Baker: Reagan Regretted Veto Of Sanctions Against South Africa

TPM

Former Secretary of State James Baker on Sunday said he was "certain" that President Ronald Reagan regretted his decision to veto sanctions against South Africa during Apartheid.

"I'm sure he did regret it," Baker said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "In fact I'm certain that he did."
He said that Reagan later worked to end Apartheid in South Africa.
"Once that happened and control of South African policy passed to the Congress, President Reagan was really determined to … meet with the black leaders of South Africa and deal with the problems of Apartheid. And he was able to do so," Baker said.
Baker, who met Nelson Mandela, called the leader an "extraordinarily beautiful human being."
"He had an enduring and endearing presence of dignity that I don't think I've seen on any other person," he said. "How many people forgive their captors when they've been imprisoned for 27 years?"

VEVO Presents: Nine Inch Nails Tension 2013

apartheid = noun (Concise Encyclopedia)

(Afrikaans: “apartness” or “separateness”) Policy of racial segregation and political and economic discrimination against non-European groups in South Africa. The term was first used as the name of the official policy of the National Party in 1948, though racial segregation, sanctioned by law, was already widely practiced. The Group Areas Act of 1950 established residential and business sectors in urban areas for each “race” and strengthened the existing “pass” laws, which required nonwhites to carry identification papers. 

Other laws forbade most social contacts between those of European descent and others, authorized segregated public facilities, established separate educational standards, restricted each group to certain types of jobs, curtailed nonwhite labour unions, denied nonwhite participation in the national government, and established various black African “homelands,” partly self-governing units that were nevertheless politically and economically dependent on South Africa. These so-called homelands were not recognized by international governments. 

Apartheid was always subject to internal criticism and led to many violent protests, strikes, and acts of sabotage; it also received international censure. In 1990–91 most apartheid legislation was repealed, but segregation continued on a de facto basis. In 1993 a new constitution enfranchised blacks and other racial groups, and all-race national elections in 1994 produced a coalition government with a black majority. These developments marked the end of legislated apartheid, though not of its entrenched social and economic effects. See also African National Congress; racism.


Nelson Mandela, the revered statesman who emerged from prison after 27 years to lead South Africa out of decades of apartheid, has died, South African President Jacob Zuma announced late Thursday.
Mandela was 95.

Warren On Third Way Criticisms: 'Oh Please'

TPM

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said Thursday that think tank Third Way is "flatly wrong" about the solvency of Social Security.
"We could make modest adjustments and make the system financially stable for a century, and we could make somewhat larger adjustments and make the system pay more for seniors who rely on it," she told the Huffington Post. "The conversation for too long has been about whether to cut Social Security benefits a little bit or a lot. And that is flatly the wrong debate to have in mind."

An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday by Third Way leaders that criticized Warren's beliefs about programs like Social Security caused liberals to issue condemning responses to the progressive Wall Street-backed group. Warren wrote to major banks challenging them to disclose their donations to think tanks. And the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has urged multiple Democrats to cut ties to Third Way.
Third Way responded by agreeing that banks should disclose their donations, but co-founder of the group, Matt Bennett, said that the group still considers Warren's stance on Social Security "magical thinking." He added that JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon's Social Security benefits would increase under a Warren-backed plan.
Warren scoffed at this in the interview with the Huffington Post. 
"Oh please. I'm out there working for Jamie Dimon the same way Dick Cheney is out there trying to save the environment," Warren said.

