Government Support

PARIS -- Settling one of the most bitter trade disputes between the United States and Europe, U.S. officials announced a tentative agreement yesterday limiting government support for the commercial aircraft industry.For several years, Boeing Co. and McDonnell Douglas Corp. have accused Europe's fast-growing Airbus Industrie consortium of stealing business through unfair direct state subsidies.Airbus has countered that U.S. manufacturers are indirectly subsidized by orders from the Pentagon and the space program and are engaged in a thinly veiled attempt to thwart a European upstart in an industry they have long dominated.

If I am Nadya Suleman right now, I'm thinking 14 kids under the age of 7 is going to be the easy part. Dealing with all the anger that is raining down on her is what's tough. The wonder that greeted the news that Suleman had given birth to eight reasonably healthy babies quickly gave way to intrusion, ridicule, resentment and violent threats. Some of those threats included the phrase wood chipper, if you can imagine. And there has been a new and disturbing headline just about every day since the octuplets came into the world on Jan. 26. The mother is divorced, and the man whose sperm fertilized her eggs is just now finding out that he has 14 children.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is joining a growing chorus of American orchestras sounding a sour financial note.The BSO expects to run a deficit of about $800,000 this year, according to executive director John Gidwitz. That would be the orchestra's first shortfall since 1986, when it embarked on an acclaimed $40-million endowment campaign that, with the help of a six-year, $10-million state grant, was designed to prevent it from going in the red.Much of the BSO's deficit, which represents about 5 percent of the BSO's annual $17 million operating budget, is the result of reductions in anticipated government support, Mr. Gidwitz said yesterday.

Q: Whether it's nursing home care, support for an assisted-living facility or in-home help from a nurse or aid, most people will need some help in their later years. Do you feel you will be able to find and afford the help you need (for yourself or for older relatives)? Is the government doing what it should to see that such services are available and help all Americans afford them? I strongly feel that the government, and the society as a whole, are not doing what they should to see that the services the elderly need are available or affordable.

"Alone in the Crowd," the Baltimore Museum of Art's exhibition of African-American prints from the 1930s and '40s, illustrates the value of government support of the arts. The show, which presents 104 works by 42 African-American artists, is a small part of the enormous body of work produced under the auspices of the federal Works Progress Administration, which subsidized the activities of thousands of American artists, writers and composers during the Great Depression.African-American artists represented a minuscule fraction of the total population of artists in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is joining a growing chorus of American orchestras sounding a sour financial note.The BSO expects to run a deficit of about $800,000 this year, according to executive director John Gidwitz. That would be the orchestra's first shortfall since 1986, when it embarked on an acclaimed $40 million endowment campaign that, with the help of a six-year, $10 million state grant, was designed to prevent it from going in the red.Much of the BSO's deficit, which represents about 5 percent of the BSO's annual $17 million operating budget, is the result of reductions in anticipated government support, Mr. Gidwitz said yesterday.

Islamic art show opening drew 1,900 to WaltersMore than 1,900 people attended the opening of "Islamic Art and Patronage: Selections from Kuwait" at the Walters Art Gallery last Sunday, the largest single-day attendance at the Walters since some 4,000 people attended the museum's Black History Day last Feb. 4.According to museum spokesman Richard Gorelick, an additional 2,000 people attended previews of the exhibit, which features more than 100 objects covering...

Chicago. -- After a college lecture on government support for the arts, a man got up to say that such support would be nice if we could afford it, but that we must address necessities before we can indulge luxuries.Another questioner agreed that aesthetic education should be put in the school curriculum, but that supplying the capacity to appreciate art is enough; you do not need to supply the artifacts to be appreciated.A third man said that government's support for the arts skews the market, not letting us find out what people really want to see, or hear, or dance to. Why should the government supply what the popular support would not undertake?

AUSTIN, Texas -- Since its inception in 1987, Sematech has been the model for an American partnership between government and industry to cultivate a technology that ultimately benefits the entire economy.Nearly five years later, support from both sides of that partnership is flagging.On the government side, the proposed Bush administration budget for the coming fiscal year cuts federal support for Sematech by 20 percent, from $100 million to $80 million.On the industry side, as many as three out of the 14 founding members may leave the Austin consortium aimed at restoring U.S. supremacy in the manufacturing of the key component of Information Age economies, the microchip.

