This is an interesting article written by one of the most well known liberals of the 20th century on his small business.

After a run for the presidency and a quarter century on Capitol Hill, George McGovern left public service and became the owner of a business -- a punishingly revelatory experience. If only, he says now, his career sequence had been the other way around

Calvin Coolidge was too simplistic when he observed that "the business of America is business." But like most sweeping political statements, even Coolidge's contains some t***h -- enough, as I've learned, to make me wish I had known more firsthand about the concerns and problems of American businesspeople while I was a U.S. senator and later a p**********l nominee. That knowledge would have made me a better legislator and a more worthy aspirant to the White House.

In 1988 I yielded to a longtime desire to own an inn with conference facilities, where I could provide good food, comfortable rooms, and lively public discussion sessions. A friend of mine, who had a lifetime of hotel- and restaurant-management experience, described the Stratford Inn, in Connecticut, near the respected Shakespeare Theater, as the ideal place for such an undertaking. He agreed to manage it for me if I'd put up the capital.

Without properly analyzing the difficulties of such an endeavor, I plunged into the hotel industry with a virtually impossible leasehold agreement, just as the recession hit New England with unusual force. Given the nature of the lease and the severity of the recession, I doubt in hindsight that either Hilton or Marr**tt could have made this venture profitable. I certainly couldn't.

After two and a half years that mixed pleasure and satisfaction with the loss of all my earnings from nearly a decade of post-Senate lecture tours, I gave up on the Stratford Inn. But not before learning some painful and valuable lessons.



I learned first of all that over the past 20 years America has become the most litigious society in the world. There was a time not so long ago when a lawsuit was considered a rare and extreme measure, to be resorted to only under the most critical circumstances. But today Americans sue one another at the drop of a hat -- almost on the spur of the moment.

As the owner of the Stratford Inn, I was on the receiving end of a couple of lawsuits that fit that description. In one case, a man left our lounge late one night and headed for his car, which was parked in our parking lot. He got into a fight along the way, and later sued the hotel for not providing more security in the parking area. We did have a security guard on duty, but I doubt that many hotels can afford the kind of extensive security arrangements that could guarantee there will never be an altercation among patrons once they leave the comfort of life in the tavern.

On another occasion, a person leaving our restaurant and lounge lost his footing and fell, allegedly suffering a costly injury. He promptly sued us for damages. Both of the suits were subsequently dismissed, but not without a first-rate legal defense that did not come cheaply.

I am a former history professor, not a lawyer. But it does seem to me that not every accident or fall or misfortune is the fault of the business at which it occurs. Yet lawsuits prompted by such events have spawned a multibillion-dollar industry -- one that drives up the costs of doing business and rendering medical care. Not to mention how it wars against a congenial and humane way of life. We begin to see one another not as compatriots, neighbors, and fellow citizens but as potential plaintiffs and defendants. If we don't stop suing one another for every possible misfortune or alleged negligence, we are going to undermine both the health of our economy and the quality of our society.

The second lesson I learned by owning the Stratford Inn is that legislators and government regulators must more carefully consider the economic and management burdens we have been imposing on U.S. business. As an innkeeper, I wanted excellent safeguards against a fire. But I was startled to be told that our two-story structure, which had large sliding doors opening from every guest room to all-concrete decks, required us to meet fire regulations more appropriate to the Waldorf-Astoria. A costly automatic sprinkler system and new exit doors were items that helped sink the Stratford Inn -- items I was convinced added little to the safety of our guests and employees. And a critical promotional campaign never got off the ground, partly because my manager was forced to concentrate for days at a time on needlessly complicated tax forms for both the IRS and the state of Connecticut.

I'm for protecting the health and well-being of both workers and consumers. I'm for a clean environment and economic justice. But I'm convinced we can pursue those worthy goals and still cut down vastly on the incredible paperwork, the complicated tax forms, the number of minute regulations, and the seemingly endless reporting requirements that afflict American business. Many businesses, especially small independents such as the Stratford Inn, simply can't pass such costs on to their customers and remain competitive or profitable.

I'm not expert enough after only two and a half years as a business owner to know the solutions to all those concerns. I do know that if I were back in the U.S. Senate or in the White House, I would ask a lot of questions before I v**ed for any more burdens on the thousands of struggling businesses across the nation.

For example, I would ask whether specific legislation exacts a managerial price exceeding any overall benefit it might produce. What are the real economic and social gains of the legislation when compared with the costs and competitive handicaps it imposes on businesspeople?

