Beck's lobbying mix-up

On his Fox News show this evening, Glenn Beck urged his viewers to call their state and local lawmakers and tell them not to accept the $26 billion in federal funds provided by an emergency jobs bill that President Obama signed yesterday. Unfortunately for Beck, on-screen text directed his viewers to the Capitol Hill lawmakers who already passed the bill.

According to the Associated Press, the bill in question provides $10 billion “to school districts to rehire laid-off teachers or to ensure that more teachers won't be let go” and $16 billion to “extend for six months increased Medicaid payments to the states” which would “free money for states to meet other budget priorities, including keeping more than 150,000 police officers and other public workers on the payroll.”

According to Beck, however, the bill was part of a conspiracy by the federal government to “trap the states into massive debt” in order to fulfill the supposed plot by academics Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven to “collapse the system.”

And so, Beck told his viewers, “you must pause the show, turn the show off,” “pick up the phone,” and “call your local representative, you call your statehouse, you put your butt in front of the governor's mansion if you have to, and you tell them... that they must not take this money.”

Just one problem: During Beck's call to phones, the caption below him read, “Call the Capitol Switchboard; (202) 224-3121.” The members of Congress who already passed the bill aren't really the ones you want to call to get your state government to refuse funds that would prevent mass layoffs of teachers and police officers.

Video below the fold.