The pith and substance of Rick Mercer's anger against misleading and personal attack ad is exemplified in this terrific rant. His takes on them is that they are the work of bullies and cowards. I agree entirely.
The propensity of the Federal Reformatory types to use these pre-election ads that are not subject to campaign spending rules. That is such a cheap trick and an integrity breach the spirit of the law. These political dirty tricks are right out of the American Republican cum Tea Party types that Harper seems to idolize.
Personal attack ads come from the kind of people you tend not to trust to make fair and effective laws that serve the greater good - only their own self-interest. I think the fact that Harper's Alberta brain trust who write and run these anti-democratic and misleading ads are behind the Wildrose Party in Alberta. I make one wonder if this cozy relationship with Harper gives substance to Premier Stelmach warning to us to expect them to engage in that same kind of George Bush-league politics Harper loves to do.
If you want respect as a politician, attack policy - not persons.
Here is what Mercer says about all this:
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Dave Taylor Joins the Alberta Party
So yesterday was a big day for the New Kid on the Block Alberta Party. It has its first MLA as Dave Taylor moves from disgruntled Liberal to disaffected Independent to the discovery of the Alberta Party.
There was lots of noise over this move in the social media and the traditional media. I was even taken to task as an Alberta Party member for a blog post I did on January 8, 2010 when two PC MLAs went directly from one party to the Alliance without any cooling off period as Independents to take the temperature of their constituents over such a move. Give it a read and tell me what you think is the right way for politicians to change their minds. What about when a political party kicks out an MLA like the PCs did with Raj Sherman and Guy Boutilier? Should the PCs first consulted with their constituencies to get permission?
There is no simple answer and saying it is just "politics" as usual is not very satisfactory either. The bottom line in al of this be careful and intentional about who you vote for. Politicians are given consent to govern us at the ballot box. We defer to their judgment to make value trade-offs and choices on our behalf all the time. We also empower them to make laws that will limit and dictate our behaviours. That is a lot of power.
The unanswered question is what guides and drives our ballot box choices and is there just one answer to that question? Is that answer simple or complex and does it change over time between elections? Of course all these variable are in play so to over simplify the relationship of the elected and the electors is a mugs game. Add the other complexity of is a politician beholden to the direction of the constituents or to their own conscience?
How is a politician to know the hearts and minds of constituents and are they fulling informed on the facts, implications as well as the feeling and emotions around any proposed policy decision? On the other hand how are constituents to know what is in the heart, mind and morality of the politician as they seek wisdom in order to make a values trade-off between competing interests. All political decision have a moral underpinning to them and that adds to the complexity of communications and comprehension.
Those of us not in Calgary Currie can rant and rave all we want but we are spectators in this contest. The players are Dave Taylor and the citizens of Calgary Currie. What they think about his decision to move out of the Liberal Party to Independent is as critical as their reaction to his move from Independent to Alberta Party. That is Dave Taylor making hard political choices and that always means a trade-off of values.
The right to make that choice is Dave Taylor's. The right to assess and pass judgment on that choice is the right of the citizens of Calgary Currie. If they want a by-election now to assess Taylor's choice, they can tell him so loudly, vociferously and in great numbers. If they want to wait until the general election coming sooner than later they will stay quiet and pass judgment on him then. In the mean time the rest of us can armchair quarterback all we want but it is just crowd noise. Unless Calgary Currie wants to take Dave Taylor to task for his decisions, who are we to judge?
As for the Alberta Party, the Dave Taylor move to join them is a big boost of public credibility and internal confidence. However, one swallow does not a summer make. There is a great deal more to do before the Alberta Party is election ready and credibly so. As for some great commentary on all this to-ing and fro-ing read Graham Thomson of the Edmonton Journal, Josh Wingrove of of the Globe and Mail, Kevin Libin of the National Post and one of my favourite bloggers - The Enlightened Savage.
