/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Fossil-fuel firms in line for billions in benefits after answering Trump’s donation call
The fossil fuel industry secured an estimated $190bn in tax breaks and subsidies over the next decade after responding to Donald Trump’s pre-election call for major campaign donations, leaving American taxpayers to shoulder higher bills and public health costs associated with pollution, according to a new report.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/24/fossil-fuels-trump-donations

Homeland Security defends officers in immigrant’s fatal car crash in Michigan
Federal immigration officers were about a half-mile away when a man who was illegally in the U.S. crashed a car at high speed and died in Michigan last weekend, authorities said Thursday, attempting to rebut any claim that they were in hot pursuit.
https://apnews.com/article/immigrant-fatal-crash-michigan-3938983d2a55aab9dcb5b42ba6c6cda5

Mikie Sherrill demands NJ lieutenant governor resign after report found improper behavior with women
The investigation — first reported on Sept. 4 but commissioned by Gov. Mikie Sherrill more than three months earlier — focused on Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell’s conduct in office. The report found Caldwell engaged in ethics violations, including attempts to promote a romantic partner in a state job — while not disclosing the personal relationship.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/24/mikie-sherrill-demands-nj-lieutenant-governor-resign-after-report-found-improper-behavior-with-women-01092915

Nearly 200 people wrongly identified on Nevada’s voter rolls as non-citizens
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrongly identified 185 people on Nevada’s voter rolls as non-citizens, state officials said this week, escalating concerns over the shoddy methodology the government is using to raise fear about non-citizen voting ahead of the midterm elections.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/24/dhs-nevada-voter-non-citizens-error

ICE is wasting tens of millions of dollars on ‘uninformed’ detention projects, report finds
Among the misspending was nearly $3 million to erect tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million to maintain purchased warehouses that are now being sold without having housed a single detainee, and excessive rates paid to hold detainees at a deficient and now-shuttered Florida lockup.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-detention-waste-gao-report-7909a2cf777672e1483f5ed232e93cba

Liberal dilemmas as the ruling class seeks a new vehicle for fragmented Britain
ED DAVEY has the perennial problem of Lib Dem leaders — how to make his second division team avoid further relegation. With polls showing just one in 12 voters considering voting for his party the Lib Dems are in fifth place behind Labour, Reform, the Tories and the Greens who have laid siege to a slice of their voters. Where Davey is right is in arguing that some elements in our ruling Establishment favour a Tory/Reform UK coalition. (Davey didn’t put it in these terms because to do so might draw attention to the uncomfortable fact that the austerity policies currently driving some of the support towards Nigel Farage were the centrepiece of Cameron’s Tory-Lib Dem coalition government and Lib Dem Treasury ministers were in the driving seat.)
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/ed-davey-liberal-democrats-polls-dilemmas-ruling-class-britain

What Are Prediction Markets—and Can They Really Predict the Future?
Supporters argue that this process aggregates publicly available information into a real-time forecast, allowing markets to reveal probabilities that sometimes outperform polls or expert opinion. Critics counter that these same incentives can reward speculation, manipulation, or insider knowledge, raising questions about whether they function primarily as forecasting tools, gambling platforms, or something in between. A contract’s price fluctuates with the probability of an event occurring and reflects that prediction. The price is intended to serve as the implied probability of the event occurring. Every contract includes a resolution date and rules that indicate how and when it will be settled. When the resolution date arrives, the market closes automatically, and the bettor is informed about the outcome. One major advantage of prediction markets is their simplicity. Will a given event occur by a certain date? It’s either yes or no. On two of the most prominent markets, Kalshi and Polymarket, a user buys one or more contracts that pay out $1 each if they’re right and nothing if they’re wrong.Unlike Kalshi, Polymarket relies on UMA (Universal Market Access), a decentralized oracle protocol, to resolve markets. Most outcomes are finalized automatically through UMA’s Optimistic Oracle, while disputed out comes are referred to UMA token holders for decentralized arbitration. When a dispute arises, holders of UMA’s digital tokens debate the situation in forums on the social media platform Discord before voting on the outcome. UMA “governs this process to ensure fairness and transparency,” Polymarket says on its website. Because governance is decentralized and voting power depends on token ownership, critics argue that questions remain about transparency and influence over disputed outcomes. Several prediction markets are relatively obscure. They include Good Judgment Open, a forecasting services firm; the Iowa Electronic Markets, a futures market operated for research and teaching; Manifold, a social prediction market; and PredictIt, a prediction market for political and financial events; among several others.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/09/what-are-prediction-markets-and-can-they-really-predict-the-future.html

A New Leader Wants to Move Bulgaria Left Interview with Krum Zarkov
Lasting from 1944 to 1990 and combining Soviet-style planning with nationalist policies that, over time, grew increasingly hostile toward the country’s Turkish minority, the BCP’s rule nevertheless fundamentally transformed Bulgaria. Starting from an overwhelmingly rural peasant country, its version of socialism built an industrial economy in a matter of years, eliminated illiteracy, provided affordable housing to millions, and carried out vast infrastructure projects that Bulgarians still rely on today. When the winds of change began to blow in 1989, BCP leaders proved more farsighted than many of their Eastern Bloc peers, renaming themselves the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and initiating democratic elections that they then won handily. The BSP alternated between government and opposition for the better part of the next three decades, remaining the country’s only mass-membership party. Yet politically it drifted further to the right — first leading Bulgaria into the European Union and becoming an enthusiastic proponent of neoliberal austerity, and then, in the late 2010s, under leader Korneliya Ninova, morphing into a staunch defender of “traditional Bulgarian values” against Western “gender ideology.” Meanwhile, Bulgaria descended into political dysfunction, with eight parliamentary elections between 2020 and 2026. That all came to an end in April, when what remained of the BSP’s electorate defected to former President Rumen Radev’s new party, Progressive Bulgaria, and ejected the Socialists from parliament for the first time in living memory. The party’s current leader, Krum Zarkov, had only been elected in February on a platform calling for a return to the BSP’s socialist roots. Since then, he published a manifesto entitled “The Socialism of Our Century” and toured the country, seeking to win the membership over to his vision of a renewed and decidedly more socialist BSP. Last month, during the party’s 135th anniversary celebrations at Buzludzha Peak in the Central Balkan Mountains, Zarkov spoke with Jacobin’s Loren Balhorn and Madlen Nikolova about how he hopes to reintroduce socialist ideas into one of Europe’s poorest and most unequal countries.
https://jacobin.com/2026/09/interview-zarkov-bulgarian-socialist-party