.08 Acres Turns Three

Three years ago today, I made my first post to this blog, which detailed how Mitt Romney's Commonwealth PAC was dumping money into early primary states. As of now, all he has to show in the states he worked so hard in is a single win in his birth state of Michigan. He may yet win the GOP nomination, but that's a pretty poor track record for over three years of campaign work.

In some ways, you could describe this blog the same way -- three years of work and not much to show for it. This blog-year started off with the birth of our son, the defeat of the marriage ban, about half-dozen special elections, and ended with a four-month hiatus and me pretty much ignoring my New Year resolutions.

The blog has undergone a few cosmetic changes as well. I've added categories to every post and now have a sidebar with some more dynamic content. Still, I've noticed that this year I had fewer posts where I was able to do the kind of detailed analysis that I had done on issues in previous years and once again I failed to blog about my experiences working on a local campaign.

If anyone is still reading the blog, here are some of my favorite posts from the past year:

• Interviews with then-statehouse-candidate Jim O'Day, Lisa Williams of H2OTown, Massachusetts insurance expert Stephen D'Amato, Boston City Council candidate Susan Passoni, and State Senate candidate Jeff Ross
• Interviews with the Democratic candidates to replace former Congressman Marty Meehan: Rep. Jamie Eldridge, David O'Brien, Rep. Barry Finegold, former Lowell Mayor Eileen Donoghue, and eventual winner Niki Tsongas
• This post about the state's structurally deficient bridges
• My 2007 Massachusetts Democratic Convention report
• My report on the community meeting about Watertown's Sawins pond

For trips further down the .08 Acre memory lane, check out my second blogiversary and first blogiversary posts.

New Years Blog Resolutions

I'm a few days late on this, but I wanted to make sure I committed to electrons some of the blog resolutions I've made in the new year. One thing that visitors to this site will have noticed is the decline in posting frequency in the last quarter of 2007. This also happened in 2006, both years because my involvement in campaigns got me out of a posting rhythm. For 2008, I'd like to get back to my at least once-per-weekday (holidays excluded) schedule. In addition, I'd like to actually follow through on my desire to blog about my involvement in a campaign while I'm actually doing campaign work. It's a simple idea, but one I've utterly failed to do in the last two years.

Also, for 2008, I'd like to see the blog have some more dynamic content, so I've added a section to the sidebar I've tentatively titled "Posts I've Read" (anyone with a better suggestion, please submit it) which lists my most recent del.icio.us bookmarks -- blog posts or other web content that I've recently found and decided was worth sharing, but not quite worth an entire blog post. In 2007 I spent a lot more time reading blogs than writing blog posts, so I think this would be an easy way to share the things I've read that don't necessarily merit a longer post.

Given that 2008 is a presidential election year, there's a temptation to have more national content on the blog, but I find that I have little to add to all the excellent national coverage in the blogosphere. Instead I'd like to go the other direction and have more local-level coverage in addition to state-level coverage. This will likely be a challenge in the run-up to November, but given how involved I was in the recent election here in Watertown, I regret that I didn't really talk about all the craziness in the aftermath.

And, of course, the one resolution I will most likely keep: More baby pictures.

Legislature Rejects Putting Committee Votes Online

While the news media is inexplicably obsessed with how Governor Patrick gets from point A to point B, the Massachusetts House just overwhelmingly rejected a simple measure that would increase their accountability to the public. From the Somerville Journal:

POST COMMITTEE ROLL CALLS ON WEBSITE (H 3746) House 20-127, rejected a new rule requiring that committee votes cast by legislators on bills heard by their committees be posted on the Legislature's website. Current rules require committee votes to be kept in the offices of the committee and be available for public inspection upon reasonable notice and during regular office hours. Supporters of the new rule said this would simply give people quick and easy access to the committee votes of their legislators. They noted that under current rules, a person has to drive to Boston during regular business hours in order to obtain this information. Opponents of the new rule said that the current system has worked well for years and should not be changed. (A "Yes" vote is for the new rule requiring that committee votes be posted on the Legislature's website. A "No" vote is against the requirement).

