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Edit: After feedback, I deleted my snarky comment, which I wrote based on misunderstanding the use of "plain-old".

• opo 10y ago
  >99.999% of everyone who knows what asset forfeiture is knows it because of John Oliver. Asset forfeiture has been controversial since it started being used much more frequently in the 1980s. I really doubt most of the people commenting on it here first heard of it on John Oliver's show.
  • eric_h 10y ago
    Haha, indeed. I think I'd heard of it many years ago, but I didn't really understand how fucking absurd it is until a story about it appeared here on HN. A year (~ish/maybe, my memory of timelines is fucking terrible) later I saw the John Oliver episode.
• rconti 10y ago
  Slow down there. First of all, the parent didn't claim to be a genius who had some pre-existing knowledge. Secondly, even if (s)he learned it from John Oliver, how does that make it less a part of parent's knowledge? Furthermore, the use of "plain-old" was a way of indicating that this is a new method but an old process; eg, it's not legally any different from normal asset seizure. Finally, and most importantly, I don't see any bias or why you even call it that.
• TDL 10y ago
  Radley Balko has been writing about asset forfeiture for about a decade. He has done more to bring this issue to the medias attention than John Oliver has. It is completely unfair to claim that no one knew what was going until someone famous began to popularize it more. Not that there is anything wrong with John Oliver hopping on the band wagon, that's good thing.
• tamana 10y ago
  It's best to just avoid snarky comments completely.
  • mangeletti 10y ago
    In your opinion.