112 Comments
Feb 21, 2022Liked by Michael Shellenberger

Absolutely impeccable journalism. This issue needs a blinding UV spotlight on it until it disinfects the entire situation for good. Finding out where the billions of dollars is going would be worth taking a look at. There are people stuffing their pockets, do doubt. Disgraceful. Need to find out who these people are and expose them for their gross incompetence, and possible fraud. While I understand no one likes to take responsibility in wokesim, they will run out of places to hide.

Expand full comment
Feb 21, 2022Liked by Michael Shellenberger

99% of the time, 5150 is a waste of everyone’s time. The sick person is taken to the Sheriff, or to some sort of “evaluation” facility. Minimal effort is spent trying to figure out what is wrong with the person. There may or may not be even an interview. Most of the time the upshot is that the person is released.

Expand full comment
Feb 21, 2022·edited Feb 21, 2022

The town I grew up in had a large mental hospital where many people like this were kept safe and comfortable. The hospital was a source pride to the community. People from the town worked there and many others volunteered either individually or through groups like the Nights of Columbus. I visited people there often and was a sad place to go, but at the time it was the best alternative for people who could not function in normal society. Sometime in the early 80s they began releasing the people and they immediately became homeless and living in the streets of the downtown area. Not only did it destroy the people but it ruined the downtown area as well. Within a short time, people started avoiding the area and the shops that lined the streets soon began to close. Families that had owned businesses for two or three generations had to close their shops and find other work. The area became run down with empty lots and buildings where the homeless lived and even today the city suffers from what happened almost 40 years ago despite every attempt to revitalize the area.

The hospital with its dozens of beautiful late 19th and early 20th century architecture sits empty and rotting.

This was all the result of progressive activism; they closed these hospitals down.

Expand full comment

"What, then, is going on? Why are progressives, who say they care so much about black lives, sacrificing so many of them?"

Because it's a virtue signal, a pose, a status jockeying stunt, nothing less and nothing more. If you believe one of these progressive liberals, especially the white wealthy ones, you're misguided.

There's a book called "SJW's Always Lie" that goes into this quite well.

Expand full comment

Black people don't exist for white liberals (mostly because they don't know any), they are not considered or treated as actual people but as SYMBOLS.

For the modern white liberal, black people represent a sort of Platonic Victim, who can never do but only be done to, whose lives and histories are an endless Via Dolorosa, who exist to remind us of the sins of our forefathers and, most especially, of the hateful bigotry of those other Bad Whites over there. They are both Jesus and the Christian martyrs, the suffering servant all Good Whites know to include in their prayers.

For white liberals black people exist first and foremost as a weapon to wield against their political opponents (I care about them much more than you do, bigot!) and also as a social signal that serves the same purpose as a crucifix: to let others know you represent the side of the Good.

Essentially, white liberals have sacralized black Americans and their history and their suffering, so any actual realities or empirical policies are either secondary or nonexistent; what matters first and foremost is the public worshipping (mouthing the proper pieties and prayers), aka being a member in good standing of the Woke Church.

Expand full comment

I’m afraid the past decades have made me very cynical. My take on this horror show is that if they actually fixed what’s so obviously broken and helped these poor people, the money spigot would not flow as freely and graft and money laundering would be severely impacted. Can’t have that!

Expand full comment
Feb 21, 2022Liked by Michael Shellenberger

Another great piece, Michael. For some further insights on the nexus between tax-exempt foundations and non-profits in terms of shifting policy regarding the formerly-institutionalized, this is an interesting piece from a few years back --

https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-edna-mcconnell-clark-foundation-administering-strong-shocks-to-u-s-society-and-the-mentally-ill/

Expand full comment

I think if you strip away all the motion around the issue (and soooo many others in society) enacted by pols on down to the bureaucracies et al, and examine the human, psychological motives underlying their behaviour you are left with the conclusion that these solutions are first and foremost about them and what they need to feel, and not what the victims feel and need to get better.

Only when those that are in control grow up will real solutions be enacted and the problem solved.

Expand full comment
Feb 21, 2022Liked by Michael Shellenberger

The answer is four letters: ACLU

Expand full comment

Who needs results when you can just virtue signal? The same progressives will chant Stop Asian Hate while advocating policies that harm Asians: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-stop-asian-hate

Expand full comment

Minneapolis MN in 2020, 4 out of 5 homicide victims were black. Minneapolis MN in 2021, 4 out of 5 homicide victims are black. The black population is 1 out of 5 Minneapolis residents.

Expand full comment

It's Reagan's fault? Ha! Tells you all you need to know about so-called liberals and progressives.

Expand full comment

To Democrats black lives matter only when they can be politically exploited (i.e police or white supremacist shootings). Black livelihoods don't matter at all to Democrats, they'd rather blame the 1% for all the economic hardships that black people face than admit their own policies have failed. Black peoples educations don't matter at all to Democrats either, the money that they get from teachers unions does which is why Democrats oppose school choice despite the fact that most black people want their kids out of bad schools. The Democrat Party has exploited black people since its inception, it just has them on a different kind of plantation today that keeps them dependent on the government as much as possible without actually helping them to get ahead.

Expand full comment

Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing this. You are truly a blessing to this world. Two people a day dieing of OD on the streets of SF is a crime against humanity. These people need help!

Expand full comment

Before you go on and on being an apologist for Ronny Raygun. Consider this piece of history. When he first became president, he announced he believed that all social services should be handled through philanthropies or privatized. To that, he committed to dismantling our infrastructure to further advance this privatization. I recommend a new book called THE PRIVATIZATION OF EVERYTHING.

I remember this because at the time I published a small progressive news rag. Reagan was the laughing stock of progressives. One source did an investigation to see just how much Reagan himself, theis guy who heralded philanthropy as the solution to every problem. Guess what they discovered? Near NOTHING.

His VP G. Bush would continue this form of virtue-signaling. He started a nonprofit called Points of Light. Aryanna Huffington was put in charge of fund raising. She eventually quit and later blew the whistle. Republicans, she said, have little to no interest in philanthropy. Soon after she joined the Democratic party, as if that would solve the problem, but if you knew her issues with her ex-husband, a GOP Senator, maybe it makes more sense. She went on to publish the Huffington Post.

Expand full comment

Headline says "Progressives Don't Care For Black Lives"

Content says cops won't 5150 a mentally ill homeless person.

So cops are now progressives?

Expand full comment