397 Comments
Feb 7, 2022Liked by Michael Shellenberger, Nellie Bowles

It's hard to find a philosophical home these days. I'd always considered myself fiscally conservative and socially liberal and so never felt comfortable anywhere until my nephews educated me about the libertarians. But I was very uncomfortable about the Completely Unregulated Drug Use thing.

I read with great interest Bari's open letter when she fled the NY Times, having followed her writings for some time. Nellie I knew less about, but had read some of hers. A lifelong hunter and conservationist, I began to read Michael Shellenberger, a dedicated environmental advocate who had begun to question the Environmental Crazies, and here he is!

I look forward to Common Sense each and every day - the writings of reasonable, classic liberalism, with a clear understanding of the dangers of unbridled socialism, nutcase-outrageous environmentalism, communist-inspired radicalism. Finally. I'm home.

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Do you really need more evidence that progressivism is insanity? Seriously? I lived in NYC under the Dinkins reign of terror that was thought intractable. All it took was public disgust - even among West Village and UWS liberals - and Giuliani cleaned up the mess in a few years. It isn't hard, you just have to have a usable brain and be able to see cause and effect. Sorry but progressives don't. They claim they care but allow vulnerable people to wallow in human misery while robbing law abiding taxpayers of the joys of urban life. Everything a progressive touches turns to merde.

As far as fentanyl, it comes from China. An act of war. Why are we buying anything from these fiends? Ban and boycott China's products, including their reprise of the 1936 Olympics.

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Feb 7, 2022·edited Feb 7, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles

New York City is certainly no shining model of success, at least during the disastrous De Blasio reign. They have a huge and growing homeless/addict problem, which translates into skyrocketing street crime. Combine that with a lunatic D.A. who releases criminals with no bail, treating the police as the enemy, and you have a complete meltdown in progress.

De Blasio forced a hotel to accept dozens of homeless, at a cost of millions of dollars to the city; they proceeded to trash the facilities and turn the surrounding sidewalks into feces-infested drug dens... because some homeless, it turns out, don't actually want a nice home and wouldn't know what to do with one if handed it for free.

It turns out that Trump was right after all. Close the border and stop the flow of fentanyl from Mexico. Slap a huge tariff on Chinese imports and demand they close down their fentanyl factories. Push for education reform including superior alternative pathways such as charter schools. Establish opportunity zones in the bombed out cities, and incentivize small and large businesses to go there. Call out and praise black entrepreneurs. Pressure companies to keep their domestic plants and factories open, and reform the tax code to make this work, and attract more foreign investment, and repatriate trillions of overseas dollars. Push for more blue-collar training.

This isn't hard. It's common sense. Sadly, the liberals, and really the general, uninformed, gullible fools that make up the majority of the electorate, didn't get it, and threw him out. And now, we are seeing the same awful, failed "progressive" policies promulgated in every major city in this once-great country. For those of us who grew up in better times, it's hard to watch this long, slow decline, and it's tempting to throw up our hands and say, screw'em. They voted for this insanity, now let them suffer with it.

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Feb 7, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles

Portland is very much like San Francisco. My first apartment here was down the street from a large homeless encampment. It came along with the frequent car thefts, feces on the sidewalk, dirty needles strewn about. I know a number of people that do not even let their dogs go out in their yards unsupervised after one horrific incident. A homeless man took a puppy from someone’s yard. After the puppy failed to get him extra cash while panhandling he dismembered it. He then left the dead puppy on the owners doorstep.

We keep having initiatives for housing first proposals. We do have an affordable housing issue, where it is not uncommon to hear about teachers living in their cars. But we aren’t doing much to help people that work full time but struggle to afford rent. Instead we spend millions on the people living on the street. I can’t help but wonder, wouldn’t it be more attractive to stop working and live on the street with all of the services provided as opposed to working but falling through the cracks?

There is so much pontification and naive idea less. I see well meaning people get upset at private businesses around town limiting access to their toilets. They aren’t the ones that have to go in and clean up the bathrooms afterwards that featured poop paint murals and drug residue.

