Roundtable: Hillary's DNC; Suing Trump University; No Tipping?

The Democrats historically wraps up with Hillary Clinton's speech. To local lawsuits against Donald Trump University are going to trial. Local restaurant opener -- owner tries to eliminate tipping. I'm Mark Sauer, the KPBS Roundtable starts now. Welcome to our discussion of the week's top stories. I'm Mark Sauer -- sour. Joining me is Chris Jennewein. Bianca Bruno of courthouse news. Lori Weisberg covers tourism and travel. Philadelphia was a historic place, a party chose a woman as its representative. Hillary Clinton spent decades of public service and has plenty of scars to show was chosen who sought tonight. Here's what she said she pledges to do in her first 100 days in office. In my first 100 days we will work with both parties to pass the biggest investment in new good paying job since World War II. Jobs N it -- manufacturing, technology and innovation, small business and infrastructure. If we invest in and the structure now we will not only create jobs today, but lay the foundation for the jobs of the future and we will transform the way we prepare our young people for those jobs. She vowed to keep fighting for issues critical to children and families, painted a hopeful vision of America and denigrated Donald Trump as unfit and ill tempered for office. They once said there wasn't a dime's worth of difference. It was night and day. To hear some of the phraseology, it was morning at midnight. It created a sense of optimism, the focus was America is great. There are problems to be fixed versus the Republican convention which was America is under a threat and we've got to fix it now. I, Donald Trump saying he was going to fix it. You heard it if you listen closely in the music. There was a lot of 60s rock 'n roll at the Republican convention. More recent, upbeat music at the Democratic convention. A major theme was tragic shootings, San Diegans are reeling today about officer shot last night. Trump says he is law and order, how does Hillary Clinton address police shootings? There was much more about law and order, terrorism at the Republican convention. The Democrats talked of it as well. Hillary Clinton mention specifically Dallas the tragedy. The police chief there called for new officers and within a day 500 people came forward. It is surprising that the Democrats didn't focus on the hot button issue of law and order and terrorism, to be through truthful the Democrats are carrying out a war against ISIS right now. Two years of airstrikes against him. How would you suggest Hillary is on her remarks? She has the defense establishment behind her. She has the experience of dealing with the Iraq war as a senator and more significantly, the seal attack that took out bin Laden. In one of the videos, several that preceded the talks there was a classic image of her with her hand over her mouth, President Obama in the background and officials all around as they are waiting for the results of that rate. We've got a couple women on the panel, a theme of course is that she was the first woman to be named as a major party candidate. 2008 when she ran against Barack Obama she did not embrace it. This campaign she seems to. What's your reaction as a woman? I think she's kind of playing out to millennial women. I would be a millennial woman, I saw last night, there was a sketch on Stephen, bears -- cold air show, two women who did a sketch about signing the Declaration of Independence and what it meant to have a woman -- This thing was out there and pop culture. She's been on talk shows a lot playing into that. Lori? I wanted to switch back to the comparison you are making between the two conventions. You know it's almost like a dour sense of hopelessness about the country right now with the Republican convention and Trump positioning himself as being the one to fix it. There was more hopeful inclusiveness under the Democratic convention. I was just seeing today, despite that negative dark view world view that we saw the latest polls show we saw a bump in polling for Trump since. No matter what you think of that convention, it resonated. His polling -- Those are notoriously volatile. We won't know what the effect is. We do have a bite from Michelle Obama. This was a lot of division in the first day of this. Michelle Obama was the one who gave a powerful speech and tried to pull the party together. There's one of her remarks. Today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. I watch my daughters, to beautiful intelligent black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn and because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all of our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States. There was a little bit of blowback, FOX news Bill O'Reilly had a non-comment -- odd comment. He said it was built by slaves, but they were well fed. I think what Michelle Obama said spoke to the transformative experience of America. The idea that you can come from anywhere, you can be black, you could be Asian and you can cease the highest levels. When people who were slaves 150 years ago are now President and First Lady and first children, an example of that was the Muslim father of an Army captain. An incredibly moving statement at the convention, what he was saying was that his son died for the American values. I think the most poignant thing was when he said Mister Trump, you have not been toward the sacrifices I have. He said my son would never been here a few headband Muslims. It's common for the opposing party's candidate to be low-profile. Donald Trump made news this week, it seemed to be encouraging Russia to get involved in our election and search for more of Hillary Clinton's emails. He praised Vladimir Putin and that garnered stark responses. Trump is spoken many