Thom Hartmann: Jason Mattera was seven minutes into his speech yesterday to the 2010 CPAC conference when he raised his rallying cry: "we must be that generation that stands athwart history" - as I recall he was paraphrasing William F. Buckley- 'yelling, “Hey jackass get your government off my freedom!' ” Right.
Jason Mattera, JasonMattera.com. Am I pronouncing that right, Jason?
Jason Mattera: You got it, Thom yeah, thanks for having me on the program.
Thom Hartmann: You’re welcome. Your new book, "Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation". Brainwashed?
Jason Mattera: That is correct. Yes.
Thom Hartmann: How did the Obama Machine brainwash your generation?
Jason Mattera: Well Obamamania didn’t happen in a vacuum so I wanted to offer conservatives an investigative look into some of the behind the scenes tactics that Barack and his just team Obama effectively employed and that the GOP has had a disastrous outreach towards younger voters for a while now.
And, but this election showed that you can’t take younger voters for granted, Thom. There were some states, North Carolina, Indiana and Florida that were won specifically because John McCain got walloped in the youth vote category and that’s why I wanted to write the book. To give that behind the scenes look and hopefully jolt many of these Obama zombies from their brainless slumber.
Thom Hartmann: Okay. Well the Obama zombies, the believers in I’m guessing what you would characterize as socialism?
Jason Mattera: Well I think a lot of young people don’t know the, they got caught up with the cool campaign. My, I...
Thom Hartmann: So they bought the brand, they didn’t understand the politics behind it?
Jason Mattera: No, I think a lot of people did and for instance in chapter 3 I have what’s called the Dave Matthews electoral magnet. Where even Barack employed this effectively against Hillary during the primary where Indiana University, Bill Clinton was giving one of his finger wagging speeches, trying to encourage young people to vote for Hillary in the primary. And Barack did something masterfully. His team went and started handing out free Dave Matthews tickets during the speech. The crowd just completely evaporated, went to the, started heading over to the Dave Matthew’s speech, texting their friends like hey Barack’s handing out tickets for Dave Matthews. And they had thousands of young people that just organized just like that.
Thom Hartmann: Pretty smart.
Jason Mattera: It’s a smart tactic.
Thom Hartmann: It sounds like what you’re saying is that your generation are stupid.
Jason Mattera: I think many of them are, well it depends. They’re certainly ignorant in, I think, a lot of American history, they don’t understand the constitution.
Thom Hartmann: Oh, absolutely I mean that stuff all got stripped out of our text books in the 1980s because it was socialist, you know.
Jason Mattera: That’s, it definitely got stripped out. But the, my generation…
Thom Hartmann: No there was a major campaign, I was alive, I had kids in high school at the time, I remember it well. I lived in Newt Gingrich’s district when it happened. And it was you know it was like yeah we’ve got socialist teachers teaching the socialist history of the socialist movements and the we can’t have this.
Here’s a question for you Jason.
Jason Mattera: Sure, go ahead.
Thom Hartmann: Are you willing to sign the pledge to take no socialist government mandated crap from this government? For example, are you willing to say that you will never, ever take police, fire or emergency services?
Jason Mattera: Well I think that’s certainly a disingenuous way of framing it. No one is against police or fire protection or ambulance services.
Thom Hartmann: They’re socialist!
Jason Mattera: No it’s not.
Thom Hartmann: They’re owned by the government.
Jason Mattera: The police, no it’s a local government, it’s called federalism where you have designations between local state and national government and there is no national police.
Thom Hartmann: So you want to stop all federal money from going to supporting police and fire because they get a large chunk of their money from the federal government.
Jason Mattera: No, they, no they…
Thom Hartmann: Ok so you distinguish between local socialism and federal socialism.
Jason Mattera: The government, well no it’s not socialism. The government, no one is against government, you’re talking about…
Thom Hartmann: Okay so then are you willing to stop flying on airplanes because the socialist FAA, you know, tells the airplanes where to go?
Jason Mattera: I think the FAA would be actually run better as a private industry but no. You’re saying, it’s like you’re saying, I don’t know how much money you make, but if you made, if you got a Bush tax cut, and I’m guessing you were against the Bush tax cut. So did you give that back to the IRS?
Thom Hartmann: No.
Jason Mattera: No you didn’t!
Thom Hartmann: I will openly say that on that regard I’m a hypocrite, I will openly say that.
Jason Mattera: No but, I bet, what is the policy, …
Thom Hartmann: Now I’m just curious, are you willing to sign the pledge not to use public roads? We actually had a conservative caller in the last hour say you know I’m opposed to all this stuff. And I said are you going to start ignoring those socialist traffic lights? And he’s like, "yeah".
