Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The willow is too close to the house.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

This really is a full service blog.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Let’s finish the job.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Let there be snark.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Open Thread: Local Hero

Open Thread: Local Hero

by | 76 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

A man for our season, per CNN:

… [State Sen. Daylin] Leach’s outburst was inspired by a Politico article about a meeting Trump recently had with sheriffs from around the nation and a conversation during that meeting about asset forfeiture. That’s a legal practice in which a law enforcement agency seizes money and property that may have been obtained through criminal activities.

According to the article, Rockwall County, Texas, Sheriff Harold Eavenson mentioned that a state senator in Texas wanted to change the asset forfeiture law. The change would require that a person be convicted of a crime before his or her assets could be seized.

“Who is the state senator? Do you want to give his name? We’ll destroy his career,” Trump replied, according to Politico.

Leach is a Democrat whose Facebook feed is full of anti-Trump postings, though none were addressed directly to the President.

He has previously co-sponsored bills that attempted to reform asset forfeiture laws in Pennsylvania, his spokesman, Steve Hoenstine, said Thursday in an email.

After the Politico article ran, Leach posted on Facebook: “Hey! I oppose civil asset forfeiture too. Why don’t you come after me you fascist, loofa-faced s***-gibbon!!”…

Still later, Leach wrote on Facebook: “S***-Gibbon” goes viral! Maybe someday it will be written on my tombstone….or his.”…

Local outlet Philly.com seems to admire Sen. Leach’s stance:

He championed legalization of medical marijuana in Pennsylvania.

He spoke in defense of abortion rights during an emotional debate in Harrisburg.

But it wasn’t until State Sen. Daylin Leach posted the Tweet Heard Round the World that the Montgomery County Democrat went viral…

As of Thursday afternoon, the tweeter-in-chief had not responded. But many others had: a thousand phone calls, more than 12,000 retweets, nearly 30,000 likes… His voicemail box, which holds 150 messages, was full because no one had time to clear it. Interview requests had come from as far away as London.

A few, he said, were angry callers shouting personal insults. One respondent on Twitter labeled Leach “an intolerant leftist totalitarian ideologue,” while another upbraided him for “an immature and unprofessional comment.”

But Hoenstine said the message in “90 percent” of the calls was, “‘Hey, I’m from Denver,’ or ‘Hey, I’m from Boise,’ or ‘Hey, I’m from Alaska — I saw what Daylin said and I appreciate it.'”…

Leach said Thursday that his tweet was a spur-of-the-moment response and not a strategic missive to increase his national profile. Hoenstine, too, said he had no idea that the senator had sent the tweet until after it went live and a notification landed in his email inbox…

Apparently Sen. Leach has prior history, per Dan McQuade at Phillymag, “The Pennsylvania state senator got thousands and thousands of retweets…”:

Daylin Leach has been making jokes on the Internet about as long as I have…

But thanks to Twitter, everyone literally is now a comedian. And so Daylin Leach is back at it again on his Twitter account, where he tweets with abandon, clashes with critics, and dishes out sarcasm: “But its fair, because both rich and poor alike are free to donate $6,000,000 to federal candidates each cycle.”…

Moving right along…

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  4. 4.

    Ohio Mom

    A new fan here, too.

    I barely understand how asset forfeiture can be legal after a conviction but really, how could there not have been court cases striking down the idea that there can be pre-conviction asset seizures?

    Obviously, IANAL.

  5. 5.

    jl

    @Ohio Mom: IANAL either. And I would like to know too. I think the deal is that you can get it back if you are not convicted of a crime, but the burden of proof is always ever after, on you, not the state, not the cops who took it. I don’t understand how that is constitutional. I guess it is a process and it is doo (as in doo-doo), but that doesn’t make it right.

  6. 6.

    efgoldman

    @trollhattan:

    Can Betty join his speech-writing staff?

    Can he join Betty’s speechwriting staff?

    Cole, if you’re out there, offer this guy a front page slot.

  8. 8.

    debbie

    @Ohio Mom:

    That’s a legal practice in which a law enforcement agency seizes money and property that may have been obtained through criminal activities.

