I have given you my opinions on what I think you should do to gain economic and political influence in the country. I guess it is time that I talk about what I am doing and what I plan to do, myself.

First of all, I blog and I tweet. I am on Facebook and will soon be on YouTube. I speak my mind and expect others to do the same.

I am not able to run for public office for reasons I will not go into. Suffice it to say that I am physically limited from doing so.

I grow a good deal of my own food and have for several years so that I do not feed the corporate farming industry any more than necessary.

My partner and I share a single automobile.

I lobby my senators and congressmen on a regular basis and sign every petition that I receive that is in keeping with my personal opinions on government policies. I circulate my own petitions from time to time. I do not host political events because I do not have a proper place to do so but I do encourage these events and hope that my friends will host them. I lobby the White House on a regular basis.

My plans for the future are more ambitious and I will be in a position in a couple of months to act on those. They include small scale, sustainable food production, both animal and vegetable products, on a commercial scale and production of food products for export to countries with whom we have a serious trade deficit. I am considering the manufacture of large, portable solar generators to be rented out for special events and power outages. I have not costed out the generator project yet so I do not yet know if it will be financially feasible but I have no reason to believe that it will not. I will be using solar panels to generate electricity for most, if not all, of my farming operations. This is not only more reliable but very cost effective over time. I am even thinking of a trial project to lease solar panels to home owners but I can’t do all of this at once and that is a project for the future if I decide to go forward with it at all. I will have more than ample opportunities to drill for water on the property that I will be moving to. This will supply my crops and livestock and possibly will be bottled and sold on the open market.

Power to the (Gay) People!

Within the next ten years virtually every region of the US will be dealing with shortages of drinkable water. Prepare now to be situated to influence the policies that will be necessary to provide sufficient water to the people of this country.

If you live in a rural area and you own land you can, and should, drill wells, test the water for heavy metals and bacteria and use it or bottle and sell it. This, though, is a drop in the bucket of the larger problem.

You will have the most effect and influence if you are holding public office, particularly at the state and municipal level. Creative approaches such as solar or wind powered stills and desalination plants in addition to major cleanup projects will be required as well and this is where the debate over funding will be the most volatile and and the most important. Coal companies in particular should be responsible for funding these projects because they are the industries that create the most pollution both on the front end in mining operations and on the back end when coal is used to generate electricity.

Clean coal technology, if it really existed would eliminate only a small part of this pollution. It would do nothing to rectify the damage done in the mining operations which could be mitigated even now simply by enforcing existing regulations.

The other and most important part of clean water legislation is the clean air act because much of this pollution gets into the water in the form of acid rain which interacts with the environment to release mercury into the water that is absorbed by fish and pollutes our food supply as well.

“Keep a movin’, Dan. Don’t you listen to him, Dan. He’s a devil not a man and he spreads the burning sand with water; clear, cool, water.”

If you are living on the grid you are dependent on energy companies and the oil, gas and coal industries. If you are running your home with solar panels you are off the grid and not subject to all the pain and inconveniences of downed power lines and blackouts due to temperature.

If you are supplying people with affordable solar power you control your own fate in many ways that help to eliminate the political influences of oil, gas and coal companies wherever you do so.

I would like to see members of the LGBT community applying for stimulus funds to start up solar panel leasing companies all over the United States.

The new proposal to use returned TARP funds to supply SBA loans will make even more money available to the public.

These companies will also create jobs for administrators, clerical workers, installers and maintenance people as well as sales people to get the public on board.

Gay self reliance is about more than public office. It’s about controlling all the major influences on our lives. Energy is a huge one, but just one of those influences. Water, potable water, water for growing crops, is another.

And on a personal note, Draft Sean Payton for Governor.

I hate to keep talking about Sarah Palin because our criticism only seems to make her more popular with the extreme right wing of the Republican Party and the Republican Party cannot hope to win any election without bringing along this extreme element which they created by using Christianity, scare tactics and racial code words in the two previous election cycles. But…one cannot leave unremarked Ms. Palin’s use of crib notes on her palm. This is something one might expect from junior high school girls who hadn’t bothered to properly prepare for a Geography test or who were just not smart enough to learn the subject matter. (There are certainly those of us who believe Ms. Palin could benefit from going back and taking a class in eighth grade Geography.)

Now, let’s talk about matters of substance. The issues that will need to be addressed on all levels of government by anyone running for office are Health care, Energy, Water, Disaster Preparedness, Crime and Social Services such as homelessness and hunger. It is necessary to develop clear and firm policies and in regard to all these issues and to have a plan to deal with them before throwing your hat in the ring. Platitudes and generalizations are no longer acceptable to savvy American voters and to young voters in particulars. If you have details ready to present as you campaign and have these details committed to memory so that you can discuss them on your feet you will have a tremendous advantage over the traditional politicians who are all going to, “cut out the waste and corruption and eliminate unnecessary spending.”

It is more important to do the right thing than to get elected. Have and keep the courage of your convictions. Your policies will not be popular with everyone and some of them may be unpopular with the majority. That doesn’t make them wrong and that doesn’t give you permission to change them. You should change your position on issues only if you are convinced that those positions were wrong in the first place and then should not hesitate to make those changes and be prepared to explain why you are changing them.