Jason Mattera: Can I tell you what I am opposed, I am opposed, no the conservatives, I think Thom, you’re purposely being disingenuous. Conservatives are …
Thom Hartmann: No I’m purposely identifying the fact that our society is filled with what you guys call socialism and the real agenda of the wealthy guys who are funding the think tanks that people like you have bought into and the ideology, the whole libertarian ideology, are by and large millionaires and billionaires who are playing you guys as useful idiots.
Jason Mattera: No that’s not true. The useful idiots are the Obama zombies I talk about who have no idea why they’re voting for this man and his policies are a torpedo aimed at their financial futures. But no conservative is against infrastructure for roads. We’re talking about huge insolvent government programs. I mean Medicare, Medicaid, social security.
Thom Hartmann: Actually I know a lot of conservatives who think that roads should be privatized.
Jason Mattera: Well, no. Not serious ones. I mean there’s no national…
Thom Hartmann: Well they’re doing it all over the country. Look at the Chicago skyway just got privatized. It’s now owned by a company in Spain.
Jason Mattera: Privatizing roads because it’s run more efficiently is not a bad idea. But I’m saying…
Thom Hartmann: Right, so let’s get rid of the socialist roads.
Jason Mattera: No, but there’s constitutional authority to actually build infrastructure. You don’t have campaigns, the campaigns is against creating these more insolvent government programs on top of insolvent government programs. The tea party movement is not being led by people fed up with government roads and I hope you can understand that. And you probably agree with that.
Thom Hartmann: No. They’re just as hypocritical as I was when I gladly took my Bush tax cut.
Jason Mattera: It’s not hypocritical. Socialism is about what the idea that government wealth, government spending can create wealth, and I’m having this social justice platform. Roads and infrastructure does not, benefits everyone. Redistribution of wealth does not benefit everyone. You’re stealing from one person to give to another.
Thom Hartmann: Well Jason. We’re talking with Jason Mattera, his new book, “Obama Zombies.” JasonMattera.com his website. I get it how, and maybe we have a point of agreement here. I get it how government spending on things that are only intended to be destroyed is wasteful.
In other words, if we build a bomb, and drop it on somebody and the bomb cost us, well the average cruise missile for example costs around 918 thousand dollars. So every cruise missile that we lobbed into Afghanistan for lo these many years, it’s cost us almost a million dollars a piece and produces no lasting social good here in the United States.
On the other hand, if each million dollars had been used to build a school or a bridge or a hospital, that million dollars would produce 5, 10, 20 million dollars over the 50 year life span of that building. Right? Are you with me?
Jason Mattera: No. Well I’m with you that certainly dropping a bomb is not producing, is producing prosperity but that’s not, you know that’s not the point.
Thom Hartmann: Well I think if we were defending ourselves I would not be opposed to that, I am not opposed to all military spending. I just don’t think that in Afghanistan or Iraq we were frankly defending ourselves.
Jason Mattera: Okay.
Thom Hartmann: But that’s a whole nother argument. My point is that, you know, this, here you’ve got the US military that has lost, lost, they can’t account for it, two trillion dollars.
Jason Mattera: That’s a problem, that’s a problem.
Thom Hartmann: Why are the tea party people not outraged about this. 2 trillion dollars is a mind boggling, that’s 2000 billion dollars.
Jason Mattera: It’s, here is why. Because while wasteful, while we should be concerned about wasteful spending everywhere, military included, the military is not taking away our freedoms as would happen with Obamacare.
Thom Hartmann: Oh they absolutely are Jason. The military is the biggest socialist institution in the United States. They own the food supply there, they provide free food, they provide free healthcare, they provide free education, they provide free housing. The military is a socialist institution, it’s the prototype socialist institution.
Jason Mattera: Thom, Thom, Thom let me ask you this.
Thom Hartmann: You’ve got 30 seconds Jason.
Jason Mattera: What freedom, okay, what freedom has the military stripped from you? It’s only protecting, it’s protecting your freedom. Obamacare is actually telling you you have to fit into a certain healthcare plan. It’s a direct violation of the constitution.
Thom Hartmann: In my world view, Jason, just, you know, for what it’s worth. A strong social safety net that includes things like unemployment insurance and healthcare, actually makes it easier for people to become entrepreneurs, start their own businesses, and build a vibrant economy. And that’s been the history of every nation in the world except the United States.
Jason Mattera: And that’s why the United States has been the greatest nation in the world.
Thom Hartmann: That’s why according to Forbes Magazine in the last 30 years we’ve slipped from being number 1 in the world in innovation to number 12. Yes. Jason Mattera, JasonMattera.com the website. The book, “Obama Zombies.” Thanks Jason.
Jason Mattera: Thanks Thom.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