If you suggest that you want to be able to safely use parks with your children, you run the risk of being lectured about how you are victimizing the homeless. The answer always seems to be raise taxes on people making 50K+/yr and home owners. It would be nice if tax payers were able to use the cities Public areas without having to worry about getting accosted.

Just enabling people doesn’t seem to be working but we keep doing it.

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Feb 7, 2022Liked by Michael Shellenberger, Nellie Bowles

Can we all agree, Michael Schellenberger is a hero for exposing this! I saw him interviewed on Joe Rogan a few months back and my mind was blown - his compassion, rationality and very doable logical solutions when it comes to the massive drug problem and environment (hello nuclear energy!) are what this country needs right now. Just bought both his books and can’t wait to read them! Thank you for being so brave against this Soros funded radical progressive free fall into drug insanity that’s killing so many lives that could have been saved.

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Feb 7, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles

I was born and raised in SF a long time ago, moved away in the 70s. It breaks my heart to see my beautiful city turned into a cess pool. What happened to the citizens who allow this to happen? They voted for progressive idiots. Pelosi, Boudin, Breed, a long string of them. I don’t see it getting better any time soon.

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founding
Feb 7, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles

Dear Bari - besides more articles like this one about the bankrupt policies of the progressive left whether it be in education, government, public health, etc., it would be so valuable to all of us if you would also write about the sanity around us, governance that is rational, even handed, non-Marxist, whatever...lives of everyday people who do not live in left wing dystopias....these gulags you describe are all dead ends, literally....

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founding
Feb 7, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles

How is this not labeled as sanctioned murder in the press? How is this not a human’s rights issue? “Here’s some more poison,” says London Breed. Maybe she wants them to die out? This is homicidal poison. Breed and Newsom make Trump look like the Dalai Lama. How are these leaders allowed to do this? Who is protecting these people from themselves? Why aren’t progressives protesting this inhumane treatment? How is Gavin Newsom still in power?

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Feb 7, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles

The greed driven realpolitik that defines the American power mad "woke for profit" top heavy bureaucratic state continues.

Demand a study. Feign horror at the condition of the oppressed. Declare yourself crusader exemplar. Climb upon the high horse of moral rectitude and cash in. Tax payer funded Federal and State grants flow like water. Our Eternal Lady of Corporate Tax Deductible Largess proclaims your sainthood and your fiefdom is born on an industrial scale. Because slaying the dragon would destroy the goldmine, the banner of virtue must obfuscate all legitimate dialogue about practical solutions. Heretics must be silenced and their careers burned in the electronic square. Above all, the bureaucratic overlords must be well informed about any possible revolt of the serfs. Then, in the wee hours of a chill morning you realize that there is only one law of survival. Never admit that the chaos created by bad financial and social policy serves avaricious greed and the dead citizen with the spike in her arm is its profit center.

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I've been thinking in a conservative vein lately...that while getting married and having children relatively young (i.e. early 20s) may have been stifling to a certain extent, this 'please the self for as long as possible' edict sure as hell isn't evidence of a fertile society. When I think back on the lively suburban street I grew up on -- kids spilling out of every orifice -- now it's a tomb -- and all these wailing, gross, overweight pink-haired women in their 20s who basically have no purpose -- when I lived in SF in the early 90s, the aimlessness that surrounded me, which turned so quickly to drugs -- but heaven forbid we should SACRIFICE OURSELVES FOR OTHERS, i.e. kids and a husband and a community...oh NO...that sounds like HELL...it's much better to live with a pile of dysfunctional roommates, hooking up with guys you'll never see again...scabbing up your face with drugs and hard living..."No way was I ready to have kids when I was twenty...!" YES, you were: YOU WOULD HAVE GROWN THE HELL UP...especially if everyone around you had to GROW THE HELL UP TOO...and on that note, I remember seeing a twenty-something obese couple, a Tweedle-Dee and a Tweedle-Dum, lumbering up Franklin Avenue bearing the burden of a gigantic cat...their CHILD....their faces stretched in some DEEPLY CARING emotion...yet if you asked DEE and DUM whether they were ready for children...OH NO...CAN'T HAVE THAT...So...what am I saying here? As a useless idiot who took the ME ME ME message to heart, and wound up with NOTHING....I know all too well where this messaging is taking us...the PINK-HAIRED FEMINIST PIPER...leading fools off a cliff...

