Prepare your talking points!

[elfs]

A couple of weeks ago, I highlighted a conversation between Seattle's right-wing pundit (and former GOP candidate for Washington State Governor) John Carlson and the director of Insite Canada, in which Carlson was delighted to learn that Insite's record of getting people off heroin was less-than-stellar.

I pointed out that the point of Insite wasn't to get people off drugs. And it isn't. Instead, as the end-of-year report highlights, the point of Insite is to keep people alive, and in the thirteen years that Insite has been active, not a single person who uses Insite's facilities has died of a drug overdose.

156 people died of opioid overdose in King County in 2015, and the King County Director of Public Health said 2016 was on track for a similar tragic outcome.

I doubt those deaths weigh heavily on Carlson's conscience.

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[elfs.livejournal.com]

In 2003, David Frum, who's recently been praised for being one of those conservative writers who ran away from Trump with his hair on fire, wrote a book called Dead Right.

In it, Frum described what conservatives consider capitalism's greatest gift: it's frightening.

The great, overwhelming fact of a capitalist economy is risk. Everyone is at constant risk of the loss of his job... Risk makes people circumspect. It disciplines them and teaches them self-control... Without welfare and food stamps, poor people would cling harder to working-class respectability than they do not.

It is not capitalism's ability to generate wealth that's beneficial. Instead, the true benefit of capitalism is that it, the closer you are to the poverty line, the less margin for error you have, the more likely you're going to be "disciplined" and "respectable" to those who can afford to fuck up, and fuck you over, again and again.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

That goes the other way too. When you and your family are hungry and have no hope, then there is no incentive not to rise up and disrupt the status quo. France in 1789, Russia in 1917, and China in the years 17, 21, 184, 399, 756, 1351, 1644, 1674, and so on are examples.