I’m not usually awake early on a Sunday, but last week, after dispatching a hearty bowl of cereal and a surprisingly quick trip down 128, I arrived in Wakefield just after 9 a.m. full of energy and ready to knock on some doors.
Our canvassing team met up outside the Wakefield Public Library. We paired up and received our instructions. With my friend Ben Fraimow, I set off to Church Street to start some community conversations. I learned very quickly that canvassing requires perseverance. No one living in the first three houses we knocked was home. Ben and I didn’t pick up steam until the fourth door, where we had an interesting conversation with a new voter from Florida. We talked about the scheduled doubling of student loans, which affects millions of college studentslike me across the nation. Both Elizabeth Warren and John Tierney fought to keep these rates from doubling to make college more affordable; it’s a big reason why I’m supporting them this November.
Canvassing involves speaking with voters whose opinions differ from yours – something that at first seems scary, but in these hyper-partisan times, somehow refreshing.Nothing made this clearer than my conversation with a Scott Brown supporter about government debt. Although I disagreed with him about how to exactly pay down the debt, I told him about a recent independent analysis that found Elizabeth Warren’s deficit-reduction plan would be 67% more effective than Brown’s and we agreed that bipartisan effort was needed in Congress to solve the problem. This is why it’s so important to canvass: Face to face contact is the best way to discuss issues with voters.
When the canvass was over at 12 P.M., although I was tired and ready to go home, I felt like I had accomplished something. After the event, I reflected with other volunteers and at some level, everyone pushed himself or herself in a way they hadn’t before. It wasn’t easy work. But the reality is, fixing our political system will be hard, and it starts talking with ordinary people about issues that matter to them. That’s what canvassing is all about, and it’s why it was such a gratifying experience.
Discuss
20 Comments . Leave a comment below.with Granby for Elizabeth Warren. We had two campaign staffers there and 8 Granby residents.
We’ll have visibilities and a phone bank planned. I think it’s fair to say that Elizabeth Warren has grassroots enthusiasm that the Brown campaign lacks. This fact is reflected in contributions, in spite of the stupid and misleading headline, in the Globe: ninety-seven percent of donations to Warren’s campaign are from individual donor as opposed to 81% of Brown’s donors. Brown gets a whopping 13% of his donations from PACs, Warren 2%. (See Open Secrets)
Most people I know resist using Sundays for phone banking, door knocking, etc.
Warren wants to end oil subsidies which will cost the consumer higher energy prices. Also, by repealing Obamacare, the true savings was not calculated, nor the true cost for keeping it, as Warren wants to do. So Brown actually lowers the deficit and Warren adds to the debt, since she stifles economic growth by raising taxes on the job creators and higher energy costs.
– Scott Brown
Oil prices are set by world markets and usage. Prices stay up because of world demand but have fallen some in the US because of conservation by users. So sorry Sen Brown’s proposals will not affect the deficit positively. Oil companies also have record profits so it is going to be little sweat to go without unneeded largesse.
The ACA provides insurance at lower prices for many citizens who could not purchase insurance before. To start up the exchanges is an extra cost but the deal was to pay for it with taxes on medical device companies and insurers. Both agreed emphasizing as long as there was a mandate to ensure more “customers.” So the mandate, the added fees, and contribution from insurers were all industry and Republican backed provisions or they would have not allowed any national health insurance plan to exist. On the Democratic side it was a public option without a mandate that was supported. So Dan most of what you find unsavory in the ACA, as I do, was the creation of conservative politics trying to maintain the off kilter “freebie market.” Instead of competition at level of what medical care providers you wanted, their view was carving up market share by insurers.
Problem is many Dems want it their way or the highway. I suggested getting rid of the tax breaks in exchange opening up ANWR and XL Pipleline and conservation land that nobody visits. The daggers came out at me as iff I committed the original sin.
I dot oppose Obamacare but be honest with me about it. The thing really has not been implemented, and the projected cost is already going up and up.
IMO, single payer paid for by a federal sales tax. Everyone contributes, everyone….. Figure out what we need, and adjust accordingly.
that the problems were introduced by industry and Republicans. I did not say what form of health insurance reform I favored. OK, so I agree with you, some form of single payers sounds right to me. However what you call Obamacare steps us in that direction. In Vermont using the consultant work of Dr. Hsaio from the Harvard School of Public Health, the architect of the Taiwan health insurance system, the ACA will form the infrastructure of a Medicare like system for the state. Also Justice Roberts has given the green light for taxes as a method to pay for ACA. We’ll have to see how this plays out.
