/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Pressley Demands Israel Release US Citizen Sama Safi, Abducted by IDF More Than Two Months Ago
The Guardian reported in June that Safi, a psychology student at the West Bank’s Birzeit University, was arrested along with three other women around the same time. An Israeli military spokesperson told The Guardian that they were all arrested “after promoting hostile terrorist activity and additional terrorist-related activities.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/free-sama-safi-israel

HCA workers push for higher pay and more staffing amid billions in profits: ‘I’m struggling’
The hospital system has over 300,000 employees in the US and the UK, with 22,000 US workers represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) who are in contract negotiations with HCA. Workers are asking for a pathway to a $25 an hour minimum wage, improved wage scales and raises that match the increased cost of living, along with benefits including paid vacation, sick time and bolstered work protections.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/11/union-hca-healthcare-workers-protest

Advocates Call for End of Deadly Tactic Used by For-Profit Health Insurers to Deny Treatment
The policy brief, published Monday by the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), an anti-monopoly think tank, argues that the system is a massive drag on the US healthcare system, draining doctors of their time, fueling hiring shortages, and—most importantly—worsening treatable health problems for millions of Americans.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/corporate-care-veto

Judge temporarily blocks implementation of NYC's new pied-à-terre tax
The ruling pauses enforcement on the tax on second properties while a lawsuit brought by a group of homeowners moves forward. That lawsuit alleges that the city bungled the rollout by including many who live full-time in their homes on a list of 900,000 people who could be subject to the tax, as well as sending letters to 17,000 others.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/judge-temporarily-blocks-nyc-new-pied-a-terre-tax/

Democratic socialist tries to beat the governor’s pick in a chaotic Wisconsin primary
The 37-year-old known for sprinkling her comments with profanity and leaning into her edgy and sometimes humorous social media profile excited the liberal wing of the party. Hong called for free childcare and healthcare and a moratorium on artificial intelligence data center construction. But she also wrestled with her past support for defunding the police, saying at the race’s only debate that she would not support cutting law enforcement funding.
https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-primary-governor-hong-socialist-acd872f6cf113e741291b9b47f9d9111

‘A lazy cop’: Maryland police officer allegedly faked traffic stops to avoid service calls
Dequwan Houchins, 30, is accused of four counts of false entry in a public record and five counts of misconduct in office and could face 12 years in jail and a $4,000 fine for each of the false entry charges, if convicted. On one occasion, when Houchins reported being unavailable, he was allegedly ordering a smoothie, the indictment claims. His unusual work patterns came to light in December after police officials received a complaint that Houchins had been making false reports of traffic stops for months.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/11/baltimore-police-false-traffic-stop-reports

Farm linked to cyclosporiasis outbreak hadn't been inspected in 7 years as FDA lags on foreign inspection targets
A federal law enacted to prevent diseased and dirty food from reaching Americans' plates requires the FDA to carry out nearly 20 times that many foreign inspections each year. But the FDA hasn't come close to meeting the congressional mandate — or even 10% of it — in the 10 years it has been in place, spanning administrations led by both political parties.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taylor-farms-mexico-fda-inspection-cyclosporiasis-outbreak/

FDA proposes mandatory food ingredient reporting
Food safety advocates have long complained that the "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS, designation is a major blind spot. But the new proposal doesn't detail what FDA will do with ingredients it finds questionable.
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/11/fda-proposes-mandatory-food-ingredient-reporting

Federal safety agency issues final report into 2025 blast that killed 2 at Pennsylvania steel plant
U.S. Steel has said the explosion happened when workers were flushing a gas valve with pressurized water in preparation for routine planned maintenance at the sprawling riverside industrial facility, the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The valve ruptured under intense pressure and released combustible coke oven gas.
https://apnews.com/article/steel-plant-explosion-pennsylvania-2958a6fbf51475ccae621e6f6b93b518

The Democratic Party Establishment Punches Back
Things came to a head with the undeniable success of DSA-backed candidates in New York City’s June 23 primaries. It was a test of whether the country’s most prominent democratic-socialist mayor would continue to align with the Democratic Party’s center and right wing or use his political capital — and, more importantly, the popularity generated by his program and campaign — to challenge them. While Mamdani initially pledged to support candidates on the Working Families Party line, including Democrats who were not endorsed by DSA, at the 11th hour he switched course to advocate for three insurgent candidates who won their primaries by large margins, undermining the designs of his party’s leadership. Mamdani made the political calculation that if he supported DSA’s candidates, he would gain more favor from his base and from the DSA rank and file (after facing backlash for his coziness with the police and his endorsement of Kathy Hochul for governor). House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s response was telling in its passive-aggressive restraint. When asked whether Mamdani’s endorsements had made him enemies in Washington, Jeffries confirmed that the two had “strongly” disagreed over his picks and warned that the mayor “has got work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward.” It was the sound of a party leader trying to manage an insurgency rather than one confidently setting terms for it.
https://www.leftvoice.org/democratic-establishment-punches-back/

Hoisted from the Inbox: China Wobbles or Worse in Store?
Yves here. Some who are knowledgeable about China correspond with me. I sent around an article from Asia Times, China’s 25-year tax reach will cost it more than it collects. This measure seems so misguided (in terms of the 25 year part, not some collection of back taxes per se) as to seem desperate. From the top of the story: China is now chasing decades of unpaid tax on money its wealthiest citizens moved offshore, in some cases reaching back as far as 25 years. Call it what it actually is: a state deciding, after the fact, that wealth it once let leave the country is now fair game to reclaim. To be sure, taxing worldwide income isn’t radical policy. The United States has taxed its citizens’ global earnings for a century, and Europe has recently tightened comparable rules considerably. Closing an offshore-trust loophole that let public-market gains dodge income tax entirely brings China roughly into line with practices already standard among major economies. Say that much for Beijing, and mean it. But reaching back a quarter of a century after the fact is an excavation, and excavations rarely come with the kind of consistent, explainable standards that keep a tax system credible in the eyes of the people paying into it. Wealthy families are being asked to settle gains from windows chosen with little public rationale, with their accounts based in China frozen until they pay. It’s the act of a government working backward from how much money it needs toward whoever still happens to have some. What wealthy families fear in a moment like this is rarely the tax rate itself. Rates are negotiable and can be planned around years in advance. What can’t be planned around is a government reserving the right to rewrite the deal after the fact, which is why the response to that kind of risk is exit over negotiation. I queried my interlocutors: “This action suggests China is in crisis. despite the denial in the article. No one would have said the US was in a crisis in late 2007 either.”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/08/hoisted-from-the-inbox-china-wobbles-or-worse-in-store.html

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: All Power to the Soviets!
“Drive nature out of the door and she will rush back through the window.” It seems that the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties have to “learn” this simple truth time and again by their own experience. They under took to be "revolutionary democrats" and found themselves in the shoes of revolutionary democrats—they are now forced to draw the conclusions which every revolutionary democrat must draw. Democracy is the rule of the majority. As long as the will of the majority was not clear, as long as it was possible to make it out to be unclear, at least with a grain of plausibility, the people were offered a counter-revolutionary bourgeois government disguised as "democratic." But this delay could not last long. During the several months that have passed since February 27 the will of the majority of the workers and peasants, of the overwhelming majority of the country’s population, has become clear in more than a general sense. Their will has found expression in mass organisations—the Soviet’s of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. How, then, can anyone oppose the transfer of all power in the state to the Soviets? Such opposition means nothing but renouncing democracy! It means no more no less than imposing on the people a government which admittedly can neither come into being nor hold its ground democratically, i.e., as a result of truly free, truly popular elections.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/jun/17b.htm

Tybna