2
Daily Nebraskan
Monday, March 7, 1983
n n n
firs n c 3 n
I82JM Es...
. . . but a walking shadow; a poor player
Tliat struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
And then is heard no more; it is a tale J
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. I
Signifying nothing. ' J
atesspy ..,.J....J
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y-aoTyn economy dopswooDg
ifoD'eseeableamid dleseoed
It's hard to be optimistic after looking
at the figures, but determination and
optimism is what it will take to turn
around the lagging farm economy.
The Omaha World-Herald has reported
that the number of farms and businesses
filing bankruptcy in Nebraska nearly
doubled from 1981 to 1982. Two-third's
of t lie SI 17.9 million debt was from
farms.
Undoubtedly, the economic recession
has hit us hard. For the 45 farms and
ranches filing last year, the debts totalled
S75.1 million - up 12 times from 1981.
What are we to make of these statistics?
Are wc falling apart or picking up the
pieces?
Bankruptcy Court Clerk Judith Napier
sees it as an attempt to "Jiang on." If
these farmers are trying to get back on
their feet, they deserve all the help they
can get.
Help may be on the way in Washington.
At least indirectly, the House Agriculture
Committee has taken steps that should
help the agricultural sector. The
Committee proposed an increase of S347
million for the U.S. Department of Agri
culture soil and water conservation pro
grams. For the 47 percent of the farm
population who live in the North-Central
region of America, the action is a promis
ing one.
If the proposals pass, the Soil Conserva
tion Service would receive 30 percent
more than President Reagan budgeted,
and the Agricultural Stabilization and
Conservation Service would get a 40
percent increase.
Support for the proposals seems to
be unanimous among the committee
members, with strong backing for improve
ments in the watershed protection and
flood prevention program. If passed, the
program would get more than twice the
funding allotted by Reagan, and would
near $205 million.
It also gave priority to increased funds
for the Great Plains Conservation Program,
watershed planning and river basin surveys.
John Block, Secretary of Agriculture,
said that the program cuts were prompted
by Reagan's spending restrictions. Yet
in an Associated Press article, Block
said, "1 am now so confident about the
future, I won't hestitate to say that I
see 1983 and '84 as the pivotal point
for the U.S. farm economy." He credits
Reagan's policies for what he sees as a
turnaround in the economy.
Block sees the declining inflation rates
and interest rates as reasons to take heart.
He said the 2 percent rise in farm produc
tion expenses last year was the smallest
since 1964.
If he is right, maybe this will be the
year that our farmers see noticeable gains.
The change is certainly overdue. The
Agriculture Department reported that
a farmer's net income fell in 1981 to
$8,042, the lowest since 1977. With de
clining land values and record crop sur
pluses, the prospects seem cloudy.
But the nation's farmers are determined
and the House Agricultural Committee
is supportive. 1983 could very well be the
year of economic turnaround for
farmers -if they can "hang on" - and if
the government gives them something to
hang on to.
Backward life Down Under
SYDNEY, Australia - It really docs
take a long time to get to Australia. I left
Los Angeles Feb. 17 and 20 hours later,
on Feb. 19, I was here (you lose a day
crossing the International Dateline).
For those of you who don't know, Fin
a UNL student spending a semester abroad
in Australia. The exchange was made
possible by the Institute for International
Studies in Oldfather Hall, the International
Student Exchange Program in Washington,
Bob
Glissmann
D.C., and loans from my mother and the
bank, both in Omaha.
At the moment, I'm sitting in my
dormitory room (dorms are called
"colleges" here) on the Macquarie Univer
sity campus in North Ryde, New South
Wales (North Ryde's a suburb of Sydney)
sweating like a pig. It's about 80 degrees
here, with 90 percent humidity. I don't
suppose this is eliciting sympathy from any
of you, so I'll move on.
A lot of things are different here; a
lot of things are the same - I'm comparing,
of course, American and Australian things.
For one thing, they drive on the wrong
side of the road. Well, I probably shouldn't
say "wrong," they just drive on the other
side. That's hard to get used to. The
steering wheels are on the other side, too,
so I've been getting in on the wrong side
of the cars.
This reverse arrangement works in other
things, too. If you're walking down a hall
or a sidewalk, you stay on the left side and
people pass on your right. The escalators
also are set up opposite the way ours are.
Everything's metric, too. I don't really
know the current temperature because
they keep saying it's 28 degrees, or it's
30 degrees. Even calories are different -I
saw on a Fresca can the words "a low
joule soft drink."
"Yield" signs say "Give Way" here, and
Rice Krispies are, believe it or not, "Rice
Bubbles." They don't seem to have
7-Up here, but they have something called
"Lemon Squash" that is about the same.
Of course, they have Coke here, and
McDonald's. (In fact, my first meal in
Australia was from McDonald's.)
