Left Turn Canada

Where do you find Canada's best fish and chips? Which is the best bar to play in Thunder Bay? Why should you bring cash on the ferry to and from Newfoundland? How do you find cheap motel rooms at the last minute in any town in Canada? Based on his years of traveling with the indie band, United Steel Workers of Montreal, Gern f. Vlchek has written a comprehensive guide to successful touring for any independent Canadian band. Here he shares all the insider info he gained in his years organizing his band's life on the road, and now he lays it all out for you in a witty, take-no-prisoners style. Gern f. Vlchek has explored Canada coast to coast, first as a long-haul truck driver, then as frontman for the United Steel Workers of Montreal. After years of hard driving and hard playing, he has a lot to say about Canada, its people, its musical experience, and just about every town that dots our national main street, the Trans-Canada Highway.

A leading political science professor provides scientific proof of media bias in this sure-to-be-controversial book Dr. Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slant of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news, as a way to measure the PQ, or "political quotient" of voters and politicians. Among his conclusions are: (i) all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias; and (ii) while some supposedly conservative outlets—such the Washington Times or Fox News' Special Report—do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most mainstream outlets. Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American, and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah. With Left Turn readers can easily calculate their own PQ—to decide for themselves if the bias exists. This timely, much-needed study brings fact to this often overheated debate.

This book examines the “left turn” in Latin American politics, specifically through the lens of Ecuador and the effects of the Citizens’ Revolution’s actions and public policies on relevant actors and institutions. Through a comprehensive analysis of one country’s turn to the left and the outcomes generated by that process, the authors and editors provide a clearer understanding of the ways in which the popular desire for change (predominant through the region in recent times, as a response to late-twentieth-century neoliberalism) was realized—or not. The particular case of Ecuador further potentiates analysis of the entire region-wide process, considering that the “corrector” cycle is now at an end, and that the economic and international conditions that favored the return of left governments have also changed.

An engaging introduction to the vibrant history of the political left in Canada