The next step for the Alberta Party is finding a leader. A major move in that direction happened yesterday too. Glenn Taylor, the current and three time Mayor of Hinton took the first overt step towards running for the Alberta Party leadership. He put up the non-refundable deposit as a candidate as a show of good faith and his personal confidence in the Alberta Party. Now he awaits a final decision to run or not depending on the final rules for the leadership campaign from the Alberta Party Provincial Board, expected February 5th.
Full disclosure, I am working on Glenn's bid for Alberta Party leadership. So stay tuned for more on Glenn Taylor and feel free to contact me at ken@cambridgestrategies.com if you want to join the Alberta Party and the campaign team.
There was lots of noise over this move in the social media and the traditional media. I was even taken to task as an Alberta Party member for a blog post I did on January 8, 2010 when two PC MLAs went directly from one party to the Alliance without any cooling off period as Independents to take the temperature of their constituents over such a move. Give it a read and tell me what you think is the right way for politicians to change their minds. What about when a political party kicks out an MLA like the PCs did with Raj Sherman and Guy Boutilier? Should the PCs first consulted with their constituencies to get permission?
There is no simple answer and saying it is just "politics" as usual is not very satisfactory either. The bottom line in al of this be careful and intentional about who you vote for. Politicians are given consent to govern us at the ballot box. We defer to their judgment to make value trade-offs and choices on our behalf all the time. We also empower them to make laws that will limit and dictate our behaviours. That is a lot of power.
The unanswered question is what guides and drives our ballot box choices and is there just one answer to that question? Is that answer simple or complex and does it change over time between elections? Of course all these variable are in play so to over simplify the relationship of the elected and the electors is a mugs game. Add the other complexity of is a politician beholden to the direction of the constituents or to their own conscience?
How is a politician to know the hearts and minds of constituents and are they fulling informed on the facts, implications as well as the feeling and emotions around any proposed policy decision? On the other hand how are constituents to know what is in the heart, mind and morality of the politician as they seek wisdom in order to make a values trade-off between competing interests. All political decision have a moral underpinning to them and that adds to the complexity of communications and comprehension.
Those of us not in Calgary Currie can rant and rave all we want but we are spectators in this contest. The players are Dave Taylor and the citizens of Calgary Currie. What they think about his decision to move out of the Liberal Party to Independent is as critical as their reaction to his move from Independent to Alberta Party. That is Dave Taylor making hard political choices and that always means a trade-off of values.
The right to make that choice is Dave Taylor's. The right to assess and pass judgment on that choice is the right of the citizens of Calgary Currie. If they want a by-election now to assess Taylor's choice, they can tell him so loudly, vociferously and in great numbers. If they want to wait until the general election coming sooner than later they will stay quiet and pass judgment on him then. In the mean time the rest of us can armchair quarterback all we want but it is just crowd noise. Unless Calgary Currie wants to take Dave Taylor to task for his decisions, who are we to judge?
As for the Alberta Party, the Dave Taylor move to join them is a big boost of public credibility and internal confidence. However, one swallow does not a summer make. There is a great deal more to do before the Alberta Party is election ready and credibly so. As for some great commentary on all this to-ing and fro-ing read Graham Thomson of the Edmonton Journal, Josh Wingrove of of the Globe and Mail, Kevin Libin of the National Post and one of my favourite bloggers - The Enlightened Savage.
The next step for the Alberta Party is finding a leader. A major move in that direction happened yesterday too. Glenn Taylor, the current and three time Mayor of Hinton took the first overt step towards running for the Alberta Party leadership. He put up the non-refundable deposit as a candidate as a show of good faith and his personal confidence in the Alberta Party. Now he awaits a final decision to run or not depending on the final rules for the leadership campaign from the Alberta Party Provincial Board, expected February 5th.
Full disclosure, I am working on Glenn's bid for Alberta Party leadership. So stay tuned for more on Glenn Taylor and feel free to contact me at ken@cambridgestrategies.com if you want to join the Alberta Party and the campaign team.
What Motivates Our Voting Choices?
