Monday, June 30, 2008

Pounding the Streets Saturday June 28, 2008

When you are running for office and don’t have lots of money you walk neighborhoods. Well Saturday morning was another walk in a small subdivision in Noblesville.

They were having a community wide garage sale so lots of people sitting in their driveways. What a great way to meet people. This subdivision is still being built out, so the homes and people are new to the area or homes. Here are some of things I saw, spoke to people about, etc.

On a sad note, I saw a lot of for sale signs and foreclosure signs; in fact one home the garage was boarded up.

I asked a neighbor about the home, “lost their job and then the home, nice people.” Then he told me about someone a few houses down, who was not paying his mortgage on purpose and had not paid it since January. He told me that smart- … believes with so many houses on the market, they won’t foreclose on him because he keeps the lawn nice. I had to laugh. Your kidding I said. “No” was the response. He figures he is going to last a year that way and then find another home and do the same thing. I asked how he was doing on the mortgage front. He told me when his mortgage jumped, he sat down with the bank and took his four years of equity and reapplied it into a new 30-year mortgage, with little monthly increase. Pretty smart guy.

I spoke to another couple that just moved here from Michigan and needed forms to register to vote. They took a beating on their Michigan home, but were very happy to be here.

One dear woman asked me if I was Republican or Democrat, only one out of the entire area. That is a surprise to me. When I responded Democrat she said “too bad, why should I vote for you?” I started out by asking her if she knew who her representative was? She didn’t. The I told her she had been in office for 16 years, you would think she would have hear of her by now. The came the OK, “my husband is 62 and an engineer without work in his field, he is now selling cars and most of the time brings home almost nothing as cars are not selling. “ We spent the next 15 minutes talking about energy and jobs in Indiana. By the time I left I think that Republican is going to vote for me.

Lots of people would not answer their door when I rang I have to wonder why? I could see them in their house, maybe they though I was selling something. But I did get to talk to about 1/3 of the people living in the area. Main areas of concern, since was a neighborhood with lots of young couples was state testing in the schools and of course the price of gas. I did not find one person who believed testing was in the best interest of the children. On the price of gas, I asked them if they insulated their home about what the builder recommended. Only a few said yea. I explained to them if everyone did in the entire state we would reduce the power needs and in the long term reduce overall fuel consumption, that overnight we are not going to get the price down. I also explained how Indiana does not provide real incentives to reduce home power needs such as credits for wind and solar power. Many were surprised.

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