Day: December 1, 2008

‘I did not get on the bus to get arrested; I got on the bus to go home.’

As told by the Library of Congress:

On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was full. Blacks also were required to sit at the back of the bus. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system and led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.

Rosa McCauley was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. In 1932, she married Raymond Parks and with his encouragement earned a high school diploma. The couple was active in the Montgomery Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). While working as a seamstress, Mrs. Parks served as chapter secretary and, for a time, as advisor to the NAACP Youth Council. Denied the right to vote on at least two occasions because of her race, Rosa Parks also worked with the Voters League in preparing blacks to register.

. . .

Although her arrest was not planned, Park’s action was consistent with the NAACP’s desire to challenge segregated public transport in the courts. A one-day bus boycott coinciding with Parks’s December 5 court date resulted in an overwhelming African-American boycott of the bus system. Since black people constituted seventy percent of the transit system’s riders, most busses carried few passengers that day.

The success of the boycott mandated sustained action. Religious and political leaders met at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (later the Southern Christian Leadership Conference). Dexter’s new pastor, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., was appointed the group’s leader. For the next year, the Montgomery Improvement Association coordinated the bus boycott and King, an eloquent young preacher, inspired those who refused to ride:

If we are wrong—the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong—God almighty is wrong! If we are wrong—Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer and never came down to earth. If we are wrong—justice is a lie. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama, 1955.

Allen Stewart Konigsberg

… is 73 today. NewMexiKen saw Woody Allen doing stand-up once upon a time when we were both a lot younger (about 45 years ago, sigh).

Here’s a few of his insights, some possibly from that very time.

“A fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, she said ‘no’.”

“I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.”

“I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.”

“Some guy hit my fender, and I told him ‘be fruitful, and multiply.’ But not in those words.”

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”

“If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.”

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

Conservation President

Thirty years ago today President Jimmy Carter took abrupt and sweeping action to preserve 17 endangered areas in Alaska. Carter used the 1906 Antiquities Act to prevent exploitation while the Congress deliberated. Carter’s proclamation established:

Admiralty Island National Monument
Aniakchak National Monument
Becharof National Monument
Bering Land Bridge National Monument
Cape Krusenstern National Monument
Denali National Monument
Gates of the Arctic National Monument
Enlarging the Glacier Bay National Monument
Enlarging the Katmai National Monument
Kenai Fjords National Monument
Kobuk Valley National Monument
Lake Clark National Monument
Misty Fiords National Monument
Noatak National Monument
Wrangell-St. Elias National Monument
Yukon-Charley National Monument
Yukon Flats National Monument

Two years and a day later the Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

Why government needs to spend

Because we consumers no longer can (many of us).

We can’t get home equity loans to spend, because housing prices have dropped and many of us don’t have any home equity to borrow against.

We can’t spend the dividends or gains from our stock portfolios because stocks have dropped 45% in 13 months, companies are reducing dividends — and no one should sell their stocks at these prices just to buy stuff.

Some of us, of course, don’t have jobs, or fear losing them.

And now, our credit cards are going away:

(Reuters) – The U.S. credit card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said.

The economy consists of four parts — consumption, investment, exports minus imports, and government. Consumption is down for the reasons we see above. Most expect it to continue to decline well into 2009. Investment is down because companies don’t expand when they can’t sell — and they can’t get credit to expand anyway because of the banking crisis. (And no one of sound mind is building any houses.) Exports are dropping because the dollar is 20% stronger, which means our products are more expensive in the rest of the world.

You don’t have to be John Maynard Keynes to realize that government is the only buyer left.

And so the talk of a stimulus package, one hopes this time in the form of infrastructure — bridges, schools, rail.