/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2426081
How can I send a message to the NPA?

>>2426083
Nvm they got matrix, I'll post the conversation here

>>2426083
They're not answering

>>2426089
Why aren't they answering?

EPA axes contracts with unions
Bob Coomber, EPA’s senior labor adviser, said the reason for terminating the contracts was “to prevent irreparable harm to national security.” He referred not only to the contract with AFGE, but also to ones with the National Association of Government Employees, Engineers and Scientists of California, and the National Association of Independent Labor.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/08/epa-axes-contracts-with-unions-00501208
https://archive.ph/r741e

Unionized Berkeley REI workers get pay raises after Labor Board claimed they were shut out
The payout comes months after investigators from the National Labor Relations Board issued complaints that the Washington-based outdoor equipment retailer illegally excluded unionized workers at stores like the one in Berkeley from wage increases and other bonuses that were otherwise given to non-unionized employees. After NLRB issued its complaint in March, Berkeley workers said they felt REI’s alleged actions were “punishment” for unionizing. The complaint was at least one of four the Board had issued against the company at the time. And dozens of claims, alleging violations of labor laws like illegally terminating and intimidating workers, were under investigation at the time by the NLRB.
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2025/08/08/unionized-berkeley-rei-workers-get-pay-raises-after-labor-board-claimed-they-were-shut-out
https://archive.ph/tP2eS

As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act
It’s not clear that any state has a solution and the actual effect of data centers on electricity bills is difficult to pin down. Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta. But more than a dozen states have begun taking steps as data centers drive a rapid build-out of power plants and transmission lines. That has meant pressuring the nation’s biggest power grid operator to clamp down on price increases, studying the effect of data centers on electricity bills or pushing data center owners to pay a larger share of local transmission costs.
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/04/electricity-costs-bills-data-centers-ai

Atlanta CDC gunman believed Covid vaccine made him suicidal, official says
The 30-year-old gunman, identified by the Georgia bureau of investigation as Patrick Joseph White, tried to get into the CDC’s headquarters but was stopped by guards before driving to a CVS across the street and opening fire, the official said. White died during Friday’s violence. The suspect’s father contacted police and said his son was upset about the death of his dog, and had also become fixated on the Covid-19 vaccine, an official said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/09/police-officer-david-rose-atlanta-cdc-shooting

Whitmer told Trump in private that Michigan auto jobs depend on a tariff change of course
The Democrat came with a slide deck to make her points in a visual presentation. Just getting the meeting Tuesday with the Republican president was an achievement for someone viewed as a contender for her party’s White House nomination in 2028. Whitmer’s strategy for dealing with Trump highlights the conundrum for her and other Democratic leaders as they try to protect the interests of their states while voicing their opposition to his agenda. It’s a dynamic that Whitmer has navigated much differently from many other Democratic governors.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-whitmer-michigan-tariffs-auto-industry-c14e8791aa880643bddcdf9ea5372dca

‘A Nation of Shopkeepers’: The egotism of the petty bourgeoisie
A Nation of Shopkeepers is a 2023 book by (ostensibly) Marxist academic Dan Evans. It is an attempt to develop our understanding of the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ or middle class, which the author perceives as an ignored part of society. Evans argues that the petty bourgeoisie – the intermediate class of small business owners and independent professionals, squeezed between the working class and the big capitalists, – has in fact grown to the point where it constitutes a third of the British population (23 million). This, he argues, nullifies the analysis of Marx and Engels, who wrote in the Communist Manifesto that: “[t]he lower strata of the middle class – the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants – all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.” Deindustrialisation, Evans argues, has changed the nature of work, and therefore has undermined the classical Marxist understanding of class. The mentioned claims of a swelling in the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie is explained by the creation of what Evans labels the ‘new petty bourgeoisie’. Within this ‘new petty bourgeois’ class is included “[d]eclassed graduates, call centre workers, teachers and teaching assistants, salesmen, estate agents, nurses, firemen, public sector workers and more”. In terms of their relations to work, this ‘new’ class is identical to the working class, in that they must sell their capacity to work in order to live, and in fact work side by side with workers. What separates the ‘new petty bourgeoisie’ from the working class, Evans tells us, is that they aspire to “social mobility”; they dream of better things for themselves – and so are therefore individualistic – whereas the working class is happy with its lot. By changing the definition of class to a set of cultural values, Evans has managed to perform a magic trick, by pulling a completely new class out of thin air! Rather than seeing things such as classes in their process of historical development, Evans takes them as a finished product, a checklist of characteristics (which can be handily found at the back of the book) for us to foist upon the world.
https://communist.red/a-nation-of-shopkeepers-the-egotism-of-the-petty-bourgeoisie/

