Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Oct 30, 2021 17 tweets 8 min read Read on X
This barbarism. Why do the progressives who run our cities allow it? Because they believe arresting him and mandating drug treatment is worse than letting him die on the sidewalk without dignity.

Yes, that is the actual reason. And yes, it is as stupid as it sounds.
The big lie is that San Francisco lets ~700 people/year die totally preventable drug deaths, including on the street, because it lacks the money to help them.

But SF spends over $100,000 per homeless person. That’s more than enough to pay for 90 days of court-ordered rehab
The official line from the people who are directly responsible for allowing 700+ of our fellow humans to die on sidewalks, rather than receive mandated treatment, is that “homelessness is caused by poverty, high rents & lack of housing.” They want us to believe our eyes are lying
I was told by the people who are directly responsible for preventing life-saving medical treatment to dying addicts that the reason for San Francisco’s “homeless” problem is because Ronald Reagan slashed federal housing funding. In the 1980s.
Progressive activists and journalists have lied to the American people about what they do in Portugal and Amsterdam and other nations. In those places, police arrest addicts who break the law, to save their lives, and coerce or mandate treatment as alternative to jail.
I traveled to Amsterdam and discovered the truth, and recorded a video interview with the head of Portugal’s drug program to debunk the lies
The idea that you need to arrest addicts who break laws, and offer them the choice of jail or rehab, has been the mainstream one in civilized nations for decades.

The idea that it is better to let their addiction worsen, and rely solely on Narcan, has never worked anywhere.
I’m not messing around. San Fransicko is the evidentiary foundation for our campaign to change the sick ideological policies directly responsible for letting hundreds of people die annually. I have presented my findings to the SF Grand Jury. I will present them to US Justice Dept
Anybody who has seen what we have done over the last decade to change attitudes and policies around nuclear energy will know that we are not messing around. We will do the same on drugs. It won’t take 10 years. What is happening in progressive cities is obviously failed & immoral
Progressive leaders in San Francisco defend the gruesome status quo by repeating easily-debunked myths eg “not enough money,” “Reagan,” etc

Progressive activists tried to bully me after I reported the truth. They failed. But such tactics have worked on many others for decades.
The mayors of some liberal cities, such as Boston, are standing up to dogmatic harm reduction-only activists and mandating treatment.
It’s helped that The Boston Globe has covered the open drug scene honestly, as driven by addiction, for weeks
Progressives in Boston are trying to stop the mayor. As usual, they are abusing their status as doctors to grossly misrepresent their fringe views as mainstream. As usual, they know nothing of what Europe does. As usual, they are motivated by ideology, not what works in practice.
In cities across the US, including SF, Denver, Austin, and NYC, there is a battle between moderates and progressives. The progressives have for 25 years been heavily-funded by billionaires, and well-organized, in comparison to moderates, but that’s starting to change
In the name of ending racial disparities in incarceration we’ve allowed much worse racial disparities in drug deaths & drug dealing

It’s not complicated. Enforce laws. Offer treatment on demand & as an alternative to jail. Shelter first, housing earned. Universal psych & rehab
Liberals let our thinking and emotions be hijacked by progressive (radical Left) ideologues who demanded that we deny the role of addiction & make housing a right. They promoted “Housing First” over what is proven to work, which is abstinent-contingent housing.
“If you just give a carrot, you get spoiled people. If you give an addicted person just the carrots you’ll be addicted”