Of course the economy and speculation push to raise oil prices that leads people to conservation. It is not so much the cause as the effect. If people use less oil, the price at the pump drops. If the subsidy stops and the industry tries to raise prices at the pump it will trigger more conservation and it will get them nowhere. Isn’t this how the capitalist system is suppose to work?
Totally disagree with oil prices. We are artificially keeping the supply of oil low in the USA b/c IMO, extreme environmentalsm, and this is my biggest fear with Dems. When I know of billions upon billions of oil bubbling up through the ground in ANWR, then get the darn stuff, instead of “bowing the the Saudi’s or Chaves. That, IMO, is true capitalism. I want the least expensive energy possible, so I can enjoy life, not “sacrificing” and relying on the T to get me to work. Let VA drill for oil off their coast, don’t stop them. Those are good paying jobs too.
Final thought, if you read my posts, I defend blue collar jobs. SomervilleTom always tells me to google stuff, so I ask you peeps to google Haverhill Paperboard. 100 year old business, relocated to Soth Carolina, primarily due to the high electric rates here in MA. Plant closed in 2008. Where do you think those workers are doing now? Yet, Deval pursues the most expensive electric generating system, offshore wind.
Thanks for the info on ACA.
I think you’re confusing reality with “The Beverly Hillbillies”:
I invite you to provide some links substantiating those “billions upon billions of oil bubbling up”.
I love your last post.
http://www.anwr.org/Background/How-much-oil-is-in-ANWR.php
http://arctic.fws.gov/issues1.htm
The US consumes about 19.1M barrels per day. That’s about 7B barrels per year. According your second link, there is 50% likelihood that there are 7B barrels of “technically recoverable” oil in ANWR. Your first link says “DOI also estimates that there exists a mean of 3.5 billion barrels” (though it gives no sources).
So your two links say that ANWR might have 0.5-1.0 years of US oil consumption. Nobody talks about anything “bubbling up” — instead, the environmental consequences of that optimistic year are profound (and expensive).
Sorry, but that is nowhere near enough oil to affect oil prices.
Since we consume so much, it is not worth it. Same arguments Republicans make about raising taxes, the deficit is so big, doesn’t put even a dent in it, so don’t bother.
Excuses, excuses, excuses……
Yes, that is the point. Since we consume so much, it isn’t possible to drill our way out of it.
Excuses? You made the unsupportable claim, not me.
Just admit it, set, point, match.
Just b/c on specific thing doesn’t solve the entire problem, every little bit helps. Why build Cap Wind when it produces a minuscule amount of energy that MA uses?
It’s all sweetness and light over there at anwr.org
Making energy policy is hard. It’s even harder when a loud fraction of the electorate doesn’t seem to be conversant with basic facts.
FrumForum is a conservative blog run by David Frum, an author, commentator, and former speechwriter for George W. Bush who is interested in holding intelligent debates about the great issues of our day. Accordingly, he has a low regard for the Tea Party brigades.
Frum sent some interns to a DC Tea Party rally the other day to survey them about the economy, taxes, health care, and energy. The crowd size was 300 to 500, and the sample size was 57.
The Tea Partiers were asked how much oil lies beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in terms equivalent to annual domestic oil consumption. The average response was 70 years. One person estimated 1,000 years worth.
The right answer – if you accept the highest number in a U.S. Geological Survey estimate – is about 2 years and 3 months, based on the present consumption rate. That works out to around 16 billion barrels.
Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/republican/anwr-oil-0331#ixzz215R9ZFBQ
Yes, 2-3 months if we don’t use a drop from anywhere else. But realistically, at 1.5 million barrels a day, we have decades worth domestic oil. Plus good jobs at good wages, a win-win situation.
2 years and 3 month supply of ANWR oil translates into “decades” of AMWR oil?
Assumes just ANWR oil would be used to supply the entire USA, which is absurd. Once on line, we could bring down approx. 1.5 million barrels per day. If we get 7 billion out of ANWR, then it would last over 12 years. We all know more would be found.
Using your standard, why bother with Cape Wind since it produces very little energy based on what we consume every day.
So the oil from the ANWR fields would be sold on the global market, along with the yields from XL. So since we now consume 20% of the available oil yet produce only 2%, how much would ANWR and XL increase domestic production?
And as far as Cape Wind (or other wind farms) goes, we all know there is an infinite supply of wind even if some of wish that more oil would be found.
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