And on a personal note:  Draft Drew Brees for Senate.

1. Congressman Shelby stomped his foot and blocked 70 Obama nominees until he gets pork projects for his state.

2. Mitch Landrieu became the first white Mayor of New Orleans since his father who was Mayor in the 1970s. He is the brother of the state’s only Democratic senator, Mary Landrieu and the choice of the black community.

3. Mardi Gras parades began this weekend (There are two that go by my house today.) and will keep my small town somewhat hamstrung until Ash Wednesday happening next week.

4. The New Orleans Saints are playing in the Super Bowl.

5. Nashville hosted the Tea Party Convention and Sarah Palin launched an illogical diatribe after Tom Tancredo insulted Hispanics in particular and all immigrants in general as the opening speaker. Both were well received by the convention attendees.

As a result of all these converging attractions and my attempts to follow them all I didn’t manage to post yesterday and I will not attempt to give my opinions or advice today.

There is just one thing that I have been wanting to mention and that is that offices such as Mayor and Town Council Member are not insignificant. They are a very good way for people to get a foot into the door of the political process and alliances among mayors and small towns with big cities can have a great weight in forming the direction of your state’s momentum and its influence on the national front.

Today, enjoy the Super Bowl and those in places that have them, enjoy the parades.

The good news is that the Tea Party Movement seems to be falling apart. The bad news is that it isn’t happening fast enough to prevent further damage to the country. If CNN and other news media would stop referring to the Tea Party as a “growing movement” it might go away a little faster. It isn’t growing, it’s actually shrinking. But it’s good for CNN’s ratings so they will continue to hype it the way that they treated right wing lies about the health care proposals as different points of view rather than the pure fabrications that they knew them to be. It was months before they told the public that the “death panels” didn’t exist even though they knew the truth from the beginning. More than anything we have to hold the media accountable for the way they report on the issues of importance to us and the way to do that is to constantly confront every lie or piece of misinformation with a flood of complaints to everyone involved and to publish our complaints in the headlines of their competition.

In the long run the Tea Party will damage Republicans more than Democrats. Unfortunately it’s the short run that matters most right now. According to the most recent polls the Tea Party is approved by about one third of the national population and more people have no idea what they stand for than approve of them. I have to put myself in two of those categories. If they have a recognizable agenda I am unable to recognize it. I also fit into the category of those who disapprove based on their inflammatory rhetoric and dismissal of the truth. The only definite agenda that I see from them is a desire to see the President fail regardless of the consequences to the country. They are in lock step with the Republicans in this regard. Republican lawmakers who were in favor of lifting DADT only a few months ago are all opposing the change now and Secretary Gates (a Republican) first seemed to be in favor but is employing the same delaying tactics that the Republicans in Congress used to prevent health care reform from going forward until it was dieing on the vine.

It is becoming more apparent that we are going to be thrown under the bus again by the people who pretended that they would help us gain true equality as American Citizens. We have no one to rely on but ourselves. It is essential and urgent that we register and run for every office that we can so that we will soon be making our own laws that treat all Americans as equal under the law. We need at least two people running in the Republican primary in Florida for the office of Senator. Then they should both run as Independents in the general election (assuming that they don’t win the primary, lol).

I said yesterday that the discussions of repealing DADT would be ugly but I had no idea that they would become patently ridiculous quite so soon. Yesterday, Saxby Chamblis, Senator from Georgia, said that repealing the law would lead to “adultery and body art” in the military. Simply being in the military is one of the leading causes of adultery and the only people I knew with tattoos when I was growing up were men who had been in the Navy or the Marines. You’ve got to do better than that, Senator.

Back to running for office. If at all possible I recommend running in both the primary and the general election. Running in the primary will give you a chance to become known and to get your views in front of the public. Simple change your party registration to Independent to run in the general election. Nothing new about this tactic either as we saw in the last Congressional election.

Don’t even think about spending your own money for your campaign. Raising money is an important part of any campaign and anyone who is contributing is seen as endorsing your candidacy.

Don’t spend a lot of money on television ads. Let’s face it, you probably won’t be able to raise enough money to run many such ads. Local newspapers with half-page ads can be very effective and social media, while already beginning to decline in importance, is still very useful for the near future.

Direct mailing and those offensive robo-calls are actually very effective. Making use of the news media, television in particular, are one of the most effective things you can do and it is completely free. All you have to do is say something outrageous enough that the local news will want to question you on the air.

Places where Tea Party candidates are running against republicans will have the most impact for your candidacy because the traditional candidate will already be weakened and your statistics in the polls will look closer to the other candidates numbers.

Another thing about Tea Party candidacies, the places where they are running have a great deal of anger about the way the country is being run. There is no specific reason for this anger in general, the Tea Party is simply taking advantage of people’s discontent and has no specific agenda so offering an alternative, regardless of what it is, will appeal to a great many of these people who consider themselves Independents or Centrists. These are the people who follow my mother’s old axiom, “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” They don’t know what they actually want and they are largely uninformed on the specifics of issues and will vote for almost any alternative.

