Texsox

Rick Perry was close. With partisan politics the norm, I can't think of anyone. The political parties force everyone to the party platform.

Pure gold.

Here's a crazy idea. Parity is easy. Make every player an employee of the league and assign them to teams each year. Reset rosters every year and it won't matter who the owners are or their resources. In fact, why should each team have an owner? Merge all the teams into one corporate entity. It's all a travelling road show.

Exactly

Who are you including in your definition of the party? The 70,000,000 people who voted for Trump?

70,000,000 Americans voted for him and in various amounts agree with the protestors, (but probably not the actions). I'll take a guess and say 60,000,000 will never ever vote for a Democrat for president. I'm hoping some moderate within the party can gain traction and build a base that pushes Cruz and his cult to fringes where they belong. The GOP is facing a serious crisis. Or, perhaps a socially liberal, fiscally conservative, party can gain ground. I'd look seriously at that.

The difference that is in his favor is its probably not a friend or family member convincing you to buy a Cross Fit franchise. I find the most anti MLM people are the ones that tried and failed. I've known a few folks that earned a decent income as a side hustle and one that made it a life long job. Twenty plus years and a nice living. Pampered Chef, World Travel, Prepaid Legal Services, Cutco, and others generate a lot of income with their products and services. But it's very hard work to make it a full time gig and to generate the income that is projected. Most will fail. But they will fail with a few hundred dollar loss and a closet full of cooking gear or an overpriced off season vacation memory instead of bankruptcy and collections after trying to own a restaurant or other business. I did Pre Paid Legal Services for a couple years. They allowed you to sell your business which I did and the person I sold it to, an insurance salesperson, was doing really well at it last I heard. I love sales, it was my full time job, and I had the exact contacts and skill set to be successful with that MLM. I also didn't try to recruit someone I knew didn't have a skill set to be successful. More because I didn't have the time or desire to train them in sales than any fiduciary or ethical high ground. Often times I saw someone who has a spotty work record who can't keep a job think this is the answer. Be your own boss. Then they discover when you have your own business every customer is your boss and if they fire you, your business fails.

The success rate is exactly why they are so widely disliked. Anyone can buy in. No one is vetted or denied the opportunity of they can make the investment. Too many people believe sales is easy. Jack, you want to be protected from investing in something that you will not be successful in. Just because you will fail in MLM doesn't mean others will or it's a scam.

One of my former employees and White Sox fan has built a career in MLM. I argue with him that's it's not really like owning your own company and that 95% of the people he recruits will lose money. He replies that they will get discounted travel and an opportunity. I reply if we were back in our previous roles how many of the hundreds he directly recruited or the thousands that they recruited would he have hired and paid a salary to. The answer is not many. Every organization looks like a pyramid. There are more salespeople than CEOs. More VPs than middle managers. The reason they are legal is they aren't predatory. If you want the opportunity you can buy in. Businesses fail all the time. That doesn't mean they were victims of predatory business models.

I'm differentiating it from a Ponzi scheme. It's a low cost franchise that doesn't screen anyone out.

The manufacturer's salesperson who is responsible for sales to that store does put pressure on those stores to sell or lose the opportunity to continuing carrying that product line. He puts on that pressure because his boss, the regional sales manager is pushing him for greater sales.

No one is forced to "work" for them. They give anyone a chance who wants the opportunity to start a business that opportunity. Starting a business costs money. You want a Burger King franchise? It costs you millions and you have to buy the product from them. The difference with Amway and others is they don't charge as much and don't turn away anyone who wants the opportunity. If you want to sell a product as an independent business you have to buy the product. It doesn't matter if it's golf clubs, steaks, makeup, cleaning supplies, or cars. When that restaurant goes out of business where they prey for their suppliers?

It's the exact same. My local golf shop buys a product from a manufacturer and resells it. Someone else buys from Amway and resells it. What's the difference?

So people shouldn't be allowed to buy stuff and sell it?

So the owner of the golf shop by my house shouldn't have to buy the products he sells? Titleist should just give him stuff that he doesn't have to pay for?! You're joking right? Where do you think businesses get the merchandise they sell? The problem with MLM is people with no sales skills buy that merchandise and can't sell it. No one would hire them for sales, but they have a dream and believe it's as easy as it looks, and lose their investment. Those restaurants that have probably closed in your neighborhood. Those owners had to buy food to sell. They failed because they couldn't sell enough to stay afloat not because buying stuff to sell is a scam.

Did you read my post? Apple is a multi level marketing scheme. You buy something in the store and folks all the way back to corporate gets paid. All those multiple levels. The key difference between a legit MLM company and a pyramid is with MLM the customers receive a product or service. Again, the problem with MLM is anyone can buy themselves a sales job. People who would never last in straight commission sales buy the hype and fail. In a pyramid scheme there is no product or service. The newest members basically pay the oldest until there is no money coming in.

They are. But almost what corporation uses MLM. You buy a new car. The salesman earns a commission. The sales manager earns a commission. The general manager gets his cut. The Ford factory rep gets paid, the regional managers get paid, it goes all the way back to the President of Ford. All those multiple levels get paid. Buy something at Walmart and all those levels get paid. Pyramid schemes are different because they have no product or service and are illegal. Where MLM receives a bad name, and I believe justifiably so, is they "hire" anyone. There are people that have no business in sales and they fail. That's not the fault of MLM, that's poor hiring. They would have failed at opening any new business.

I ended a thirty year business career and retired to educated. I've been teaching 12 years now from 8th grade in a poor school where most kids had a parent or less with little or no education and now I'm teaching seniors who generally have two college educated parents at home. A couple things I would do. First realize that as a society we're starting at an incredibly inequitable point. Poor kids with uneducated parents don't have books at home, they don't have parents that have the time and energy to teach them much. My current students have been surrounded by educational opportunities since birth. How do we fix that? Pre school programs. It's not much, but I've got nothing else. Lower home values mean less funding for schools. So poor schools have higher student to teacher ratios and less experienced teachers. I'm at a destination school in a destination district. I'm surrounded by quality educators who make me better each day. So the kids who are already ahead of the game have an advantage 24/7. We need a system that encourages our best educators to rotate into schools that need the best. They also need a guaranteed rotation back to the top schools they rotated from. When Texas implemented a new rating system for schools it did exactly what most teachers and administrators knew would happen. It identified the most affluent areas of the state with the highest educated parents. Based on these ratings the general public somehow believes I'm suddenly a better teacher because my students are performing better. My students have all the advantages from food security to parenting. This is already too long. I'll stop here.

No he can't, not something that was actually almost presidential in tone.

Nice Trump speech today. About four continuous years too late.

Probably reading this and happy he's missed.

That would be the most interesting set of court cases in a long time.

Ok. How about remembered but not acted on? People won't leave the Republican party in droves, there won't be much talk about election security. It will be much like the hordes that were walking from Central America to invade that turned around right after the election. Or building the wall. There will be something new to debate during the next election cycle. The shock goes away.

Trump is a television star, a social media maestro. This isn't reality for some people, it's a show with zero appreciation for the gravity of the situation. I rejected the cult label being applied until yesterday. It's the most accurate way to describe those individuals that committed acts of terror at the capital.