Okay, I'd expect this from PBUS, but not from ABC. But once again, the bail insurance companies show how low they can go by posting personal attacks against various people they believe are behind this generation of bail reform.
They're trying to subtly hide them by putting all the personal attacks on a separate site and FB page, but unfortunately the address for that is the same address listed for ABC on it's main website. Make no mistake, if it's against bail reform and it's trashing someone personally who is for bail reform, it's probably the bail insurance companies that are responsible for it, no matter how many layers they use to shield themselves.
Specifically, ABC has been naming people and questioning their motives, insulting them, and even portraying them in horrible (I suppose ABC thinks they're funny) pictures. Really, has anyone ever taken a picture of a sitting justice on a state supreme court and portrayed him as the devil? Yes, the bail insurance companies have.
Early in my bail career, I named one guy publicly and quickly came to regret it. I shouldn't have named him because he was just doing his job, which just happened to include a radically different ideology than my own. In fact, at the time I named him, I didn't really even think I was doing it as a slight -- it just turned out that way later on. I named another guy privately, but he forced me to do it. Then he decided to become an expert witness for the bail insurance companies, and, well, you're just asking for trouble when you do that. I think maybe he retired.
Since then, though, I've really tried (and, believe me, it's hard) to not name actual people in this bail reform thing. I'll talk about the companies and their lobbyists, but nobody should have to walk around thinking some goofball has put their picture on the web with horns and a tail. If you know me, you know that mostly I talk about issues (feel free to read some of the papers on my website). I write all the time, and none of it is about individual people, unless you count someone like Alexis de Tocqueville. My last paper was 200 pages and all I talked about was constitutional language. Can't you insurance companies at least try to do the same thing?
I want you bail insurance people to ask yourselves a question. When you were little, and your mother asked what you wanted to do when you grew up, did you say, "I'd like to trash the personal character of anyone who gets in my way of making gobs of money?"
The other day a bail insurance dude asked, "Why don't you just ask the bondsmen?" Well, one reason is that whenever we ask people in your industry about the issues, we get personal attacks. And, bail agents, just remember that personal attacks are the sign of desperation. Argumentum ad hominem seems okay, but it never works. The fact that this logical fallacy even has a name ought to tip you off.
There's still time for you all to create a decent strategy around this thing that doesn't involve personal attacks. The fact that you make them at all, tells my you don't know what that strategy even is.
This is the sleaziest thing you've ever done, and it plays into the slow degradation of our civil discourse. For that, you get the weasel pic -- twice.