    Then Trump should have lost all his stuff years ago.

  9. 9.

    Baud

    @Ohio Mom:
    @jl:

    I’m not an expert, but it’s an old procedure that makes it easier for the government go after any property associated with a crime even if no one is convicted. I’d imagine in the old days it was used to capture smuggled goods. Like many things, the war on drugs led to its expansion.

    All of this is subject to correction by someone who knows what they are talking about.

  11. 11.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    One respondent on Twitter labeled Leach “an intolerant leftist totalitarian ideologue,” while another upbraided him for “an immature and unprofessional comment.”

    I get those all the time, but most of them are from people who belong to groups such as ‘Deplorables for Trump’ who also like ‘The Angry Patriot’, ‘Conservative News Today’, etc.

    Strangely enough, the pro-patriot groups generate a lot of posts that defend people who knob-polish Vladimir Putin.
    I wonder why….

  12. 12.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    I’d imagine in the old days it was used to capture smuggled goods.

    Back in the days of the Salem Witch Trials, the sheriff kept the property (including cows, horses, etc.) for himself. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he was one of the wealthiest men in town.

  14. 14.

    Another Scott

    Alec Baldwin is hosting SNL tonight. He and they have a mountain of material to work with. It could be one for the ages…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Asset forfeiture is bullshit, and anyone with the slightest familiarity with the Constitution (well, so much for Donald) should know it.

  16. 16.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    There is such a dearth of courage among white men – the only voices that carry weight – that this is considered to be brave, when actually, this should be the least of what we’re hearing from our elected officials when the entire executive branch has been handed over to the Russians. The fact is that it’s the constituents pushing them to be brave, which isn’t very brave, but hey, we’ll take it where we can get it.

  18. 18.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Civil Asset Forfeiture is total bullshit because it craps all over that whole ‘presumption of innocence’ thing.
    Criminal asset forfeiture is something else entirely.
    You know the difference, but I’m sure Dolt 45 doesn’t know and wouldn’t care even if he knew it.

  21. 21.

    hovercraft

    “an intolerant leftist totalitarian ideologue,” while another upbraided him for “an immature and unprofessional comment.”

    Appart from the word leftist they could be referring to the Trumpenfuror. These people know we can all see and hear him when he speaks right? Projection has always been a trademark of the right, but this is a whole new level.

  22. 22.

    Another Scott

    @Villago Delenda Est: It’s an old idea, and it took off under Reagan (of course). The argument is, it’s a civil action against property – not a charge against a person.

    The Economist:

    This is a procedure known as “civil-asset forfeiture”. Unlike criminal forfeiture, in which prosecutors seize the proceeds of criminal activity as punishment for a crime, civil-asset forfeiture does not require a conviction or even a criminal charge: in fact, a study by Henry Hyde, a Republican former congressman, and the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, found that 80% of people whose property was seized by the federal government were never charged with a crime. Forfeiture proceedings are brought not against people, but against property that law enforcement need only allege is connected to criminal activity. This can give proceedings in which forfeiture orders are contested bizarre names such as United States v $10,500 in U.S. Currency or State of New Jersey v One 1990 Ford Thunderbird. It also gives property owners fewer constitutional protections than criminal defendants would have; owners often have to prove their innocence to get their property back, rather than the state having to prove their guilt.

    Though civil-asset forfeiture has a long history, it took off in America following passage of some amendments to the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Prevention Act in 1984 that allowed police to keep and spend forfeiture proceeds. This gave law-enforcement agencies a direct financial incentive to take more stuff, and led to what the Institute for Justice (IJ), a libertarian law firm, calls “policing for profit”. In 1986 the federal Asset Forfeiture Fund took in $93.7m; by September 2013 the Fund held more than $2 billion in net assets. Some of those funds are disbursed to local law-enforcement agencies. As Sarah Stillman noted in her outstanding article on forfeiture abuses, many police departments depend on forfeiture funds to fill budget gaps, which further increases the incentive to snatch (for some, this is a feature, not a bug). Agencies can spend funds with relatively little oversight on activities only tenuously related to law-enforcement: in Atlanta’s Fulton County, for instance, the district attorney’s office is alleged to have spent forfeiture funds on a Christmas party, flowers, a security system for the district attorney’s home and assorted yummies including “mini crab cakes in a champagne sauce” (Paul Howard, the district attorney, insists such expenditures have reduced turnover and improved morale).

