Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday.

- Heather Mallick nicely sums up much of the philosophy behind the Cons' train wreck of a pension proposal:

Flaherty seems to regard the CPP as communism. It isn’t. It’s brilliant in a sensible Canadian sort of way. Hard-right governments — American, British and Canadian — are always droning out about “financial literacy.” CAW economist Jim Stanford, who is a director of the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education, points out that this drive, while helpful, also places a greater burden of blame on consumers whose investments tanked recently. It wasn’t the stock market being run like a casino, it was the fault of the dopey investor. Don’t expect the government to help, Flaherty is saying. You’re on your own. (The American Republican phrase is “no government interference.” The British call it “the Big Society.”)

But of course, it's worth keeping in mind the flip side that the financial sector can always count on a giveaway.

- Meanwhile, Michael Shapcott points out reason for concern that a business-first mindset is having a toxic effect on charities which are forced to move outside their intended purposes in the hope of chasing down funding.

- After an election that saw about as solid a showing as was possible without winning a seat, the New Brunswick NDP has a leadership race on its hands. And it'll be particularly interesting to see how the candidates can do in building on the party's positive profile from this year's election campaign.

- And finally, it's certainly progress that the first charges have been laid related to police actions at the G20. But we'll have to wait and see whether the charges against Constable Babak Andalib-Goortani prove to be anything more than an attempt to charge somebody to avoid a more thorough examination of responsibility for the trampling of civil rights in Canada's largest city.

New Brunswick election reading

As the New Brunswick provincial election campaign enters its home stretch, here's a quick survey of a few sources worth reading to get a handle on the campaign.

Let's start with Alice's customary detailed look at the state of party nominations at the the Pundits' Guide's New Brunswick page - with links to all candidates' websites serving as a particularly useful resource for those looking to track down information in a hurry.

For those looking for a quantitative analysis of the state of the campaign, the place to go is once again Three Hundred Eight, whose multi-poll projections figure to be particularly useful in a tight campaign where single polls can be found to support almost any possible outcome. (ThreeHundredEight's NDP projection has slipped from two seats to one based on a campaign-period drop from the teens to lower double digits.)

Meanwhile, if you're looking more for a subjective riding-level analysis and projection, NBPolitico makes up for relatively infrequent posts by serving up plenty of material at every turn. NBPolitico now projects two seats as "lean NDP" (leader Roger Duguay's riding of Tracadie-Sheila as well as another northern riding in Nepisiguit) - but based on my own limited contribution to the race, I'm particularly interested to note that Saint John East has been downgraded from "safe Liberal" to "lean Liberal", signalling that it's looking to be more in play as the campaign progresses.

As for media outlets, newspapers to check out include the Telegraph-Journal, Daily Gleaner and Times & Transcript, while CBC New Brunswick also has regular updates and analysis.

If I've missed any sources worth including, please feel free to point them out in comments - as the campaign looks to be well worth following closely from here on in.