The announcement yesterday of former Alberta Liberal moving from Independent and becoming the first MLA of the revived and revised Alberta Party drew lots of interesting reaction in MSM and social media. Some on Twitter called up a blog post I did over a year ago when two Conservatives bolted directly to the Alliance last January.
Fair game but I felt there was a slight misrepresentation of what I was suggesting and seeking input from readers on floor crossing at that time...but that is for others to judge. Here is a link to the January 2, 2010 post for you to consider. Here is the central question I was asking about voter motivation in election:
When citizens cast ballots it is unclear if they are voting for a party, a candidate, a leader, a platform, an issue of just name recognition or any combination of these motivations. Do we elect politicians to exercise their best judgement or to reflect the majority opinion of their constiuents or perhaps some other controversial but perhaps more "enlightened" position on an issue?
So I pose the same questions again but this time as "A burning question!" You can let your thoughts be known in the comments to this blog and on the Burning Question on the right hand side too.
Fair game but I felt there was a slight misrepresentation of what I was suggesting and seeking input from readers on floor crossing at that time...but that is for others to judge. Here is a link to the January 2, 2010 post for you to consider. Here is the central question I was asking about voter motivation in election:
When citizens cast ballots it is unclear if they are voting for a party, a candidate, a leader, a platform, an issue of just name recognition or any combination of these motivations. Do we elect politicians to exercise their best judgement or to reflect the majority opinion of their constiuents or perhaps some other controversial but perhaps more "enlightened" position on an issue?
So I pose the same questions again but this time as "A burning question!" You can let your thoughts be known in the comments to this blog and on the Burning Question on the right hand side too.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Blog Polls Are Crap!
I have recently returned to posting "Blog Polls" every week on this site. I have had some reluctance in doing it because they are not really scientific polls. It is really misleading to call them polls because it implies that they are random and science based. They are nothing of the sort. I have had some Tweets from folks I respect who have called these "blog polls" crap and I agree...especially if they are represented or understood to be science based random and reliable polls.
WHY BLOG AND MEDIA "POLLS" ARE CRAP
I know the main stream media including major newspapers, radio stations and television websites often to the same misleading techniques as "blog polls." That hardly justifies the activity and does nothing to absolve the misleading label of "poll." These mainstream media "polls" are not scientific or reliable either. Like those on blogs they are at best a relatively unreliable representation of what some readers might think. We have no idea of the nature and composition of the readership or the respondents in either case.
These "polls" can even be hijacked by groups who what to create an impression of reality that is also misleading by pushing one group or another to flood the "poll" with answers that serves their preferences or purposes. The recent question of who should hold the balance of power if we have a minority Alberta government is perhaps an example of a push by a group to influence results. I don't know but have suspicions. Many of my readers are Alberta Party members and many more are Alberta Party curious so it is no surprise that this new party is the dominant choice. I note a key strategist of the Alberta NDP recently criticized my blog polls Twitter and all of a sudden there is a surge in NDP support for holding the balance of power. I think this is an example of starting the conversation so long as people see that the survey results are only useful for that purpose and not conclusive of anything.
This is just a signal to readers to use their critical thinking skills and read these surveys like they would horoscopes. Treat them with the same degree of authenticity. These so-called "polls" are to random sampling opinion surveys as Dr. Phil is to psychology...infotainment at worst and conversation starters at best.
SCIENCE BASED POLLING UNDER PRESSURE TOO
Opinion polling as a science has come under serious credibility pressures recently too. This is because the tried and true techniques used in the past to generate a random representative sampling has reliability problems with the rise of cell phones as virtually the exclusive connectivity link of a younger generation and the difficulty to connect to them skews the data. The move towards self-selecting volunteers to register with pollsters who allegedly represent a demographic or a region is suspect too because the more indifferent or disengaged opinions are not likely to be canvasses. Then we have caller ID that allows people to filter out unwanted calls or unknown callers. That again undermines true randomness. Then we have the fact that as many as 20 calls have to be made before someone will take the call and invest the time to respond to a phone survey. How randomly representative is the data collected with that kind of randomness? There are "solutions" but they are not perfect either. But that is another issue for another post some other time.