What possible reason could there be for legislators to be opposed to this other than a fear of added scrutiny? Is there something that I'm missing here? What has the current system worked well for other than for keeping the average person away from these roll call votes?

I'm not surprised that this measure failed. It's well known that the Massachusetts legislature is no fan of sunshine. Still, I would have thought it would do better than to fail by a six-to-one margin. This is public information, and the the state should be making it easy for the public to access.

.08 Acres Turns Two

Today marks the second blogiversary of .08 Acres -- it was two years ago today that I made my first post to the blog. My second year was markedly different from the first in that the first in that it was much more focused on activism. For the bulk of the year, I was involved as a volunteer for the Deval Patrick campaign and though I tried to be fair minded to the other Democratic candidates, I have already noted my regrets that I didn't blog more about the campaign. That said, of course, I don't regret any of the work I did for Deval Patrick, and I'd say it turned out rather well, even if it put a dent in my blog traffic.

The Massachusetts blogosphere is also very different than it was a year ago. During the election, Blue Mass. Group really came into its own, and now dominates the local progressive blog scene. They are a multimedia force, and rightfully so. Other smaller blogs popped up, but many of them have faded since November. We had our second all-blogosphere event, the Blogleft Lieutenant Governor's Forum last May, but despite its success, we haven't taken anything else on since. Perhaps we can use the off-year to increase our communication and collaborate on something again.

If you're new to the blog, here are some of my favorite posts from the past year:

• My behind-the-scenes look at how Deval Patrick delegates won the Watertown caucus.
• The analysis of turnout and loyalty in gubernatorial elections from 1998 and 2002, and the county breakdown of the 1998 gubernatorial election.
• Chats with Middlesex District Attorney candidates Jarret Barrios (who shortly thereafter dropped out) and Gerry Leone (who won the office unopposed).
• My reports from the Mass. Democratic Future Convention and the Mass Dems nominating convention
• The series of posts I wrote debunking gubernatorial candidate Kerry Healey's fear-mongering on over-the-counter sales of hypodermic needles.
• The review I wrote of Crashing the Gate, by Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.
• Some personal storys about my thoughts on 9/11 and the debate about detainee treatment.
• My liveblog of the Deval Patrick primary victory party at Blue Mass Group and subsequent analysis of the November gubernatorial election
• Some post-election thoughts on civic engagement following Deval Patrick's grassroots victory.

For highlights of year-one, check out my first blogaversary post. What does year three hold? I won't predict anything except that readers should expect a big announcement in the next two weeks or so. Stay tuned!

There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays

The .08 Acres household is spending this week out-of-state with family. Expect light posting until the New Year.

Merry Christmas!

Bloggers Should Blog

If there's one thing that I regret about the past election cycle -- and given how everything went, there might just be only one thing -- it's that I wasn't able to fully reconcile my work with the campaign and my writing here on this blog. As it got closer to election day, I was doing more and more interesting things, but writing about them less and less. Even now, with the election a month in the past, it's been hard for me to get back in the swing of things.

The title of this post I stole from one written by kid oakland back in October. He argued that "the best thing any blogger can do as an election approaches is to do what they do best year round." That stuck with me during the time between the primary and the general election. I started this blog because I was vaguely aware that there were a lot of political events happening that were not being covered by the media and that you would never know what had happened unless you were there. I decided that part of my mission would be to go to them and write about it. For the past few months, I've been going to things, but not writing about it, or about much of anything else. All last year, I was in a position to make politics more accessible to people, yet I did not find the time or the energy to do so.

There are only so many hours in a day, and perhaps if I had the ability to stop time, I would have been able to blog more during the campaign. I made the decision to spend my free time on the campaign rather than on the Internet. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I made the right choice, but it got me thinking about how to blog as part of a campaign. What would be interesting for people to read? Perhaps I should have focused less on documenting whatever atrocities the state GOP had committed that day and written more about what being a town coordinator was like. People might be interested in what we did and how we did it, but I always felt that I shouldn't be giving the strategy away. It's silly, really, given that everyone knew that Deval Patrick's strategy was to get as many people involved as possible and get them to convince their friends and neighbors to do likewise. At the same time, before becoming involved in this campaign, I never really thought about what a campaign's field organization did. Maybe if I had read someone's campaign diary, it wouldn't have been so scary to get involved in the first place.