Let’s go gaily forward! Good luck!

We are about to be treated to a year of insults, humiliations and discussions about us that ignore the fact that we are in the room if Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has his way.

This unnecessary prolonged debate will undoubtedly energize the tea party nut-jobs who will say anything, regardless of how hurtful or how untrue, to get themselves on television.

We need to flood the local media with letters to the editor and all of the members of Congress with letters demanding that we be given our constitutionally guaranteed equality under the law. We need to inform the ignorant, neo-nazis, KKK, Christian Taliban and the public in general that we will not be intimidated into allowing Congress or the Military to continue to deprive us of our rights as Citizens of the United States.

Congressmen should be informed that there could be several people running against them in the upcoming elections, that you will do all in your power to place gay candidates on the ballot to run against them in both the primaries and general elections without regard to party affiliations or that you will personally run against them in the primaries, disrupting their party elections by limiting the number of votes cast for them and making it more likely that they will not get to run in the general election by placing their opponents into the position of the nominee of their party.

Dirty tricks? No! Self defense. Running “spoiler” candidates is a tried and true political tactic that has been used by both parties throughout history. If we do it better and more intensely more power to us. Nobody will expect us to be elected or even nominated but simply getting on the ballot will guarantee that we will get SOME votes if only those of our friends and relatives. In a closely contested election these few votes could determine who gets the nod in the end. While we will not be getting candidates we like elected we will be throwing the parties into confusion and disarray and causing them to spend money on issues that they may not want to address.

I suspect that the Democrats will reconsider their positions on the DADT issue and the Republicans will fail to take us seriously to their detriment so that they will end up being more damaged in the long run.

As was pointed out in the comments for Part I, biodiesel made with algae oil is a thing for the future and not ready for prime time. I do believe that it will become one of the most important energy sources in the long term. Certainly biodiesel produced with peanut or corn oil will be a small part of the energy menu going forward, but this is unsustainable in the long run because it would require too much dedicated farmland and take enough food off the market so as to drive the price of corn and peanuts to unacceptable levels.

For those of you with an entrepreneurial drive who are interested in getting into the energy production business now or in the near future I believe that solar panels would be the way to go. Start-up costs would have to be arranged through bank financing (which would be difficult in the current economy) or through private investors. I think that one of the best and most effective ways to arrange financing would be through coops sharing expenses and profits. This might even be arranged with the cities and towns getting involved and sharing the costs or a more traditional coop with the customers owning the company with the people creating the company remaining in control and having the last word on all significant issues while retaining fifty-one percent of ownership.

While there are bound to be benefits to the environment my primary concern it that the LGBT community could develop an important area of influence and leverage in the country. If gay owned businesses controlled a significant share of the nations power supply it would be impossible for the general public to deny us full equality.

The future of this nation depends, more than anything else, on our energy policy going forward. Continuing to import foreign oil and natural gas has made us so dependent on other countries that they have become less than sympathetic to our needs and no longer willing to rely on our leadership. Continuing to use coal for the majority of our electrical needs will pollute our air and water to the point that life will become miserable in the very near future. Our fish and drinking water are already so compromised that consumption of or those things is dangerous to life and health in parts of the country already. This can only spread throughout the country and will do so faster than people realize. The mining of oil, coal and natural gas all involve workmen to risk their lives and compromise their health in order to support their families. Building huge wind farms is a logistical nightmare and having personal wind turbines in our back yards causes not just logistical problems but quality of life conflicts in neighborhoods. Replacing gasoline with alcohol is a boondoggle and costs drivers more in the long run because it reduces miles per gallon. This leaves only two sensible energy alternatives for the consumer. Solar panels and biodiesel. In fact, plain vegetable oil could easily replace even biodiesle with a minor change to diesel engine design. The most sensible and cheapest way to produce vegetable oil for fuel is to build greenhouses to grow algae. This is more practical and space-saving than producing oil from corn or other field grown crops and far less expensive. Until very recently, solar panels were out of the reach of the average homeowner because of their cost. Now, however, it is possible to have solar panels on our houses without buying them. There is a company in California that has begun leasing solar panels to home owners at no up-front cost and an affordable monthly payment. There are several advantages to this business plan for the consumer. The cost of energy is constant from month to month and does not change with the seasons or with the vagaries of the weather. Power lines going down in a storm or because of a traffic accident is not an issue. Power blackouts because of over consumption will be a thing of the past. Parents do not have to worry about their families being asphyxiated in their beds at night. Moreover, the costs per month will be less than buying energy from conventional power companies. Installation and maintenance are the responsibility of the company that we lease from. Millions of permanent, well paying jobs would be created. We could stop subsidizing the oil and gas industries and close down dangerous coal mines that violate safety regulations and destroy the environment. The only thing standing in the way of having this go nation wide is the cost of solar panels produced in the United States and the shortage of panels produced in other countries. (China is already producing twice as many panels as the US and at half the price.) I will discuss this issue in part II tomorrow.