DOES HARPER HATE EVIDENCE MORE THAN LIBERALS?
With the Harper government destroying the Canada Census we will not longer have a randomly selected scientifically reliable source of crucial information on Canadians after 2006. The ignorance of that policy decision will ensure that public policy design in the future will be a crap shoot that will inevitably result in crap public policy. I believe that is the ultimate political goal here. The fundamentalist anti-intellectual underpinnings of the Reform roots of the Harper government want to design failure into government so it can be replaced by Darwinian market forces in all cases. I mention this to show that even quality scientific polling is being undermined by a political ideology that says it is OK for faith to trump facts. Evidence is tough to rebut so the Reformatory Harper government passes policy to ensure we don't have facts in the first place. That is even more dangerous to democracy than silly unscientific "blog polls."
IT'S ABOUT STARTING THE CONVERSATIONS
I think the questions posed in a "blog poll" will only be conversation starters in and amongst the readers of that blog in comments, social media and off-line IRL (in real life). There is no reliable value to be attributed to the responses and folks have to know that. I will continue to put questions to my readers for response but I will not call them "Blog Polls" any more. I will call them "Burning Questions" from now. I hope these Burning Questions continue to serve the purpose to engage citizens in the political culture of our times. I hope they trigger real conversations in communities, between friends and amongst co-workers and even within families to help focus attention on the political issues and public policy concerns that are shaping our times.
If that is the case, I believe they are worth keeping. If you have a Burning Question you want me to pose, email it to me.
WHY BLOG AND MEDIA "POLLS" ARE CRAP
I know the main stream media including major newspapers, radio stations and television websites often to the same misleading techniques as "blog polls." That hardly justifies the activity and does nothing to absolve the misleading label of "poll." These mainstream media "polls" are not scientific or reliable either. Like those on blogs they are at best a relatively unreliable representation of what some readers might think. We have no idea of the nature and composition of the readership or the respondents in either case.
These "polls" can even be hijacked by groups who what to create an impression of reality that is also misleading by pushing one group or another to flood the "poll" with answers that serves their preferences or purposes. The recent question of who should hold the balance of power if we have a minority Alberta government is perhaps an example of a push by a group to influence results. I don't know but have suspicions. Many of my readers are Alberta Party members and many more are Alberta Party curious so it is no surprise that this new party is the dominant choice. I note a key strategist of the Alberta NDP recently criticized my blog polls Twitter and all of a sudden there is a surge in NDP support for holding the balance of power. I think this is an example of starting the conversation so long as people see that the survey results are only useful for that purpose and not conclusive of anything.
This is just a signal to readers to use their critical thinking skills and read these surveys like they would horoscopes. Treat them with the same degree of authenticity. These so-called "polls" are to random sampling opinion surveys as Dr. Phil is to psychology...infotainment at worst and conversation starters at best.
SCIENCE BASED POLLING UNDER PRESSURE TOO
Opinion polling as a science has come under serious credibility pressures recently too. This is because the tried and true techniques used in the past to generate a random representative sampling has reliability problems with the rise of cell phones as virtually the exclusive connectivity link of a younger generation and the difficulty to connect to them skews the data. The move towards self-selecting volunteers to register with pollsters who allegedly represent a demographic or a region is suspect too because the more indifferent or disengaged opinions are not likely to be canvasses. Then we have caller ID that allows people to filter out unwanted calls or unknown callers. That again undermines true randomness. Then we have the fact that as many as 20 calls have to be made before someone will take the call and invest the time to respond to a phone survey. How randomly representative is the data collected with that kind of randomness? There are "solutions" but they are not perfect either. But that is another issue for another post some other time.
DOES HARPER HATE EVIDENCE MORE THAN LIBERALS?