times about his appreciation for the Russian strongman. Most of the news was about him asking the Russians to look for more hat emails. He said the American press would handily reward them if they brought more. What was more scary is that he said he thought it was time to recognize that Crimea is a part of Russia. He was advocating Russia took Crimea by force two years ago, we should just let them have it. We ought not to protest it, we should stop sanctions. That is really scary. The last time that something like that happened between a great power and a lesser power was when Hitler took over Czechoslovakia in 1938. He often will say things and then ask forgiveness later. In the case of the asking for Russia's up on the emails he later said he was joking. I think you're right, less attention was paid to Crimea and I don't know that he was joking. He sounded serious. There was an expectation that since Donald Trump has main strain of experience being in TV and reality TV he would put on a better show. I think most of the observers say the Democrats have the better show. The ratings are high. Wednesday, there were 2,000,000 more viewers across the country for the Democratic convention than the third day of the Republican convention. That isn't predictive of the election outcome, it is interesting that the Democrats put on a more view showed. We are wrapping the segment up. We do have a farewell, the convention was a farewell to President Obama and he said he was ready. And now I'm ready to pass the baton and do my part as a private citizen. This year in the selection, I'm asking you to join me, reject cynicism and reject here and some in what is best in us to elect Hillary Clinton as the next president of the United States. Show the world we still believe in the promise of this great nation. We are going to move on to a related segment, Donald Trump emerged from his convention to some bad news from a judge here in San Diego. It's likely the lawsuits claiming Trump University was at -- fraud will proceed to trial. Bianca, tell us about these two suits, start with the largest one. Colin versus Trump was filed in 2013 it was the second filed against the now defunct real estate school Trump University. Colin was filed right Art Cohen and other plaintiffs this was nationwide the other one only covers former students in California and New York and Florida. Is that the low first Trump. That was older, it was filed in 2010. The federal judge who Donald Trump has lambasted publicly, he says that's one of his old in cases that he's presiding over. He's hoping to get that moved forward. The trial date is set for after the election in November for the week after Thanksgiving. There are pretty high tone -- how tell us about Daniel Petrus Ali -- Petrocelli. He's from Los Angeles he represented the gold family in the O.J. Simpson trial. He also represented Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. He's well-known he has all collates -- accolades. Is a top choice for Trump. He is the fourth attorney. He's going through a bunch. Jason Forge. Jason Forge is a federal prosecutor he's worked on a lot of white-collar crime, suits representing the defendants in those cases. He's also prosecuted Randy do -- Duke Cunningham. He has experience. Let's talk about specifically the motion before the judge last Friday and what did he do? Last week there was a motion for summary judgment in the Cohen case. Basically, the judge has to decide if there are tribal issues. If they presented enough is -- evidence for the case should go to trial. The judge indicated the hearing that he would likely dismiss trumps motion, the case would go to trial. We don't know what his decision has been. There were a lot of headlines over the weekend saying it was going to trial, which was miss care or is a sure it was a tentative ruling. We should know, these motions for summary judgments are saying let's throw this out we don't need to get into the problems. They are tough to accomplish for any case. Even Petrocelli recognize that when he gave his argument. He just said, I'm going to throw this out there and see what happens. What is his major argument? The Cohen case, Trump was not involved in the day-to-day operations at Trump University. The real estate school started out online, as sort of online seminar classes. Later it rolled out and took these flashy, meetings held at hotels getting people to purchase the course, some form -- former students refer to it as a get rich quick scheme. They invested money, Petrocelli said Trump wasn't involved in the day-to-day operations. There were other people involved. Isn't that very much trumps business model, after all he sells writes to his name but he doesn't get deeply involved. He makes his money in that transaction with his name. Absolutely. They pointed out that some of the advertising themes in the way it was presented, one of the major claims is that he said that the hand-picked the mentors and the teachers for the course when in reality, he was not very involved as the program grew. Basically, Petrocelli said it's sales coming in at -- advertising. The video is pointed out that was filed in evidence were Donald Trump had said he hand-picked the instructors, this is a major claim in the case in both cases actually. Basically, pointing out he did hand-picked them, Petrocelli said, that was copy and pasted, it was from a previous interview that he had done at the start of Trump University and Trump wasn't aware the video was being used at the seminars at hotels. We've got a short time left. The videotape deposition Donald Trump gave, the media outlets, some national want these released. The transcripts are out there. Why do they want the videos out of what Trump said? The media outlets are being led by the Washington Post, the New