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In addition to supporting and sustaining addiction in SF, they are also supporting the Mexican drug cartels. Fentanyl seizures on the border are at record highs, as more than one million people have flooded in to be trafficked or abused.

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My sympathy for the good people of SF no longer exists. Zilch. Nada.

They got EXACTLY what they voted for.

As insane as some elements of the GOP are, at least red cities have some semblance of law and order.

All one has to do to see where the Democrats and progressives would like to take us is to look at LA and SF.

Hard pass on their “compassion” and “concern.”

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Feb 7, 2022·edited Feb 7, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles

The only way change can happen is if it starts affecting most. Just remember that S.F. has been on this path for years and state money keeps increasing for it; when money keeps flowing for 'homelessness' and not controlling the drug problem(rehab, etc.) the problem will not go away.

Like my own Twin Cities there has been no political balance in S.F. since the early '60s and this is a result. Personally, if you support controlled drug usage, fine. What society cannot accept is the destruction of another's personal property without penalty. In other words, you can drug yourself to infinity, just do not make me pay for it either directly or by destroying my personal property.

California law is accepting up to $950 of stealing other peoples property before being charged. Seems to me to a large root of the problem. Cal. politicians are pro-crime and that needs to change.

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Feb 7, 2022·edited Feb 7, 2022

“Voters have found themselves in the strange position of paying for fentanyl, meth and crack use on public property. “

So maybe this guy should do an investigation on how much the cartels/China is paying the leftists in charge. And expand that to the democrats in Congress that are denying fentanyl stay a schedule one drug even though they are keeping marijuana schedule one. It’s madness what the left is doing to this country.

Why should taxpayers pay for more than one narcan shot? Some of these addicts get “saved” regularly, obviously learning nothing except there are a bunch of suckers out there willing to fund their deathstyle.

And BTW, the Netherlands sometimes supplies heroin yet we are to believe they condemn hard drug use? What pray tell, do they consider hard drugs if not for heroin?

The west is rotting from within and the left is not only okay with that, it’s a feature of the left.

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SF policies destroy the lives of the drug addled and the middle and lower classes that lack the financial means to leave the insanity. The situation is allowed to continue because billionaires and multimillionaires residing in SF, experience the city in an entirely different manner.

In one of the city's many ironies, Presidio Heights' streets are kept clean and safe 24/7, despite the fact residents continually implement and cheer on failed SF programs, in order to maintain their social justice status. The homeless are neither dying in front of their mansions nor crawling thru their bedroom windows in an attempt to finance their addictions. Private security and staff ensure the urban ills that have invaded the rest of city, remain someone else's problem.

Tranquility is important when doing the Lord's work. PH residents cannot be bothered with homelessness, ODs, drug deaths or the fact only 1 in 10 SF Black and Brown male students can read or perform Math at grade level. They are too busy relocating the NBA All Star game from North Carolina, ensuring MLB festivities do not occur in Georgia and forbidding CA state employees from traveling, on the state's dime, to the Hermit Kingdom of Texas.

SF's current state will never improve until private security is outlawed or the rot becomes so prevalent, it can no longer be kept from the streets of obscenely wealthy, liberal neighborhoods. If the children of the rich and famous had endure stepping in human waste and watching addicts perish on the street, while walking to schools that failed 90% of their students, the insanity would stop in a week.

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Feb 7, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles

A ghastly account of what has happened to a once-great city, and not only this one, but Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Baltimore ... you can name the others; it’s a long list. The cat may be too far out of the bag for the bizarre handling of this “homeless” problem to be undone.

I will only say that its principal cause is glaringly obvious: The voting in of the leftists who run ... er, run down ... these cities. I was just in Tampa/St. Pete. The contrast between it and the aforementioned cities could not be more stark. You reap what - whom! - you vote for.

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