Prices in the fast food joints are about
the same as in America. The difference
shows up with the more expensive cuts
of meat. I had a T-bone for about five
bucks the other day. The meat didn't
compare to Nebraska beef, but hey, what
does?
Automobiles are much more expensive
here, as is gas. It's about $2 a gallon here
now. The value of the Australian dollar
is about the same as the American.
But the money is all different colors
here - the one dollar bill has a picture of
the queen on one side and what looks like
cave scribblings on the other side, and it's
kind of pink-orange, brown and green.
The two dollar bill is green and yellow and
has a picture of a guy and a sheep on one
side, and another guy and some grain on
the other.
On all the bills, there's a watermark -you
hold the money up to the light and
there's a profile of somebody important
inside.
The coins are different, too. The various
coins are decorated with creatures ranging
from some kind of rat, a weird lizard with
sails under its neck, a mole-like thing,
a bird with four tails, a platypus, an emu
and a kangaroo.
They've got a bunch of weird birds
around here, too. One is an Indian myna
bird that walks all t over, another is a
miniature parrot that's blue, green, red and
yellow, and there's another one I haven't
seen yet that sounds like a calf or a
bleating sheep. Maybe the sheep live in
trees here, who knows.
Oh, and although it's hard to tell, I
think the water goes down the drain clock
wise here.
Upcomisng Gemaim election
nave mm-mme
Perhaps you remember freshman year in
college, dozing through a Christ-to-Krush-chev
survey course on Western history,
when suddenly Professor Whatwashisname
mentioned the Peace of Westphalia and a
groan rose from the soles of your penny
loafers: Another damned date to memo
rize. Why disturb the dust on such memo
ries? Because Sunday's elections in Ger
many are among the most important in
postwar Europe and Germany's past is
always tangled up in the present.
The Peace of Westphalia (1648, ended
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George
Will
the Thirty Years War) ratified the existence
of more than 300 sovereign German princi
palities. That suited the princes and the
national interest of Germany's rivals.
But it retarded the evolution of a mature
German nationalism. France and Britain
were nations in the 1400s; the United
States was a nation in the 1700s; Germany
was not a nation until the second half
of the 19th century. Today German
nationalism, always problematic, is a
force on the left and is associated with
neutralism - the escape from history
and geography.
Most Germans do not think constantly
about - or vote in consequence of - the
proposed deployment of modernized intermediate-range
missiles. But the Social
Democratic Party under Hans-Jochen
Vogel has moved radically leftward,
partly pulled by competiton with the
Greens, partly by latent inclination.
The SPD now opposes deployment by
NATO of missiles to counter the Soviet
SS-20s - a deployment first urged upon
NATO by a former SPD chancellor, Hel
mut Schmidt.
It is unlikely that the SPD could do well
enough for Vogel to govern other than in
coalition with the Greens, who would
deepen the SPD's neutralist predisposition.
With some SPD members now talking
about "security partnership" with Mos
cow, Moscow would seize upon a SPD
Green victory to connect nationalism and
neutralism. Even if Chancellor Helmut
Kohl wins, one thing has been changed,
radically and perhaps irrevocably, and
one substantial danger will remain.
What has changed is the SPD. Schmidt
held it to what can be called Bevinism,
named for Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary
in Britain's postwar Labor government.
Bevin was a Fiercely anti-Soviet socialist.
A decisive event in the growth of postwar
German democracy was the SPD's
adoption of the Godesberg platform in
1959. In it, the party formally disavowed
its Marxist past and class orientation, put
aside dogmatic anti-military doctrines and
endorsed socialism compatible with "free
enterprise and free competiton."
But the current campaign has been a
kind of anti-Godesberg, in the sense that
the party of the left among the two
natural governing parties has broken with
the central tenets of Germany's postwar
consensus. Those tenets are that modern
Germany's identity is indissolubly linked
to the West, and that German nationalism
can find full expression within the trans
national purposes of the NATO alliance.
Today the SPD is within striking
distance of power that it would use to
frustrate the most important decision
NATO has made in a generation. Doing
so would have the perverse consequence of
strengthening the "peace" movement by
making arms-control talks pointless. Why
would Moscow negotiate about limits if
NATO cannot consummate deployment
decisions?
If Kohl wins, extra-parliamentary extre
mism may follow. With an impertinence
that reflects its growing contempt for
Western Europe, Moscow, in a German
language broadcast, has warned Germans
that Kohl's election would mean social
disturbances.
Today many Europeans, and especially
Germans, are preoccupied with the des
tructiveness of modern weapons. Thus,
it is well to remember that in the war
that ended with the Peace of Westphalia,
Germany lost 35 percent of its population.
Bohemia's population fell from 3 million
to 780,000, and 30,000 of 35,000 villages
were destroyed. By 1641, Wurtemberg's
population had fallen from 400,000 to
48,000.
Today as then, Germany's inescapable
fate is to be the cockpit of European
history and never distant from danger.
(c) 1933, The Washington Post Company