Conventional wisdom is often wrong. CW said that man would never fly, that space travel was impossible, and that Custer would tame the Wild West. CW also says you can’t fight city hall. I guess CW forgot this country began with a bunch of citizens taking on the most powerful “City Hall” of that time and kicking their posteriors clear back to England.

            People talk, argue, complain and blog about our problems, yet take no real action.  As long as we remain complaining, yet passive we will not accomplish anything. If we do not become active in instituting needed change in government, we, ourselves are a part of the problem. Our government was designed on the premise of self-rule. Yet the only time we seem to take any action other than to complain, is to complain through our vote, or lack of it. We have instant communication to inform others of actions we can take, or are taking, to change government, yet all we use this ability for is to complain or to send the daily joke. We do not use the tools the founders of this country so wisely bestowed upon us. I have decided that it is time to use our new found tools for the purpose of actual change.

            Perhaps I’m a modern day Don Quixote, but I think now is the time to take on City Hall. Our politicians are no longer public servants, but prevaricating elocutionists serving big business and special interest groups, not their constituents. They have transformed election year into the Great American Con Game, promising to help the poor and middle class, while taking care of their rich power pimps in big business. For example, take our country’s energy policies. Last year Congress debated (with the light bulb manufacturers) about how much we could save with new energy efficient light bulbs. They passed legislation telling us what kind of light bulbs we will be using to save energy. They debate of how to modernize the electrical energy grid in this country, and as to how much of our tax money will be given to the utility companies so this can happen.

             As I am writing this, there are several hundred thousand people in the Pacific Northwest without power. There are also between ten and twenty thousand more without power here in Texas. Last summer there were power outages affecting millions of people. Why? The federal government wants us to believe it is because the power grid needs to be modernized (so they can give more money to their utility company benefactors). The fact is, the grid should only be supplying minimal power at this point. The vast majority of homes in this country could be supplying their own electricity through a combination of solar/wind power generation systems. Even high rise apartment complexes and office buildings could be supplying a large part of their own electricity by this method. Why hasn’t Congress, or individual states, required this to be a part of all new buildings? If we can afford to give our tax money to utility companies so that they can modernize the grid and/or their power plants, why can’t our tax money be returned to us when we make our homes self sufficient? They do it simply because they receive more campaign contributions from utility companies than they do from individual taxpayers. How do we change this?

            Thirty-four states have the process of ballot initiatives whereby the citizens petition their state legislatures. The process is actually quite simple.

1.      The signers must be registered voters

2.      Must have signer’s printed name

3.      Must have signer’s signature

4.      Must have signer’s address

5.      Must have date of signature

6.      When numbers requirement has been met, must be turned into the Secretary of State (and you should have 3 or 4% extra in case of invalid signers)

           I have on my website a boilerplate petition which can be used in any state, calling for new housing to contain solar/wind power generation systems to be energy self sufficient. I also have public forums set up so that you can start threads to organize in your state to begin circulating this petition. Getting the word out is the easy part. Download the petition and circulate it.   Contact the people in your email address book. Ask them to download the petition and circulate it to the people they come in contact with, and to send their filled petitions to you.  I have forums set up on my website. Start a thread about circulating the petition, and organize within that media to get the signed petitions to your Secretary of State. My, or should I say our, site also has a links page containing links to all of the Secretary of States so you can find the particular requirements for your particular state.

           Next  entry will be about why the federal government, in its present form, cannot fix health care. In the meantime, don't be a part of the problem, be a passive part of the problem, be an active part of the solution