Posted on 03/05/2016 2:23:39 PM PST by SatinDoll
It's amusing to watch people latch onto something that they think is full of red meat and beat their heads against the wall pontificating on it, when there's just no "there" there.
This is one of those times.
Let's take the base argument: Trump University was a "per-se" fraud because it wasn't an accredited school.
Ok, fair enough -- and the name was changed to the Trump Entrepreneurship Institute [TEI] following NY State having a hissy fit over the name. But folks -- that's a naming dispute, not a dispute over the substance of the material.
Schneiderman has his own take on this and is suing; I predict he's going to lose, but I could be wrong. There's plenty of spin involved in these allegations by the people doing the suing and quite a bit of appearance of abuse of power (in the case of Schneiderman particularly), but here's the real problem all these suits have in common: There's apparently a record from many, if not most, filing evaluations at the time of the seminars in which they claim to be satisfied, and which bears their signatures. In other words where are the damages if almost nobody is unhappy with what they paid for? It certainly makes for a tough road if the essence of the suit is fraud (that is, material misrepresentation that induces someone to do a thing and they suffer loss as a result.)
There is also a lot of smoke out there about the price of these things -- 3 day seminars (a weekend, basically) costing about $1,500 to start, along with apparently a series of them you could take for quite a lot more.
I don't know where you folks have been in the last 20 or 30 years but $1,500 for a three-day seminar is pretty standard among for-profit events. They also tend to be held in pretty tony places; $300+ a night on top of the seminar cost is not abnormal at all for the requisite hotel. So yeah, you're into this for a clean $2k plus your travel costs to do them, and the organizers make a nice amount of money on them as a result. Get a couple hundred people in there and the gross just on registrations is about $300,000; yes, you have catering expenses and such but most hotels will comp the meeting space if you fill the room block. I've spoken at a couple, and I don't do it for free -- if the value is there for the organizer and guests then as a speaker I ought to get something for the considerable time and effort that I put into preparing for such an event, and I do. Virtually all of these events tend to have some sort of exhibit hall associated with them and the organizer makes money on the table rental there too, quite a bit of money in most cases, as the organizations that rent those tables are there to sell whatever associated product or service that they think attendees will be interested in. In fact I'd be shocked if running one of these wasn't worth a cool hundred large per weekend after all expenses, including paid speaker fees and their travel, your crew's costs including their travel and lodging, and everything else was all tidied up.
The Internet has greatly narrowed the field of the seminar folks, simply because it's made information so much more-available at far lower cost. I'm not even slightly surprised that these seminars are gone, having disappeared following the '08 crash, both due to the changes in the real estate market and the proliferation of information via online means.
As for the BBB angle, it's worthless in either direction. As a former CEO my view on the BBB is 180 degrees out-of-phase with that of most consumers. BBB "accreditation" requires membership for a fee. Unfortunately the fact that the BBB is decentralized (the various regional units are more-or-less independent), "pay to play" organization and businesses are the ones paying, while the consumer is the one allegedly protected, along with the fact that their measurement means you can't expect consistency, especially across organizations that are and are not "members" or are and are not "accredited." In other words whether the organization was listed as "A+", "D" or not at all gives you nothing actionable.
In short I don't think there's anything wrong with Trump's organization having a piece of itself that ran seminars that charged an amount of money that was roughly what I'd expect to see charged for this sort of thing. That they ran afoul of a state law on their name doesn't exercise me much either. And finally, given the apparent number of people who took these seminars and that nearly all of them appear to have been happy with what they received I'm trying to figure out exactly what the argument here is. If it's that he made money at it, well, isn't that what capitalists are supposed to be doing?
The bottom line is this: Have you ever seen a business operate with thousands of customers with a 100% satisfaction rate?
Neither have I.
You really need to get into the details of those things.
The challenge Cruz is having is that too many Americans don’t understand that he’s playing Chess. And even more don’t understand the concept of a sacrifice. I’ve supported his vote on every single item. It’s why I said, YEARS ago, that I’d like to see Cruz run for president. Yet, even then, I thought that people simply would not buy why he did the things he did.
They are looking for something simpler. Sadly, it’s not there.
Oh, and I won’t lose. Life is a mist. I’ve read the end of the book. We win in the end, though it will get REALLY ugly before that. I think we are on the cusp. Heck, when Bush won in 2000, I said that all we did was put off the inevitable for another four years.
And here we are. And we will be a lot farther in a year or two. The world will be a much different place on election day.
You are a fool...
Could we show a little respect for those with whom we disagree?
My disagreeing with you does not make me a fool.
And as I said, I agree with his decisions. Make of it what you will.
Nope. When have I called people names?
Ive argued with liberals a long time and gotten slammed for some of that stuff in the past. I learned. I call Obama by his name. I call Trump by his name. And i do my level best to not call people names.
And I’m not calling people here “liberals”. What I am saying is that they are using the tactics used by liberals. Namely, ad-hominem and projection. There is always a small amount of that here and there, but the last couple of months it has become an embarrassment for this site.
We should be arguing facts and data.
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