Seriously, I don't think Fred, founder of Telegroup in Fairfield, could top all your accomplishments, repairing computers in your living room and all in SC. Seriously. How money did you make last year before your earned income credit?
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : Just a snippet about one of the Movement's big shot businessmen they love to bragg about - Fred Gratzon a Fairfield schmoe who has a string of failed businesses to his name - ran across an old article that included him: "Fred Gratzon, founder of long-distance reseller Telegroup in Fairfield, Iowa, also readily admits to being economical with the truth. The company's first direct mailing was cunningly designed to "look like an official notice from the telephone people." It was a computer printout with no company logo that blandly stated: "NOTICE OF TELEPHONE RATE REDUCTION AVAILABILITY. Due to recent changes in tariffs of the Federal Communications Commission, your company is entitled to reduced rates on long-distance service." Never mind that those "recent" changes referred to the Communications Act of 1934. "The response to this was enormous," says Gratzon. "That was the white lie that launched Telegroup." That, and the time Gratzon couldn't get friends to sign up for his service fast enough, and went ahead and forged their signatures "willy-nilly." And the time he decided he couldn't afford the expensive registration process in each state and decided to operate illegally. "We trod a very gray line," says Gratzon. "I was desperate, I had no money, I had a 1-year-old son, I was worried about how to feed my family. I didn't have money to buy zucchini. We barely had money to pay our own phone bill." Gratzon might not tell this story, except that his Telegroup grew to a $337 million company (though earlier this year it was sold after seeking bankruptcy protection)." I guess Freddie didn't see any correlation between starting a company with lies and illegal activity and the company eventually going belly up. Typical TM entrepreneur bullshit to believe that karma exists, it just doesn't apply to TM'ers.