Detroit Mayoral Primary Turnout Shows Mass Disillusionment with Local Government
This year’s mayoral election in Detroit has seen a lot of candidate debates, especially compared to last election cycle, where no public debates were held. Yet the election has failed to garner much enthusiasm from voters. Many are apathetic, find the choices lackluster, and believe that no matter who is in office, things won’t change for the majority Black working class and poor in Detroit. The election stands in stark contrast with New York’s mayoral race, which saw a high participation of young voters. Unlike New York, none of Detroit’s candidates have been speaking to the issues that could mobilize the youth. The mayoral race was a crowded field with many different personalities. The voices that were centered in the debates were Rev Solomon Kinloch, Todd Perkins, Sauntel Jenkins, Mary Sheffield, James Craig, and Fred Durhal III. Mary Sheffield has led the pack from the very beginning, both in polling and in fundraising, so her victory in the primary was a surprise to no one. Solomon Kinloch won second place to face off against Sheffield in November. The spot for second place was largely between Kinloch, Jenkins, and Craig, and to a certain extent Perkins. Kinloch had been second place in the polls for months, but a recent story about an incident of domestic abuse of his ex-wife could have negatively impacted his performance Tuesday night. However, that doesn’t seem to have been the case: Kinlock’s primary results hovered around the same percentage he held in opinion polls. Kinloch had another issue that likely affected his outcome: many of his most ardent supporters live in the suburbs and are ineligible to vote in the election.
https://www.leftvoice.org/detroit-mayoral-primary-turnout-shows-mass-disillusionment-with-local-government/

The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin Chapter 17[END] : Agriculture
Political Economy has often been reproached with drawing all its deductions from the decidedly false principle, that the only incentive capable of forcing a man to augment his power of production is personal interest in its narrowest sense. The reproach is perfectly true; so true that epochs of great industrial discoveries and true progress in industry are precisely those in which the happiness of all was inspiring men, and in which personal enrichment was least thought of. The great investigators in science and the great inventors aimed, above all, at giving greater freedom of mankind. And if Watt, Stephenson, Jacquard, etc., could have only foreseen what a state of misery their sleepless nights would bring to the workers, they certainly would have burned their designs and broken their models. Another principle that pervades Political Economy is just as false. It is the tacit admission, common to all economists, that if there is often over-production in certain branches, a society will nevertheless never have sufficient products to satisfy the wants of all, and that consequently the day will never come when nobody will be forced to sell his labour in exchange for wages. This tacit admission is found at the basis of all theories and all the so-called “laws” taught by economists. And yet it is certain that the day when any civilized association of individuals would ask itself, what are the needs of all, and the means of satisfying them, it would see that, in industry, as in agriculture, it already possesses sufficient to provide abundantly for all needs, on condition that it knows how to apply these means to satisfy real needs. That this is true as regards industry no one can contest. Indeed, it suffices to study the processes already in use to extract coals and ore, to obtain steel and work it, to manufacture on a great scale what is used for clothing, etc., in order to perceive that we could already increase our production fourfold or more, and yet use for that less work than we are using now. We go further. We assert that agriculture is in the same position: those who cultivate the soil, like the manufacturers, already could increase their production, not only fourfold but tenfold, and they can put it into practice as soon as they feel the need of it, – as soon as a socialist organization of work will be established instead of the present capitalistic one. Each time agriculture is spoken of, men imagine a peasant bending over the plough, throwing badly assorted corn haphazard into the ground and waiting anxiously for what the good or bad season will bring forth; they think of a family working from morn to night and reaping as reward a rude bed, dry bread, and coarse beverage. In a word, they picture “the savages” of La Bruyère. And for these men, ground down to such a misery, the utmost relief that society proposes, is to reduce their taxes or their rent. But even most social reformers do not care to imagine a cultivator standing erect, taking leisure, and producing by a few hours’ work per day sufficient food to nourish, not only his own family, but a hundred men more at the least. In their most glowing dreams of the future Socialists do not go beyond American extensive culture, which, after all, is but the infancy of agricultural art. But the thinking agriculturist has broader ideas to-day – his conceptions are on a far grander scale. He only asks for a fraction of an acre in order to produce sufficient vegetables for a family; and to feed twenty-five horned beasts he needs no more space than he formerly required to feed one; his aim is to make his own soil, to defy seasons and climate, to warm both air and earth around the young plant; to produce, in a word, on one acre what he used to gather from fifty acres, and that without any excessive fatigue – by greatly reducing, on the contrary, the total of former labour. He knows that we will be able to feed everybody by giving to the culture of the fields no more time than what each can give with pleasure and joy.
This is the present tendency of agriculture.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1892/bread.htm#chapter17

Tybna