York Times and other national outlets, they are saying the videos will show what the world has come to see of Donald Trump, how he behaved, his facial expressions, how he gesticulated, basically is attitude throughout the deposition. Much different from reading black-and-white. It would give context and it should be public because it has become a campaign issue because he himself is made it a campaign issue. You said the trials won't happen until after election. When Mike the judge rule? That hearing was weeks ago in early July. We don't know when he will rule. In the past he is ruled the same day as a hearing. The past two hearings, the motion by the media outlets in the summary judgment are pretty big motions. They can change the course of the litigation. It seems that judge is taking his time. Did you get a sense of the videoed depositions, to which way he was leading? I do expect him to release the tapes, the case was made for being public and the campaign issue and important for the electorate to see how Donald Trump behaved. We will be watching for your follow-ups. We're going to move on to minimum wage that's going up in San Diego in California. One restaurant owner is taking an action he hopes will impact these wage hikes. Who is our -- Arturo? He's the owner of several restaurants, whisking ladle and prep kitchen. They are more upscale. He believed the minimum wage increase will hit restaurants the hardest most restaurants paid their servers are from the house staff they pay minimum wage because they make tips. Now they're going to have to raise those wages along with all of their staff. Many staff makes above minimum wage. He feels rather than increase prices, this is the way to control these rising costs. With the service charge, he will charge 20% service charge, you automatically get it on your bill you no longer have the latitude to tip yourself. The average tips are 20%. We do have a bite explaining why he thinks this is necessary. Oftentimes 300% income discrepancy as a direct result of quirky laws in a recent court ruling which no excludes the back of the house from sharing in the tip pool. There are two sites, the employee side and the customer side is he trying to play to both and share? He's saying that with this Akin pay better benefits, the back of the house, the Cooks the dishwashers, he can give them more money. He has no control over the tips if it was Justin they have -- hands of the tipped worker. Everyone will be fairly compensated with this strategy. He seems to think it will work. We will get to where it is been tried all swear. The idea is simple. By implementing a service charge instead of a tip model, we are able to use 100% of those funds to add benefits for employees and distribute it internally the way that make sense for all of our employees. Let's talk about this, Chris. Isn't it common in Europe and other places not to tip but to have a service charge? That is common. It's ingrained there. Tipping is ingrained. Don't take my right to tip away. Maybe I want to only give 5% or 10%. He's nervous about how this will play to his customers. Haven't some restaurants in the US and in this part of the country recently tried this and they back. I'm not sure if it's San Diego, I remember reading stories, customers didn't take to it. There was and it didn't work. In the Bay Area and they have added a surcharge to help pay for healthcare. Prominent restaurant in New York just added a surcharge that did not work out so well. I've read that others have tried it and take it that. It can be dicey. With their be signs or how would you get customers to know. Before he implements it, he said he's going to put things on the menus and talk to the customers, trying to prepare them. It means less math at the end of a nice dinner. For journalists, that's great. Bianca, we do it all the time, is this something where you could just abandon the customary tip? IA at a restaurant in Austin where they had note tips. It was nice. The server explained how they were doing it. He seemed on board. I think getting the servers on board and the staff on board is important to make it successful. You said earlier, Lori, the restaurants feel they are impacted by the hikes in minimum wage. Why so? It gets back to this tipped workers. They think that -- they don't look as -- at their wages hourly, they're saying with tips they are making anywhere from $25-$50 an hour. The people that most deserve these raises are the other workers. Their intention isn't to keep raising the wage of the tipped worker to $15 an hour, which is it won't -- what it will ultimately become. Eventually, under state law in 2022 he goes to $15. Short time left, Seattle made the big bump to $15 recently, you've done reporting. What's happened up there? Academics -- know there have not been job losses. This is what they found from all the businesses in terms of price increases, it was restaurants the most anywhere from 5% to 8%. That was the impact. Did they do the tipping thing? That's up to the restaurants. What about the studies the impact of these rising wages for low income workers? Is this getting folks out of poverty? The impact on that is less clear. You need to see this overtime. We know even $13 or $14 or $15 an hour will not be enough to make a significant impact. This could impact a quarter of our workforce in San Diego. It's going to be phased in and California has their own statewide measure that eclipses San Diego's. We will look forward to your reporting in seeing the impact says we get further down the line. That does wrap up another week of stories at the KPBS Roundtable. I'd like to thank Chris Jennewein, Bianca Bruno and Lori Weisberg. All the stories we discussed are available on our website kpbs.org. I'm Mark Sauer, thanks for joining us on The Roundtable.