With the Harper government destroying the Canada Census we will not longer have a randomly selected scientifically reliable source of crucial information on Canadians after 2006. The ignorance of that policy decision will ensure that public policy design in the future will be a crap shoot that will inevitably result in crap public policy. I believe that is the ultimate political goal here. The fundamentalist anti-intellectual underpinnings of the Reform roots of the Harper government want to design failure into government so it can be replaced by Darwinian market forces in all cases. I mention this to show that even quality scientific polling is being undermined by a political ideology that says it is OK for faith to trump facts. Evidence is tough to rebut so the Reformatory Harper government passes policy to ensure we don't have facts in the first place. That is even more dangerous to democracy than silly unscientific "blog polls."
IT'S ABOUT STARTING THE CONVERSATIONS
I think the questions posed in a "blog poll" will only be conversation starters in and amongst the readers of that blog in comments, social media and off-line IRL (in real life). There is no reliable value to be attributed to the responses and folks have to know that. I will continue to put questions to my readers for response but I will not call them "Blog Polls" any more. I will call them "Burning Questions" from now. I hope these Burning Questions continue to serve the purpose to engage citizens in the political culture of our times. I hope they trigger real conversations in communities, between friends and amongst co-workers and even within families to help focus attention on the political issues and public policy concerns that are shaping our times.
If that is the case, I believe they are worth keeping. If you have a Burning Question you want me to pose, email it to me.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Where Has the Integrity Gone?
I have been trying to find the time to do a blog post on the Annual Report of Alberta's Privacy Commissioner, Frank Work. Making a living keeps getting in the way. However, Graham Thomson had covered the salient points in his Edmonton Journal column today. It is worth a read.
My political concern is the general decline in good governance in Alberta. We know from random sample research that the dominant values Albertans want to see drive and guide public policy in our province are integrity, accountability, transparency, honesty along with environmental stewardship with fiscal and personal responsibility.
With the continuing decline of the Alberta to respond to Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy that aligns with these values is becomes apparent that citizens have to one of two things. Either we make the current government change to align with those values or we change to a new government that will align with those values. We have a political culture that values spin over substance and loutishness over values.
The Thomson column provides a strong example that explains the propaganda tactics that has become the staple diet of modern politics. The recent rehash of reheated rhetoric by Dr. Ted Morton that Alberta is being ripped off by the federal government because we pay more taxes to Ottawa than services in return is pure political propaganda at its apogee.
We pay more federal tax money than others in Canada BECAUSE we make more money than anyone else in Canada. The sense that Confederation is we versus them relationship the right wing in Alberta always trots out when it is in trouble in the polls or wants to precipitate an election is not good government and really bad politics.
If we can't assume political integrity in our government, we citizens can at least keep them honest. We do that by calling them on transparency and accountability breaches and telling them loud and clear that things better change in government or we citizens will change the government next election. The status quo is not good enough. Anyone who thinks counterclockwise and wants to turn Alberta back in time is not a viable alternative either. Time for some thinking for a change.
My political concern is the general decline in good governance in Alberta. We know from random sample research that the dominant values Albertans want to see drive and guide public policy in our province are integrity, accountability, transparency, honesty along with environmental stewardship with fiscal and personal responsibility.
With the continuing decline of the Alberta to respond to Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy that aligns with these values is becomes apparent that citizens have to one of two things. Either we make the current government change to align with those values or we change to a new government that will align with those values. We have a political culture that values spin over substance and loutishness over values.
The Thomson column provides a strong example that explains the propaganda tactics that has become the staple diet of modern politics. The recent rehash of reheated rhetoric by Dr. Ted Morton that Alberta is being ripped off by the federal government because we pay more taxes to Ottawa than services in return is pure political propaganda at its apogee.
We pay more federal tax money than others in Canada BECAUSE we make more money than anyone else in Canada. The sense that Confederation is we versus them relationship the right wing in Alberta always trots out when it is in trouble in the polls or wants to precipitate an election is not good government and really bad politics.
If we can't assume political integrity in our government, we citizens can at least keep them honest. We do that by calling them on transparency and accountability breaches and telling them loud and clear that things better change in government or we citizens will change the government next election. The status quo is not good enough. Anyone who thinks counterclockwise and wants to turn Alberta back in time is not a viable alternative either. Time for some thinking for a change.
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