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More from @shellenberger

Oct 8
Fifty-five percent of people on the Left justify the murder of Trump, five times more liberals than conservatives defend political violence, and not a single high-profile Democrat has called for @jonesjay to drop out. The Left truly can not make its intentions any clearer. Image
The person whose legacy is most being destroyed by this is @BarackObama . He must demand that @jonesjay step down. Now. And he should take extraordinary efforts to demand the Left back down from its utterly crazed support for violence. This building should not open until he does that.Image
Read 5 tweets
Oct 8
Mind-blowing. In 2014, VP Biden attacked corrupt developer in Romania who owned land around US embassy. In 2015, Hunter goes to work for the corrupt developer, lobbies US ambassador to pressure Romanians to drop case, then proposes to settle case by cutting in his China client 😳 Image
This appears to have been a straight-up mob-style shakedown by the Biden family done under the auspices of Obama foreign policy and in a way the directly jeopardized US national security.
The lawyers for Hunter’s corrupt developer client first threatened to jeopardize the land upon which the embassy sat, and then proposed a deal whereby prosecutors dropped the case in exchange for the corrupt developer selling nearly half his stake to a state-owned Chinese energy company, that was also Hunter’s client.Image
Read 9 tweets
Sep 28
Good god. The Swiss people just approved digital IDs. Australia implemented them in Dec. UK last week. In all 3 nations, deep state-allied politicians are behind them. This is a digital ID/censorship emergency. Please share and reply below with info about other nations. Image
The deep state swamp creatures know that digital IDs are unpopular and so they are trying to rush them through before anyone realizes what they are doing. The good news is that the more people learn about them the more alarmed they become.

Polling in Switzerland showed 60% backed digital IDs which both houses in parliament had already approved. The final vote was just 50.4%. It almost lost. I hope the Swiss people are carefully scrutinizing the vote count.

Same dynamic in UK. Opposition to digital IDs is low and will rise. Digital IDs can and must be killed.

x.com/shellenberger/…
From a Swiss source: "Palantir and Mercator sponsored the Yes Campaign. Palantir is a member of Digital Switzerland, alongside other tech companies. Digital Switzerland lobbied for the E-ID/digital ID in Switzerland in this vote.Image
Read 10 tweets
Sep 27
The man behind the digital ID push is Larry Ellison, owner of Oracle, CBS, CNN, and, soon, TikTok. He wants data centralization and total surveillance. "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly watching & recording everything that's going on." Terrifying.
This article in the left-wing UK magazine @NewStatesman details how Ellison bankrolled Starmer's Digital ID push.

This is not a partisan issue. Freedom lovers on the Left and Right should both aggressivley oppose digital totalitarianism.

Ellison: We need to unify all of the national data. Put it into a database where it's easily consumable by the AI model, and then ask whatever question you like.

Blair: So you're really through the use of this, you're revolutionizing the way government works, right? The services it provides, the way that it operates.

Why bother having democracy at all? Why not just let Ellison and WEF and AI run things? What could possibly go wrong?
Read 7 tweets
Sep 27
And after the government combines your personal, banking, and voting data under a single digital ID, it will add social media and vaccine information. Same with Real ID in the US. The Censorship Industrial Complex was dress rehearsal for digital ID.
Stop your creepy totalitarianism @sundarpichai @Google Image
@sundarpichai @Google UK opposition vs support of digital IDs is 45 to 42.

Opponents should be able to drive that opposition number up significantly.

It is absolutely essential that the UK kill two-tier @Keir_Starmer plan for digital IDs before they metastasize across the West. Image
Read 18 tweets
Sep 24
The idea that our rights are natural is Christian Nationalist misinformation, say the media and Democrats. But it's not. It's right there in the Declaration of Independence. Behind the Left's dehumanization of conservatives is an ignorant denial of America's spiritual foundation.
To his credit, Senator @timkaine reversed his position on natural rights a few days after the hearing. “Of course, I embrace the view, expressed so clearly in the Declaration of Independence authored by Virginian Thomas Jefferson, that all people are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I accept the Senator Kaine's change of mind, but he misrepresents the hearing by saying "Of course..."

Nobody who watches Kaine pedantically lecture State Department official Riley Barnes and walk away thinking Kaine agrees with the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

Notably, Kaine placed his oped describing his change of mind on natural rights at Fox where no MSNBC viewer is at any risk of reading it.

foxnews.com/opinion/sen-ti…
@timkaine According to the New Atheists the New Atheists failed like all scientism fails. They couldn't explain reality or deliver a positive vision or affirmative program. Their entire project rests on really dumb assumptions about reality and nature.

Read 4 tweets

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