I'm lucky. I can recover eventually from the loss of the Stratford Inn because I'm still able to generate income from lectures and other services. But what about the 60 people who worked for me in Stratford? While running my struggling hotel, I never once missed a payroll. What happens to the people who counted on that, and to their families and community, when an owner goes under? Those questions worry me, and they ought to worry all of us who love this country as a land of promise and opportunity.

* * *

George McGovern, former U.S. senator from North Dakota and 1972 Democratic candidate for president, now heads the Middle East Policy Council, in Washington, D.C.

Black males between the ages of 15 and 45 account for about 7% of the population, and considerably more than 50% of the violent crime. B****s on the whole comprise about 13% of the population, yet they are well over half of the victims of violent crime, almost always committed against them by another black. White on black crime is almost not a statistic. Of the 9000 plus firearms murders last year, nearly 7000 of the victims were black, and more than 90% of them were murdered by other b****s, almost always a black male between 15 and 45. If you don't agree, take it up with the FBI. These are their stats, not mine.

It started with American business recruiting Mexican labor to the meatpacking, hotel-motel , agricultural, and construction businesses. Any attempt by politicians to pass legislation penalizing businessmen for hiring illegal or undocumented aliens have been quickly quashed. Working Americans on the other hand having only the power of their one v**e have been helpless in the face of the onslaught of union busting tactics. Meatpacking for instance once unionized is now non union. American workers replaced by Hispanics willing to work for subsistence

Let me tell you about old Butch.


Fred was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred
young' pullets,' and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs.
He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.

This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters.
Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing.
Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.

Fred's favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this morning he noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all!
When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

To Fred's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.

Fred was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Brisbane City Show and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.

The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the "No Bell Piece Prize," but they also awarded him the "Pulletsurprise" as well.

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the unsuspecting populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.
V**e carefully in the next e******n, you can't always hear the bells.

In Oklahoma a man beheaded a woman and stabbed another woman. Sounds pretty h**eful to me. So is it a h**e crime? Paging Eric Holder, paging Eric Holder.

And lets talk about guns. You know, people don't k**l people, guns k**l people. Get rid of guns and you get rid of violence, right? Only this time a gun saved a life. That's right my liberal friends, a gun saved a life. A reserve county deputy shot the suspect while he was attacking a second woman. So a gun saved a life.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/09/26/woman-beheaded-at-oklahoma-food-distribution-center-police-say/

Wow, I have to be honest with you...I never even considered the race of the supervisor...even if the supervisor was white, I see no evidence ( at least what you shared with me ) of r****m..when you say that if the supervisor is white then it can only be r****m......i don't feel that way...it never even entered my mind...why would you just assume its r****m without more info ? maybe you should read the study again...it's basically saying that if someone tends to be prejudiced, they tend to be conservative...obviously, you don't agree, but I thought it was an interesting study

There are many ways some of us can justify what happened to the young Black man John Crawford in Walmart but that would mean failing to recognize a) the reality of the situation and b) the obvious r****m involved.

This young man picked up an air rifle, BB gun, from the rack and walked a little bit around the store with it before going back to the section and sort of playing with it. 911 was called. The police arrived and demanded he drop the gun. Crawford dropped the air gun immediately, and then police shot and k**led him.

"Now, I know some of you are thinking, “Holy cow, are you an i***t? The dude was carrying a gun around Walmart!”

"Only partially true– he was carrying a BB gun– one that came off the shelf and was available for purchase. When the cops showed up, he even dropped the BB gun, but they k**led him anyway.

"But let’s say he was actually carrying a real gun around Walmart… well, that leaves us with another big problem: white people do this all the time. There’s actually a big “open carry” movement where folks bring their assault rifles to Walmart or wherever, and demand to shop without being hassled. A quick Google search will bring up plenty of photos of folks open carrying in public."

Read more and watch the video at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/how-many-john-crawfords-before-we-admit-theres-a-problem/#ixzz3ESbSONXt

Don't k**l the messenger :

http://youtu.be/0WfnjJTGSy0


Here's the actual write up on the study:

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to r****m and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.


Controversy ahead

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and r****m and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]

"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."

Brains and bias

Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and r****m were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]

In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.

Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" r****m.)

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with r****m in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.

"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

A study of averages

Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.

"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.

Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.

"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."

Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.

"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."

In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to r****m may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

Simple viewpoints

Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.

The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.

"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."

Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of r****m and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.

"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.