorks takes money from corporations and pushes policies that directly benefit their big business donors.

– Glenn Beck Partners With The Lobbying Association For AIG, JP Morgan, Chevron, Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical: Beck has quietly developed a relationship with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest big businesslobby in the world that counts top firms like Goldman Sachs and Chevron asmembers. The Chamber pushed for the bank bailouts, demanded corporate tax cuts, successfully stopped Congress from acting on climate change, saidtaxpayers should pay for BP’s oil spill, and nearly killed both financial reformand health reform. Nevertheless, Beck has appeared as a speaker for Chamber fundraisers, welcomed Chamber lobbyists on his show, and pledged support for the Chamber’s crony capitalist agenda.

Beck, who owns a $27 million media company, a fancy Manhattan apartment with his own faceadorning the walls, and his own personalized Mercedes Benz, still cultivates an image of being a regular American guy. That’s why, unlike Rush Limbaugh, who is proud of his association with so-called country club Republicans, Beck never discloses or fully explains his relationship with lobbyists and people like the Koch brothers.

Beck’s smears against the 99 Percent Movement benefit the 1 Percent: rich media pundits like himself and his billionaire backers.