06/25/08 – Trevor Lyman – The Scott Horton Show

All right, our next guest made history, everybody, back last November when they launched the Ron Paul money bomb.
I won't say it was an individual effort because I know he won't let me get away with saying it anyway, but Trevor Lyman was instrumental in raising $4 million in one day last November for Dr. Ron Paul's presidential campaign.
And then on December 16th, Boston Tea Party Day, and boy did we have a celebration here in Austin of that, helped raise over $6 million, helped put together the Ron Paul blimp.
And as I read my favorite blog, Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon.com, I found out that Trevor Lyman is in fact working with the lefties on opposing the new telecom deal.
And this is, of course, a common theme on this show as I try to push for a new realignment of the best of the left and the right with us libertarians as the real center.
Not those moderate extremists, but us libertarians as the real center of the good left and the good right.
And here's Trevor Lyman.
He's putting it in practice and raising a lot of money in order to help destroy the political careers of politicians who would destroy our Bill of Rights.
Welcome to the show, Trevor.
Hey, Scott.
How are you?
Thanks for having me.
Well, I'm doing great and you're very welcome.
I'm very thankful to have you here.
You do groundbreaking work.
This is really important stuff that you're doing here.
Tell me about how you got involved with this Strange Bedfellows project with Glenn Greenwald and some of the other liberal bloggers.
Sure.
Actually, a member of our new site, Break the Matrix, brought us together, Joshua Koster.
He had been speaking with Glenn Greenwald and others and suggested that we all look at ways to work together, because in many ways, the Ron Paul Republican is very similar to as many ideals that are in common with the Democratic Party, because true Democrats have many American ideals.
So even though there may be some differences on economics or different ways to deal with some of the social issues, we can all agree that America stands for certain things and that we need to come together when those vital elements of what makes this country great come under attack.
Yes.
Okay.
So now what's happened?
How much money have you raised and what are you guys spending it on?
Tell me about the project.
I want people interested enough that they'll help.
Sure.
Well, right now, I know that the bill passed, so I think that Glenn is a little bit more in charge of that at the moment.
We just started working together and we're just coming up with ideas now, but they did want to do an initial fundraising effort to basically attack ads to bring people's awareness up of this issue.
Going forward, it looks like we're going to plan a money bomb to do this on a much greater scale to run ads that inform the public across the nation for the worst offenders.
That's the way this game is played.
The media isn't really, for the most part, doing the job of being impartial and presenting us with the truth, so we do it through advertising.
Yeah.
Now see, this is really what I'm talking about here.
It's not that I have anything really of value to add except encouragement.
The idea that this can turn into a permanent pressure group in favor of the Bill of Rights, just hardcore on civil liberties and trying to be ecumenical and bring in as many people as possible in order to agree on the Bill of Rights, period, and that kind of thing.
The idea that this could be something, a lasting legacy of this backlash, that we could have something like this where we can continue to respond on these assaults because the bipartisan assaults on our liberty in the Congress and in the White House are not going to stop after this one.
As you said, we already lost this one, huh?
Yeah, absolutely.
If anything, they're only emboldened because they did.
They won.
Now we have to start making ...
There has to start to be a price.
The good thing is if we get rid of a bad apple on civil liberties, there's probably a bad apple on other issues as well.
We really do a lot of good if we can mix them inroads.
Particularly in the House of Representatives, and it's designed this way for a reason.
The people, at this point, I forget exactly how they break down how many people per district or whatever, but they have a ceiling on this 435.
That's a lot of tiny little districts all across this country.
Many of them are gerrymandered and kind of rigged, but in primary races especially, real differences can be made in the House of Representatives.
People pay so much attention to the race for the presidency where their vote means absolutely nothing, but dedicated activists of one stripe or another can really make a difference when it comes to the local house races.
Absolutely.
As well, the great thing about this and the internet and things like this, like the money bombs and this new money bomb that we might put together, is that we all get to come together and make a difference.
Anybody who feels passionate about the issue can spend an hour a day or half hour a day telling people to go and support that money bomb on the internet.
They can email their friends, they can put a banner on their friend's page on MySpace or whatever it is they can do, call up radio shows and so on.
It's so great that there can be a focal point and it gives power to everybody on all levels to make this difference.
Alright, now describe to me some of the different forces involved in this thing, do you know?
The thing that we're going to do next, and we haven't completely finalized it, but it really looks like we're going to go ahead, is to create a PAC that will basically run these ads that are advocating against or for candidates.
The ACLU, being a non-profit, can't be in the PAC or have a deciding role, so they'll be limited, but they have been on the initial calls and I know that they will be in support of it and I imagine that they'll do some informative posts about it.
What about right-wingers, are there any conservatives getting on board for this other than the right side of the Ron Paul faction?
We don't know yet, that's part of what we're going to be looking at, but we believe that we will get support.
Again, this is very new, myself and Rick Williams over at Break the Matrix are the two from the right so far, but we'll be reaching out and we'll ask others to come on board and I think we'll see a lot of support.
It's time, with issues like this, it's so important that we just forget about party lines, they're really significant on these matters.
Now, tell me about the campaign for liberty, are you involved in that, Ron Paul's new project?
