What Would You Do?

This week, the plaintiffs in a case that claimed that Trump University was a sham, a money-making scheme in which they were not offered education for their money, but false hope, decided to settle. Accepting half their money back. I don't know enough of the details, but the timing is critical to understanding the motivations and behavior of our future President of these United States. Getting half your money back may seem to be some consolation, but when you go into the marketplace to buy anything from a loaf of bread to a car, if it was rotten inside or would not perform as advertised, you would get all of your money back, without question.

This says far more about the defendant than about the 3500 plus lawsuits that the President-elect faces. This one suit involves about 7 thousands of individuals who collectively paid over fifty million dollars to this fake "school". Now some say that the buyer is to beware, but the courts term what the institution did was fraud and the future President and his managers faced federal racketeering charges as well. I would say that giving half the money back to make these two particular lawsuits "go away" constitutes another sort of fraud altogether.

The fact that this sort of legal "protection", being able to give your customers half their money back, when your "product" was worthless to begin with, presents a clear case for not allowing criminals to run businesses. The Attorney General of Florida, who stalled the case there against The Donald, until after the election, is now being offered a cabinet level position. This is dangerously suggestive of criminality. If you tried to craft a scheme of deception, collusion and deceitful side-stepping of laws that was more heinous, it would be hard to do. In the end, we have bad actors working in concert to get what they want at the expense of thousands of others. Perhaps tens of thousands of us will be hurt financially by these sorts of dealings. In the end, the whole nation suffers from the legal wrangling and exploitative ways of one man and his very powerful "friends".

Never mistake that this was not planned in advance, precipitated by wanton greed and/or facilitated by the cozy relationships that our future President buys outright. I would not want to step aside and allow a criminal to continue to get away with hurting people. I would not want to settle for half what I am rightfully owed. In this case, at least we are shown the true colors of this particular snake in the grass.

My wife and I recently spent $16K renovating a single apartment, but it changed the place from a rotting and disgusting mess that could have been condemned into a wonderful place that is bright, spacious, airy and beautiful.

This is what real estate "development" looks like when practiced by a person committed to the welfare of those who will shelter in their properties, one who pays a fair wage for the services they require and who has a commitment to future generations. Sadly, the system is rigged for those who would prefer just tearing down the historic buildings built by the hands of our ancestors, putting up giant structures made of imported concrete and steel by "illegal" immigrants at slave wages. There will be no multi-billion dollar ad campaign to get tenants, or side deals that enrich the developer by stealing other folks' fortunes. There will not even be any federal, state or local monies flowing in to my project. Just my own hard work and integrity, but you cannot take that to the bank, they would rather eat the steak but leave us the sizzle.

This is the same apartment from roughly the same angle just six moons later. I would like to publicly thank our plumber, Eric Vandenhuevel, Jim Havercorn, the neighborhood business called Outlaw Plaster, my brother-in-law, Peter Burns, son-in-law, Xak Melum, sister-in-law, Mary Nichols, my wife Nancy, my son, Jade, our neighbor, Dan Leiterman and the great guys at Metzler Electric for their help in moving this project toward completion. Great leaders acknowledge that their work would not be possible without those who helped with the work. We all stand on the shoulders of giants!

Honesty is telling the truth, integrity is doing so when it is not popular. When you have enough cash to buy your way out of anything, you can throw your weight around and pay off those you hurt, when you only have your reputation, you begin to understand that it takes a lifetime to build that and only a single moment can destroy it, so you really do have to hold yourself to the highest standards, not just in thought, but in action as well. This apartment and the one upstairs are now offered to anyone coming through Northeast Wisconsin through airbnb. My wife and I have made the commitment that any home in which we invest, we want to fix it up as nice as the one we live in. We will never live in a penthouse, while our customers are forced to live on half their money. We will never offer a product or service that is not worth every penny we ask in the marketplace and we will never reneg on our promises, that sort of behavior is for losers.