Squawking: Special Edition

When I started CrowDayOne, I promised I would only send these out once a week on Sundays. That's why I call this is a special edition. Think of it as "EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it!" 

In Canada, October 19 is voting day for a new government. In the US, electioneering is also in full swing, leading up to next year's election.

In my previous post, I lamented the fact that I felt so discouraged by all the election rhetoric, which often elevated my levels of anxiety about the future. So the old inner crow told me to start squawking. I promised to send out questions, opinions, cartoons, thoughtful quotes  and whatever I run across that may help us all to be better citizens.

Yesterday, I posted a question on Facebook, and e-mailed it to those who receive Crowdayone by e-mail. Thus, you may be getting this twice -- and for that, I apologize. As I said yesterday in my e-mail, I will not be offended if you ignore or turn off my feed or don't participate. However, if you are like me, wishing there was more civility in the political rhetoric that's swirling around us and fills the media, read on! And maybe do a little squawking of your own. It couldn't hurt, could it?

Yesterday's question was this:

The Crow's question: Day 1
What do you value in this country that you hope will still be a strong value for the next generation to experience?

I got some great responses, and will use those answers in my longer post next Sunday.


Today, I sent out this message:

The Crow's point to ponder: Day 2
When you read in the paper that a recent poll shows that 80% of us believe X, Y, or Z, consider this:

"Election polling is in near crisis, and we pollsters know. Two trends are driving the increasing unreliability of election and other polling ...: the growth of cellphones and the decline in people willing to answer surveys. ... When I first started doing telephone surveys in New Jersey in the late 1970s, we considered an 80 percent response rate acceptable, and even then we worried if the 20 percent we missed were different in attitudes and behaviors than the 80 percent we got. Enter answering machines and other technologies. By 1997, Pew’s response rate was 36 percent, and the decline has accelerated. By 2014 the response rate had fallen to 8 percent."

(New York Times op-ed piece, June 30, 2015 written by Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy and political science at Rutgers University and a past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.)

for those of you not familiar with Western Canada politics, Alison Redford was elected premier of Alberta; Christy Clark was elected premier of British Columbia. Both were surprise wins.