Telling Tales Out of School

I got into a brief conversation on Twitter about the stories now floating out there about Trump's business practices.

I never fully worked in the private sector - I've mostly been a librarian, that's public sector, any private sector gig has been as part-timer wage slave - so it kind of stuns me that there's no shared or collaborative awareness of who the good guys and bad guys are in the business world.

It boils down to the concept of "telling tales out of school," an old phrase about giving up confidential hush-hush information about somebody that you might not wanna do (unless you want the reputation of being a snitch). Like Octavia's Daughter points out, going public by bad mouthing a client could have been bad for business overall (future clients might want confidentiality).

The thing, I've got a solid point here: Trump has a consistent history of intentionally ripping people off.

Trump would hire contractors, get the service done, then complain about the finished product and refuse to pay. He would draw it out with the lawyers up to the point where he knows the contractors needs money to pay off their own debts and force them to take less, killing any profit those contractors could expect. Some of those contractors had to go into bankruptcy themselves.

His own Presidential campaign has generated tales about his refusing to pay out money he promised to charities, to providers, to state agencies. He's currently getting sued by a troupe of girl performers who sang at his rallies, for God's sake.

And as far as we can go with the "telling tales out of school" phrase, there's no finer example than Trump University.

And to Trump, it's just "good business."

This is a man who does not respect anyone else's rights or needs to be well-paid for services rendered.

Do you honestly think he's going to stop thinking like that the second he enters the Oval Office?

We're talking about a man who'll likely empty out the federal coffers faster than Speedy Gonzales emptying out a cheese factory. (No offense to Speedy Gonzales, and besides he raids the cheese factory to feed the starving villagers)

It's good that the stories are getting out there now, during a period that our voters can realize that Trump isn't a successful businessman, he's a successful thief. But it bothers me that someone like Trump was allowed to operate like this for over 40 years and got away with it. Shouldn't some requirement of business ethics DEMAND that a crook of Trump's venality be hauled into the spotlight for his sins long ago? Before it got worse?