Get A Grip Beck

Glenn Beck is all up in arms that the House Ethics Committee has barred some members of congress from going to his rally in Israel later this month.



On the air, Beck said he‘d heard it was Boehner’s office that was not approving members of Congress to attend the event, with 35 representatives at one point planning to attend before being told they’d been rejected by the House and would have to self-fund the trip if they wanted to go.


Beck wondered whether the congressmen were barred because “it is me as someone who holds the Republicans’ feet to the fire” or as retribution for voting against the debt ceiling deal.


I am unable to find a list of the 35 that wanted to attend so I don’t know if any of them voted for the debt ceiling or not. But, what I do know is that if it was indeed Speaker Boehner who stopped this trip, I want to shake his hand.


It is about frickin’ time that someone stand up to these congressman (and ladies too) and say hell no, if you want to jet all over the world you have to pay for it yourself. You see they are not being barred from attending, they are being barred by taking an all expensive paid trip to Israel. The charity that was planning on footing the bill is indeed a 501 (c)3. But what Beck doesn’t fully explain is that they don’t get called lobbyists when they are legally allowed to “educate” people on their particular issue. Whatever that issue may happen to be. For instance, they can hold seminars on the say global warming (a topic that Beck has spoken out against time and again), and give out all kinds of literature on that topic. That literature legally will be allowed to contain which legislation affects their topic. As long as they don’t tell someone directly to contact an elected official or try to contact that official themselves directly on that topic, they are in compliance with the law will be allowed to keep their non-profit tax exempt status. But they can take them on little junkets to the other side of the world and that is perfectly fine. That doesn’t sound a tad like lobbying to you?


I have seen quite a few conservatives all up in arms and calling Boehner a traitor. Seriously? They are legally allowed to indirectly lobby and by paying for this trip to Israel that is exactly what they were trying to do. The trip would have been so short that they wouldn’t have had time to have any meetings with Israeli officials. Basically they would have gotten off the plane, gone to Beck’s rally spent the night in I would presume a pretty expensive hotel room and got back on a plane the next day and flown home. Conservatives have a problem that Boehner put his foot down and said no?


Speaker Boehner let me be the first to shake your hand. They make $174K per year. They can afford a ticket to Israel. We need to take away as many people trying to influence the government as possible. This is why government officials don’t want to leave their jobs. These are exactly the type of perks that average Joe’s don’t get and make being a professional politician so lucrative. Enough already.


Get a grip Beck. This is exactly the type of thing you would be all over if the democrats did it. Is this hypocrisy on your part Glenn or just plain arrogance?