Monday, June 17, 2019

ABC's Personal Attacks

This last week two people on two different statewide commissions created to make recommendations on bail directed me to blogs and posts by people in the bail insurance industry (well, one was both a bondsman and an insurance guy, but you get the gist) attacking me personally. Those commission people told me about those posts not because they believed them and wanted clarification, but because they thought they were pretty horrible and couldn't believe they were written. Nice going, guys. You're upsetting the very people you don't want to upset. When they see you go after me, their first thought is that they could easily be next.

Indeed, this is the third time in as many weeks that I've seen ABC attack me by name. I've been doing this for over 12 years, and I've only named a guy once. That was a mistake, and I wrote about it later by way of apology.

I do mention the insurance companies by company name because they're the root of the problem facing the industry. But I don't go around naming various presidents, vice presidents, or lobbyists by name. Nevertheless, their response to bail reform is to go after individual people, like me, Justice Daniels, Justice Cantil-Sakauye, Alec K, and others personally, when they could easily simply write about "activists," "bail reformers," "judges," or any of a hundred other terms to describe what is going on. They don't know the substance and so they go after people.

If you're a bail agent, just take a minute to think about where that has gotten you all as an industry. Across the country, judges and others have decided that they simply don't care if money is left in the system or not. They're just not going to use commercial sureties anymore. That's entirely due to ABC and its burn everything and everyone strategy.