    The IJ’s common-sense recommendation for reforms to American forfeiture laws include increasing oversight and reporting requirements on police departments, curbing the financial incentive by directing seized assets into a neutral fund (such as education or drug treatment) or a municipality’s general fund and placing the burden of proof on the government rather than property owners. Easier said than done: efforts to reform civil-asset forfeiture have been slow and piecemeal. It turns out police departments rather like being able to supplement their budgets by taking people’s stuff. Late last year lawmakers in Utah rolled back some reforms to their asset-forfeiture laws. A proposed reform bill in Georgia won the opposition of the state’s sheriffs and in March died in the legislature for the second straight year. Maryland’s state police oppose a bill that would require them to report what they seize, why and the results of any criminal charges filed. Prosecutors in Minnesota oppose a bill that would return property to its owners if they are not convicted of a crime (this and two previous examples come from a recent post by the invaluable Radley Balko). As for the Kaleys, on February 25th the United States Supreme Court ruled against them, holding that the government can in fact seize your assets before trial, even if doing so impedes your Sixth Amendment right to the counsel of your choice. John Roberts, the chief justice, dissented from that ruling, calling it “fundamentally at odds with our constitutional tradition and basic notions of fair play.”

    (See the original for embedded links.)

    Of course it’s a nonsense legal argument, and it’s just a way for the cops to easily steal.

    Anything that directly results in more money going to police departments as a result of their own actions is going to happen more. (Cui bono?) The quickest way to cut back on it is to stop the proceeds from going directly to the cops.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  23. 23.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Another Scott:

    Alec Baldwin is hosting SNL tonight

    Baldwin’s Trump, McCarthy’s Spicer, and O’Donnell’s Bannon. Could be among the most epic SNLs ever!

    ETA: I’m imagining big here, of course. I have no idea whether this is what Lorne Michaels has in mind. But a girl can dream.

  24. 24.

    Another Scott

    @Villago Delenda Est: It’s an old idea, and it took off under Reagan (of course). The argument is, it’s a civil action against property – not a charge against a person.

    The Economist:

    This is a procedure known as “civil-asset forfeiture”. Unlike criminal forfeiture, in which prosecutors seize the proceeds of criminal activity as punishment for a crime, civil-asset forfeiture does not require a conviction or even a criminal charge: in fact, a study by Henry Hyde, a Republican former congressman, and the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, found that 80% of people whose property was seized by the federal government were never charged with a crime. Forfeiture proceedings are brought not against people, but against property that law enforcement need only allege is connected to criminal activity. This can give proceedings in which forfeiture orders are contested bizarre names such as United States v $10,500 in U.S. Currency or State of New Jersey v One 1990 Ford Thunderbird. It also gives property owners fewer constitutional protections than criminal defendants would have; owners often have to prove their innocence to get their property back, rather than the state having to prove their guilt.

    Though civil-asset forfeiture has a long history, it took off in America following passage of some amendments to the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Prevention Act in 1984 that allowed police to keep and spend forfeiture proceeds. This gave law-enforcement agencies a direct financial incentive to take more stuff, and led to what the Institute for Justice (IJ), a libertarian law firm, calls “policing for profit”. In 1986 the federal Asset Forfeiture Fund took in $93.7m; by September 2013 the Fund held more than $2 billion in net assets. Some of those funds are disbursed to local law-enforcement agencies. As Sarah Stillman noted in her outstanding article on forfeiture abuses, many police departments depend on forfeiture funds to fill budget gaps, which further increases the incentive to snatch (for some, this is a feature, not a bug). Agencies can spend funds with relatively little oversight on activities only tenuously related to law-enforcement: in Atlanta’s Fulton County, for instance, the district attorney’s office is alleged to have spent forfeiture funds on a Christmas party, flowers, a security system for the district attorney’s home and assorted yummies including “mini crab cakes in a champagne sauce” (Paul Howard, the district attorney, insists such expenditures have reduced turnover and improved morale).

