Mueller's Ace up his sleeve

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I wish I had tRump's talent at getting people to be his devil's advocate for him for free.

In my case I'm scrutinizing, not advocating.

Well so far I have come up with that in 1980 Trump hired Kaszycki & Sons to demolish a building. Those working for Kaszycki & Sons were only being being paid $4 per hr. Although the minimum wage back then was $3.10. They complained that they had to work without gloves, hard hats or masks. And then a lawsuit was filed by the workers after Kaszycki stopped paying them.

So at first glance I'm seeing the contractor being at fault. The contractor is the one who pays the crew and supplies stuff like hard hats, masks and gloves to them.

Me finding those facts so far does not mean I'm advocating or defending Trump. I suppose could just jump aboard the hate train and shout "filthy cheapskate cheeto-satan thief!" without knowing the facts, but I find going about it this way more interesting.

You need to complete the train of thought, Ez.

Who was paying the contractor?

To do the Columbo thing, you have to keep asking the next question (which is actually the Sturgeon thing but I digress).

This is meant to encourage you - critical analysis is precisely what's missing in too much political "thinking" at the moment.

Oh I'm not done yet. That was just what I found out so far. I'm sure there's more layers to peel through. Trump was supposed to pay the contractor of course. But what was the agreement? Up front, daily, upon completion? If it was supposed to be upon completion and the work wasn't completed, then there's breech of contract and so on.

I didn't get the Colombo and Sturgeon reference. But I found a detective show called Colombo, so I'll guess that's it. And Theodore Sturgeon the author?

Oh jeez, Colombo is the detective, Columbo is the yogurt

Yes, that's the show. If you can find an entire episode, it's pretty amusing. He acts dimwitted, seemingly bumbling around - but he's taking it all in, fitting it all together, and towards the end, on his way out, when the perp is sure that he's been fooled, he turns around and says, Oh yeah, there's just one thing... and wham.

Sturgeon the author indeed - "ask the next question" was a catchphrase of his, and it was intended to encourage people not to blindly believe what they were told but to look behind the curtain, or the stage set. (Edit in: also known for Sturgeon's Law, to the effect that either 94% or 97% of everything is shyte, depending on which version you come across .)

the only thing I read/listened/watched of Sturgeon's was his story about "a saucer of loneliness" which made me cry.

There were reports that in his casino business, he was really upset with the management of the casino because they paid the contractors. He fumed about that.

Years ago, I knew a couple of dipsh*ts in Arizona who hired a carpenter to build some counters in their office space. The carpenter was to be paid upon completion of the three or four weeks of work. When he finished the work, they offered him a check for half the amount telling the carpenter that he could either accept the check as payment in full or he could file a lawsuit and spend the next few years waiting for a trial to get paid and having lawyers fees that would exceed the total amount of the lawsuit.

There's been a couple of times that I've known of local businesses around here doing that sort of thing.

One business hired an independent contractor to install a lift in their garage to raise vehicles in the air to work on them from beneath. When the work was complete and the contractor went to be paid, they claimed that he installed the lift in the wrong place -- about two inches from where they wanted it -- and so they weren't going to pay him for it. As I understand it, he never did get paid.

In the other local case, a farmer hired someone to build a fence. Once the fence was built, he claimed it was in the wrong place and refused to pay for the fence.

@AuntBlabby

Re: Saucer of Loneliness

Yeah. I took that in and read it to my tenth grade English class. After *I* stopped crying.

Uh, I mean that I was IN tenth grade - not teaching a class. We were supposed to bring in a short story, that was mine.

I still have my copy of "E Pluribus Unicorn". If I remember rightly - because I'm not going to get up just now and ransack my bookshelves - I think I got it right or mostly right. If this revives remembered pain, I am so sorry. I mean it to be that, in cyberspace anyway, we're all a bit *less* alone.

He knew. He was there too. Boy did he know. (His was bipolar, not Asperger's, but he knew.)

If you can find it, his "Slow Sculpture" is very comforting. As is "To Here and The Easel". Well worth the read, both of them.

Last edited by Esmerelda Weatherwax on 22 Dec 2017, 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

documentation failures. I would have sued those sociopathic Arizonans even if it cost me my last dime, just to make them pay.

I am curious, how did your classmates react? it takes emotional maturity to grok that story, i'm betting they did not react in a mature manner.

It was college prep English. Small class. The class ended right after I finished.

We were almost all science fiction fans, so that helped. My classmates were hushed, and then several of them mobbed me, wanting to borrow the book.

God, I had no idea how lucky I was, then.

(Edit in: I've since been told that I have a spellbinding voice. I gave several professional talks in my last job, and some were on fairly contentious topics, and there was nothing after I finished but rapt silence, every time. Go figure.)

Last edited by Esmerelda Weatherwax on 22 Dec 2017, 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

^^^you WERE lucky to have quality people in your class.

Nope Columbo is the detective, you had it right. My word corrector turned it into Colombo, maybe because that's the capitol of Sri Lanka.

I'm in full agreement with Sturgeon's Law. There's often something behind the scenes and more to the story, than what's presented up front. And it takes careful digging to get at the raw facts and truth of a matter.

Not so sure I was, actually. That was then. Boyo, was that then. College and grad school were vastly different experiences.

Edit in: but in my better moments I'm glad for the good experiences I've had - no matter how long ago - because they prove that such experiences exist, are possible, and that it's OK to believe things can be good - and not accept un-good things as preferable, just because they predominate. If that makes sense.

~~~~~here endeth the philosophical and sociological digression~~~~~

Last edited by Esmerelda Weatherwax on 22 Dec 2017, 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

mebbe in the next life....