Congress Got 239 Days Off This Year, Workers Are Guaranteed Zero

THINK PROGRESS

Congress has just eight days on the job between now and the start of the next session on January 7, with the House coming back on Monday and adjourning for the year by December 13 and the Senate returning on December 9 only to most likely adjourn for the year on December 20. In total, the House will have had 239 days off this year with even more scheduled for next year.
Certainly members of Congress have work to do when they’re not required to be in D.C., including meetings with constituents, running their other offices, talking to local community leaders, and doing media interviews. Some may also use those days off on other jobs for supplemental income, but most make side money by owning businesses or from investments.
The picture is very different for the rest of Americans, however. The country doesn’t guarantee its citizens any paid vacation or holiday time off, unlike 20 of its developed peers. All European Union countries guarantee workers at least 20 paid days of vacation a year, with France going so far as to lock in 30, the United Kingdom mandating 28, and Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden guaranteeing 25. Thirteen also mandate paid holidays off. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, and Sweden go even further, requiring employers to give workers an extra bonus to cover vacation expenses.
Of course, many American employers still give their workers paid vacation time and holidays off. But that holds true for fewer and fewer workers. Today, 77 percent of workers have access to paid vacation days, compared to 80 percent 20 years ago. The biggest drops have come for those who work part-time — a position more and more find themselves in — or for employers with fewer than 100 workers. And while those who get paid vacation get more days than back then, they get fewer paid holidays, which offsets the increase.
This problem was in stark relief on Thursday as millions of workers had to show up at work for retailers who were open on Thanksgiving Day. While many were compensated with extra pay and perks and the companies claimed their workers were excited to come in that day, some employees claimed that their requests to take the day off were denied.
The U.S. also lags developed peers in other kinds of paid time off. It is the only one out of the top 15 most competitive that doesn’t guarantee paid sick days, which leaves 40 percent of private sector workers out of paid leave. Those who do get paid sick days also get fewer of them than two decades ago. The country is even more lonely when it comes to maternity leave to take care of a new child, joining just three countries out of 178 in failing to guarantee paid time off. Fathers similarly get no guarantee of paid time off when a new child arrives.

In Iceland, When Police Kill a Gunman, They Apologize

By Marc Champion

Icelandic police shot dead a man who refused to stop firing at them with a shotgun in the capital of Reykjavik earlier today -- and then they apologized. It was the first time that anyone in the country was killed by police gunfire.
"The police regret this incident and wishes to extend its condolences to the man's family," said national police chief Haraldur Johannessen.
Details of the event have yet to emerge, but this much is clear: Iceland is a weird place. The population of the island is 325,000, while the number of registered firearms is 90,000, which when you consider that Iceland also has children, suggests that more than a third of the population is armed. So why don't Iceland's police have to shoot people?
St. Louis happens to have about the same population as Iceland. Last year, the city's police chief ordered a study of incidents in which officers shot at suspects. As reported by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, that happened 98 times in the 2008-2011 period, and 12 of the people shot at died.
I don't think you can say the difference is because a lot of Iceland is rural -- all but about 25,000 of the population are urban dwellers. And the National Rifle Association will be pleased to hear that it can't all be accounted for by gun ownership: True, the U.S. has almost 90 guns per 100 people, compared with 30 per 100 in Iceland, but if gun ownership were the key difference you would expect a much narrower differential in police shootings.
One factor may be that only SWAT teams of the kind called in for in today's shooting are allowed to carry guns; the rest of the police don't. So the average officer -- let alone a neighborhood watch character such as Florida's George Zimmerman -- can't shoot anyone because they aren't armed. And one reason they don't need to be armed is that the homicide rate in Iceland is so low -- on average, fewer than 0.3 per 100,000 of population, compared with 5 per 100,000 in the U.S. In 2009, according to the Global Study on Homicide, just one person was murdered in Iceland.
In an article for the BBC, Andrew Clark, a law student from Suffolk University Law School in Boston, described his decision to write his thesis on Iceland's low violent crime rate after visiting the country's capital in 2012. He found that Icelanders happily pick up strangers in their cars and leave their babies unattended in the street. To a Londoner, New Yorker or Bostonian, that's unheard of. He concluded that the biggest reason for Iceland's low violent-crime rate was social equality. Rich and poor go to the same schools, while 1.1 percent say they are upper class, 1.5 percent lower class -- and the rest in between. So there's less resentment and anger.
Another point might be that although there are a lot of guns in Iceland (Icelanders like to hunt), buying one requires stringent checks, including a medical exam and a written test. That may prevent people from buying and using guns in a fit of anger. It might also explain why very few of Iceland's very few homicides involve firearms.
There are other possible factors, of course. For example, Icelanders have very low rates of drug abuse. It isn't clear why, but as soon as there was a sniff of a problem in 1973, the government established special police units and courts to tackle it. I'm guessing they had very little else to do.

(Marc Champion is a Bloomberg View editorial board member. Follow him on Twitter.)

U2 - I will follow

Led Zeppelin - When The Levee Breaks