    The IJ’s common-sense recommendation for reforms to American forfeiture laws include increasing oversight and reporting requirements on police departments, curbing the financial incentive by directing seized assets into a neutral fund (such as education or drug treatment) or a municipality’s general fund and placing the burden of proof on the government rather than property owners. Easier said than done: efforts to reform civil-asset forfeiture have been slow and piecemeal. It turns out police departments rather like being able to supplement their budgets by taking people’s stuff. Late last year lawmakers in Utah rolled back some reforms to their asset-forfeiture laws. A proposed reform bill in Georgia won the opposition of the state’s sheriffs and in March died in the legislature for the second straight year. Maryland’s state police oppose a bill that would require them to report what they seize, why and the results of any criminal charges filed. Prosecutors in Minnesota oppose a bill that would return property to its owners if they are not convicted of a crime (this and two previous examples come from a recent post by the invaluable Radley Balko). As for the Kaleys, on February 25th the United States Supreme Court ruled against them, holding that the government can in fact seize your assets before trial, even if doing so impedes your Sixth Amendment right to the counsel of your choice. John Roberts, the chief justice, dissented from that ruling, calling it “fundamentally at odds with our constitutional tradition and basic notions of fair play.”

    (See the original for embedded links.)

    Of course it’s a nonsense legal argument, and it’s just a way for the cops to easily steal.

    Anything that directly results in more money going to police departments as a result of their own actions is going to happen more. (Cui bono?) The quickest way to cut back on it is to stop the proceeds from going directly to the cops.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  26. 26.

    Another Scott

    @Villago Delenda Est: It’s an old idea, and it took off under Reagan (of course). The argument is, it’s a civil action against property – not a charge against a person.

    The Economist:

    Including some magic word that FYWP hates

    (See the original for embedded links.)

    Of course it’s a nonsense legal argument, and it’s just a way for the cops to easily steal.

    Anything that directly results in more money going to police departments as a result of their own actions is going to happen more. (Cui bono?) The quickest way to cut back on it is to stop the proceeds from going directly to the cops.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @hovercraft:
    When Trumpistas on FB & Twitter use polysyllabic words arranged into complete sentences, odds are it’s from a new meme that’s circulating and not their original handiwork.

    They should at least try to appear original and rewrite it using no big words & small incomplete sentences.

  37. 37.

    Yarrow

    @SiubhanDuinne: Beck Bennett’s shirtless Putin has been really great too.

    In other SNL news:

    VoteVets, a group describing itself as the largest progressive veterans group in America with more than 500,000 vets, families and supporters, says it will air its controversial commercial during SNL tonight, demanding continued health care coverage for veterans. (Watch it above.)

    “Hey @realDonaldTrump – remember us?” VoteVets says in a tweet that includes the commercial. “Since you won’t meet with vets at the WH, we’re airing this ad on #SNL this weekend to get on your TV.”

  44. 44.

    El Caganer

    Am I pushing the comparison too far when I think that Trump reminds me of the character Dim in A Clockwork Orange? “Uh, uh, uh -not to be calling me Trump no more. President call me.”

  45. 45.

    Mike in NC

    Shitgibbon must be freaking out tonight after report of North Korean missile test. Shelter in place!

  46. 46.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Yarrow: VoteVets is a great group, and they’re going right after Shitgibbon, deliberately, that draft dodging fraud.

  47. 47.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Patricia Kayden:
    Correct.
    Unfortunately the Trumpista ranks include some of my family.
    My father is an intolerant Muslim-hating bigot who thinks Jack Van Impe tells the literal word of God & my uncle Jerry hates ‘inner city welfare cheats’.

  48. 48.

    Mike G

    @Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman):

    When my uncle was in the hospital a half-dozen years back, my aunt said the nurses were drawing up lists of patients to euthanize “because of Obamacare” — two years before it went into law.