I can blog over there, but right now I don't know much about it, I'm not even so sure they completely know everything they're doing themselves, I think they're in planning phases, so I know pretty much as much as the next guy.
I know that they want to continue and to provide a focal point, Ron Paul has already started to give commentary on the events on Capitol Hill of the day, from Washington for the day, so I know they want to do that on a larger scale, video reactions and so on, so people can be more in touch with the events that are shaping our future.
Yeah, well I forget who it was that told me on this show a long time ago that when it comes to Congress, they'll never see the light, but they can be made to feel the heat.
In fact, I got a great anecdote about this from years ago in the 1990s, there was a congressman in California who filed a bill that was basically going to do what, there was a controversy actually when the court did this in California recently, but this was a bill that was going to basically require that all homeschool parents in America have to either have a government teacher certificate from college or they can't be a homeschool parent anymore and have to send their kids to the government schools.
And it had 60-something co-sponsors, I think, and it was sailed through committee and was going to the House floor, and then the homeschool moms found out about it, and they all emailed each other and whatever, and they organized a campaign where they just inundated all of Congress with particularly faxes and telegrams and things that would pile up, letters, things that would pile up in the offices, and they killed that bill so dead, it got one vote, the guy who sponsored it, on the House floor, because it had already made it through committee, it was sailing through.
And these homeschool moms, they just called up their congressman and they said, listen, if you make my kid go to government school all day, I'm going to have nothing to do but sit here and drink coffee and plot how to destroy your career, you son of a bitch.
And they said, okay, okay, okay.
That quick.
I mean, that's all it took.
That's a great line.
I like that.
Well, and this is how, well, for example, the Israel lobby works, too.
When they have their giant AIPAC meeting, everybody leaves on the last day and they go to Congress to say, Congressman, we want you to support this and that position.
And that kind of thing matters to these guys.
They want to get reelected.
And so it's our job to make them believe that the only way for them to continue in power is to do what we say in protecting the Bill of Rights, not what the war party wants.
Right.
I agree.
And I think our job is to get rid of these people that need this kind of pressure.
I mean, maybe that's just like you're saying, you know, they can never see the light.
Maybe everyone who gets into that position eventually falls that way.
And diligence is a requirement for our freedoms.
But you know, at any rate, it's all in the same, you know, people who go to homeschool mothers now, they don't like those candidates just even for getting on board.
Right.
It's all coming down on them eventually here.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
In fact, here, I just I just found this.
I'm sorry.
I missed this this morning.
But Feingold and Dodd are planning to filibuster the Senate wiretap bill.
So it's not too late.
Oh, that's great.
And what what is it?
Do you have a speculation, Trevor, as to what could have possibly prompted them to stand up for their previous promises to do just such a thing?
Could it have anything to do with the strange bedfellows pressure and all these people coming together to, you know, harp on this?
I would certainly hope so.
I mean, that'd be that'd be just wonderful news.
So, yeah, you know, they they know they push their they push it too far.
And then you get a blowback and that's what's happening.
And they know that the Internet is giving us the power to really come together.
So.
Right.
Well, and, you know, you've just served as the greatest example of this over the past year.
The money bomb success for the people who weren't paying attention or something last December, you and associates arranged this money bomb that raised over six million dollars for a purist libertarian candidate in one day.
And that's really something.
Yeah.
The whole community came together and pushed that.
And that's what I meant when I said everybody can get involved.
And that's what's so great about these things.
You provide a focal point and and everyone can tell their friends, hey, go there and donate on this.
Make your pledge and donate on this day.
And we can come together.
Everyone can do just a little bit, but we all do it together.
And we're like just a mighty ocean wave that can come through and and really make some change.
Individualists unite.
All right.
Now, tell me about tell me about Break the Matrix dot com.
That's our attempt to what we're making headway right now, building a social network.
And we're going to be taking the truth and freedom message, you know, but also just more accurate reporting and information to the mainstream.
Our goal is to collect people together, bring people together under one roof on the Internet at Break the Matrix dot com and then create content, aggregate content.
One of our goals is to work with independent cable providers to carry to pick up a BTM, a Break the Matrix channel that would air all kinds of documentaries, documentaries about the about the war, about war profiteering, about freedom to fascism.
That's a good one.
You know, all kinds of documentaries out there to get to get this kind of stuff out to the people who are, you know, still addicted to the box.
We just sit there and, you know, just channel surf and that's how they get their information.
Well, we don't have truth on that, that, you know, outlet.
So we need we need that.
And that's what we're trying to do with Break the Matrix.
Yeah, it really is all about television has been for decades.
Yeah.
That's why I'm sitting here doing a radio show, because I can't bear to think that I could actually have an effect on something.
All right.
Hey, man, you're doing a hell of a good job over there, Trevor.
I really appreciate your efforts here.
Thanks, man.
All right, y'all.
That's Trevor Lyman from Break the Matrix dot com.
He's working on this new project, Strange Bedfellows, with Glenn Greenwald and I think Atreus and a bunch of other liberal bloggers and and different pressure groups.
And I don't have the whole list in front of me, but check it out.
It's you can just Google up Strange Bedfellows and maybe add the word Glenn to it or something.
You'll find it.