Does anyone have any examples of really good campaign blogging from this cycle or others? Not simply using a blog to get the message out, but something that goes through what it's actually like to work on a campaign.

My Big Media Weekend

Okay, it's not much, but it's not every weekend that I'm on the local news and in the local paper. This Sunday, I was in the Boston Globe's Globe West section for the post I wrote a few weeks back with a map of Watertown after the sea level rises.

Not only that, but a co-worker told me this morning that he saw me on Channel 4 this weekend. Don't blink! You'll miss it. Just keep an eye out for the guy with his shirt on backwards.

Predictions for 2006

I hope that all of my regular readers, both of you, had a pleasant holiday and a happy new year. As for me, I seem to have started 2006 with a rather nasty head cold. Last night I experimented with a now-forgotten combination of medicines and I received these mysterious visions of the future:

• The February special elections will not change the status quo -- a progressive from Somerville, a conservative from Gardner and a Republican from Foxborough will end up going to Beacon Hill. Republican consultant Charlie Manning will use this as evidence that Mitt Romney would have been re-elected in a landslide.
• 2006 will be another banner year for Schadenfreude, as a number of Congressmen implicated in the Jack Abramoff and other scandals are forced to resign.
• The legislature will pass some version of health insurance reform with an employer mandate. The economic apocalypse that pro-business groups are predicting will not come to pass, but there will be a spike in the number of part-time and contract workers in the state.
• The game "What Can We Pass Over Mitt's Veto?" will continue to be popular on Beacon Hill. Democrats will be quick to remind voters that Romney is no moderate, hoping that some of that rubs off on Healey as she is forced to defend her boss's conservative stances.
• During the 2006 Constitutional Convention, opponents of marriage equality will get the required fifty votes to pass the first hurdle in getting their anti-marriage question on the 2008 ballot. The vote is close, however, and the chances that it passes a second time in 2007 are in doubt.
• Governor Romney will use the 2006 Winter Olympics as an opportunity to remind people that he was once in charge of the Olympics. "Remember the Salt Lake City Olympics?" He'll say to a national audience somewhere. "They were awesome."
• For the first time since 1986, a Democrat will be elected governor of Massachusetts. State Republicans claim this is good for the GOP as it will make them even more hungry for victory in the 2008 legislative races.
• On the Federal level, Democrats will make gains in both the House and the Senate, but unfortunately not enough to take control of either body. Charlie Manning will use this as evidence that Mitt Romney would have been re-elected in a landslide.
• During end-of-the year retrospectives of the Romney administration, Massachusetts TV viewers will once again be treated to images of the Governor without a shirt. Images of him wistfully holding a stick will unfortunately be forgotten.
• When one or more of these predictions fails to come true, I will courageously deny that they were meant to be taken seriously, despite the fact that I will gloat every time one of them actually happens.

And additionally, Globe columnist HDS Greenway presented today his medal of freedom winner predictions:

[Donald] Rumsfeld, Ahmed Chalabi, and former Enron chief Kenneth "Kennyboy" Lay were given medals of freedom by Bush in a Christmas Eve ceremony, as was Michael "Brownie" Brown for his work in the 2005 hurricane season. Happy New Year.

Michael Chertoff will, of course, feel slighted and therefore withhold help in the next big disaster. No one will notice the difference.

Fellow Mass bloggers David Eisenthal and the Blue Mass. Group also offer their predictions.

Just Who Do You Think You Are Anyway?

My name is Steve Owens, and I live on a .08 acre plot of land in Watertown, Massachusetts with my wife and newborn son. I have a dual degree in Computer Science and Political Science from Brown University. I currently make my living as a data analyst/consultant for a non-political consulting company and write this blog in my spare time.

No one has ever paid me for writing anything on this blog, and I will never accept any money to publish a favorable (or unfavorable) opinion. In 2006, I was the Watertown town coordinator for Deval Patrick's campaign for governor and in 2008 I was elected the chair of the Watertown Democratic Town Committee. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect the position of that campaign or any other organization I am affiliated with.