    An acquaintance lives in Section 8 housing, works part-time at a state-funded junior college, and gets the rest of his income from an injury lawsuit against the county — and bitches constantly about taxes and welfare.

  49. 49.

    joel hanes

    @jl:

    I think the deal is that you can get it back if you are not convicted of a crime

    Nope, not usually. You don’t even have to be formally accused of a crime, ever, or arrested.
    Sometimes people sue to get their stuff back and win. Not often.

  55. 55.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @Ohio Mom: There’s nothing untoward about demanding the forfeiture of any tools used to commit a crime, or the proceeds of the crime. But that requires a conviction.

    Civil asset forfeiture is nominally legal because there is due process – against the object. If an officer catches you with lots of cash, the case will be “The state of (your state) against $4328.92” and thus, due process will be carried out. That it harms you is disregarded, since, after all, they suspect that was drug money (or whatever). But this argument has been accepted by the courts.

    It’s great for making money for police departments and cities and states, and it doesn’t affect enough people to create a critical mass, so it’s accepted. It’s a big sign of how unhealthy our society is – it goes against principles espoused by both sides of the aisle. But still a clear, obvious and “useful” injustice is allowed.

  56. 56.

    Chris T.

    One of the fascinating things about asset forfeiture is that the asset itself is accused of the crime. “Ohh, you bad $100 bill! You stole a $100 bill! I’m takin’ you to mah jail!” I think the John Oliver video (@RM) mentions this.

  57. 57.

    Ohio Mom

    @LongHairedWeirdo: That helps a little. You rob a bank, or someone’s house and take their jewelry, you’re caught and found guilty, obviously you can’t keep the money or the diamond necklace. But doesn’t the stolen/recovered property go back to the original owner?

    I watched the John Oliver video. The idea that the police could seize a couple’s house because their son was caught with illegal drugs — how can the house be given due process? This is even more inane than the idea that a corporation is a person.

    Can’t someone make enough of a case to take this to a higher court? What level courts have accepted this as well, acceptable?

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ohio Mom:

    Can’t someone make enough of a case to take this to a higher court? What level courts have accepted this as well, acceptable?

    The Supremes.

    ETA: Bennis v. Michigan, 516 U.S. 442 (1996)

  60. 60.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ohio Mom: It wasn’t even a case about civil forfeitures – it was a case about the innocent owner defense. Good sense and decency lost. The idea of forfeitures is long established.

  63. 63.

    Adrift

    @Another Scott:

    Alec Baldwin is hosting SNL tonight. He and they have a mountain of material to work with. It could be one for the ages…

    I am normally not up late enough to watch but I am making an exception tonight.

  64. 64.

    Adrift

    @Another Scott:

    It’s an old idea, and it took off under Reagan (of course). The argument is, it’s a civil action against property – not a charge against a person.

    Yes, the cases are “US vs. $2,038.00” and “US vs. 1978 Oldsmobile”. It’s completely ridiculous and extremely sad considering people are stripped of their assets for no good reason. They have to prove they (or their property) are not guilty of an accusation.

  65. 65.

    Adrift

    If anyone is still following this thread it has come to my attention that I have an unusual knack of commenting at the end of dying threads. I should change my nym to ‘threadkiller’

  66. 66.

    Ohio Mom

    @Omnes Omnibus: I found a very long — but comprehendable to me — article on the Bennis case. Only read the first 14 pages, didn’t go on to read the whole history of forfeiture.

    I was left disgusted. Also saddened to see RBG on the wrong side. And the irony of it all being over a junker of a car.

  67. 67.

    NMgal

    @chris: Thanks for the link, chris. Cheering from the great white north (where it was 65 today at 7250 feet, global warming is a Chinese hoax why do you ask)

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @Ruckus:

    Not even. J R will roll by and close a thread the next day. And you’re not even the latest of the West Coast night owls.

  76. 76.

    SFAW

    @Ruckus:

    I think I got you beat, old man. Well, when I come here regularly, that is. I’ll cede the rest to you, however.

    ETA: In olden days, commenters used to be big on “First!” I guess that has flipped.

Comments are closed.