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. -- Peter Angelos got an early Christmas present from his 28 fellow owners. The Lords of Baseball have decided that San Juan, Puerto Rico, is a better place to stage some of the Montreal Expos "home" games than Washington, D.C., next year. But if Mr. Angelos thinks he has avoided getting competition in his back yard, he may be in for a surprise. Baseball could move the Expos to Washington in time for the 2004 season, and that's not only bad news for him but also for potential Washington fans because of how major-league sports is structured.

BAGHDAD, Iraq --- All of her life, Salwah Ziyadah has lived in Iraq as a stateless refugee, a stranger in her native land. Now the 41-year-old Palestinian woman, her elderly mother and four children face another kind of exile. They are being hounded to leave the home the family has lived in for the past 34 years. Not long ago, a classmate taunted Salwah's pale, stocky 17-year-old son, Yassir, at school. With Saddam Hussein gone, the Iraqi boy said, the Palestinians no longer had any right to be in Iraq.

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. -- Peter Angelos got an early Christmas present from his 28 fellow owners. The Lords of Baseball have decided that San Juan, Puerto Rico, is a better place to stage some of the Montreal Expos "home" games than Washington, D.C., next year. But if Mr. Angelos thinks he has avoided getting competition in his back yard, he may be in for a surprise. Baseball could move the Expos to Washington in time for the 2004 season, and that's not only bad news for him but also for potential Washington fans because of how major-league sports is structured.

WASHINGTON - The nation's aerospace industry is facing an economic and employment "crisis" that threatens to topple the United States from its position as the world leader in air transportation, space exploration and technology, according to a study released yesterday. A consolidated industry, aging work force and government apathy have combined to weaken the nation's industrial base and could threaten national security if allowed to continue, says a report from the Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry.

THE SUPREME COURT has now agreed to decide with finality whether government may consider "general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public," when making grants to artists.To some, this is infringing the freedom of speech, which the First Amendment forbids Congress to do. But every member of Congress is held accountable by constituents for every penny appropriated, and must say what it should be for.In this debate, we must distinguish between the government as patron of the arts and the government as cop. Government need not be the first but must be the second.

A month ago, the University System of Maryland was set to hit students with another round of stiff tuition increases, in some cases at more than twice the rate of inflation.But this time, the Board of Regents' express ran into a roadblock when The Sun published a story about the plan the day before the regents were to vote on it.Gov. Parris N. Glendening and other state leaders can read. They also know where the votes are. In one day, they forced the regents to delay action on the increases until their October meeting Friday in Frostburg.

LOST IN THE hoopla over the balanced federal budget projected for the year 2002 is an obvious but much-avoided question: Why have the richest people who ever lived been so comically unable to pay their bills?For this is not Paraguay, after all, or some other impoverished nation, struggling to live within limited means. This is the United States of America, 1997 -- the wealthiest nation that has ever existed.Despite self-pitying portraits of "the first generation to have less than its parents," the fact is that Americans have material resources unmatched in the history of life on the planet.

WASHINGTON -- If the Republican Congress is truly serious about ending dependence on government handouts, it should look beyond the poor and also slash subsidies to corporate America, an unusual alliance of moderate, conservative and liberal policy experts declared yesterday.The government could save $265 billion over five years by eliminating or scaling back 120 spending programs and tax breaks that benefit particular industries, according to a report released by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI)

A permit for childbearing? No children without a degree? What could be further from American notions of personal freedom and self-determination?But listen carefully to the welfare debate and you can hear how Democrats and Republicans alike are kidding themselves.If the intention of welfare reform is to stem the number of children born to parents unable to support them, and if we live in an economy where most unskilled laborers can't earn enough to support a family, then at some point Americans must face a question nobody wants to touch: Do poor people have a right to have children?

Are Carroll County voters ready for charter government?Support appears to be building for a change to an executive-county council form of government, but twice, in 1968 and 1992, the county has overwhelmingly rejected attempts to replace the county's commissioner form of government.Charter supporters think the third time could be the charm. Although they failed four years ago, they say support for an executive-county council form of government has increased among voters."I think because it was much closer last time, it could pass," said Commissioner Richard T. Yates, who was a member of a group that drafted the 1992 charter.

Chicago. -- After a college lecture on government support for the arts, a man got up to say that such support would be nice if we could afford it, but that we must address necessities before we can indulge luxuries.Another questioner agreed that aesthetic education should be put in the school curriculum, but that supplying the capacity to appreciate art is enough; you do not need to supply the artifacts to be appreciated.A third man said that government's support for the arts skews the market, not letting us find out what people really want to see, or hear, or dance to. Why should the government supply what the popular support would not undertake?