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Taylor County Sheriff DepartmentGrafton, CountyTaylor County Sheriff Department
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
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Monday, December 26, 2011
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Saturday, December 24, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
Matt Barkley helps put USC, as a university, in a new light
USC quarterback Matt Barkley is all smiles after announcing that he will return to play one more season for the Trojans. (Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times / December 22, 2011)
Let's peel back a layer on this Matt Barkley story.
The deeper significance of what he did Thursday afternoon can be easily lost in the noise and nectar of the moment.
Bill Dwyre
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In the last 24 hours, the obvious has been beaten like a drum. Barkley didn't take the money and run. Barkley is a fine young man, a class act and a role model. Heisman trophies and national titles are now real possibilities.
There are so many ways to say these things, and the media found them all. News and chatter come so fast now, and are so indistinguishable from one another, that the end measure becomes the eventual snowball at the bottom of the hill. The size of the Barkley snowball was unmistakable.
But it needs to be said that, while Barkley did a great thing for his football team, he did even more for his university. He took one small step for the Trojans, one giant step for USC.
Consider that he did exactly what Andrew Luck did at Stanford at the end of last season. Luck cited many of the things about teammates and the college experience that Barkley did, and he stayed. But we were less shocked by that one.
Why? Because Luck was from Stanford. And Stanford has long been the embodiment of academic excellence walking comfortably alongside athletic excellence. Stanford kids are usually there because they are the type who get to a fork in the road and look for a side path. When Luck did what he did last year, it seemed merely a further validation.
USC kids? Not so much.
Matt Leinart chose to hang around for another year, even after winning the Heisman. But it was never clear whether that decision was based on a desire to fight on, or on an injured elbow that wouldn't have immediately served him well in the pros. Mark Sanchez, of course, jumped off the Trojan horse before he grew into his saddle.
As an academic institution, USC should not be judged merely on go-pro or no-go-pro decisions of its star players. But, like it or not, high-profile athletes have much more to do with the image of a university than they should.
It wasn't that long ago that USC's image was that of a football factory. There always seemed to be stories about classes in map reading and football players studying for those classes in their shiny new convertibles, "purchased" at a dealership owned by an alum.
A personal favorite was when The Times' sports investigative team uncovered a class at USC in something like sand castle design. It was run by a friendly old professor with season tickets. One semester, it had 35 students, 32 of them either football or baseball players and the other three relatives of football coaches. The reporters found that all but one, a baseball player, had received an A.
The story ran, but the huge question never was answered: What had that baseball player done to get a B?
Those days are long gone. Annual university academic ratings often place USC near the top. USC's endowment has swelled and its faculty holds international stature. Occasionally, in certain categories, its ranking will top UCLA, which must rankle the Bruins more than, well …50-0.
But as leaders such as Steven Sample and others slowly changed both the reality and the image, the football monster reared its ugly head again. Pete Carroll brought back the good old days, as well as a lot of the good-old-boy alums who cared much more about the BCS than GPAs. Carroll wasn't an intentional cheat or a bad guy. He just liked it loose and fun, and it was.
Until Reggie Bush got caught.
The damage of that setback, still mostly perception but harmful nevertheless, was mitigated when Max Nikias took over as school president and made Pat Haden the face of the future. Haden made the good old Trojans nervous. Still does. He was one of them, a former star quarterback. But he was also a Rhodes Scholar (never trust a guy who goes off to England to sit in musty libraries in a tweed sportcoat) who yapped constantly about academics and clean programs.
When the NCAA came in with its wrecking ball, the good old Trojans demanded that Haden sue. The rallying cry seemed to be: Don't they know who we are? Haden said no, that the football team would take its medicine and work through this with dignity and class. His message was that this, too, shall pass.
And so it has.
But little did anybody know that a college junior with good grades, a rifle for a throwing arm and a pot of gold beckoning him would stand up in Heritage Hall and, in a two-minute speech, do more than almost anybody or anything else in recent time to validate what USC wants to be and has become.
Now, high school freshman football players who wanted to be Mark Sanchez want to be Matt Barkley first. Every university professor who despises the amount of money and energy used on football at the expense of his or her program despises football a tad less.
It is easy to imagine college presidents around the country, upon viewing a snippet of Barkley on the evening news, sitting down in a big easy chair, lighting a pipe and muttering: "Thank God."
That Barkley did what he did in a similar time frame, with reasoning and articulate presentation similar to Andrew Luck, is an un-measurable plus for USC. Stanford will always be "The Farm." But Barkley has done a perfect job of demonstrating that USC has a quality crop too.
bill.dwyre@latimes.com
Matt Barkley, Matt Barkley, Andrew Luck, Andrew Luck, the Trojans, football players, football players, USC, USC, USC, football team, football team, Mark Sanchez, Stanford
2011-12-22 098
2011-12-22 098
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EU Keeps Airlines in Carbon Market
BRUSSELS—The European Union's top court backed the inclusion of the airline industry in the bloc's carbon-trading market, in a decision likely to escalate a diplomatic row between the EU and its biggest trading partners.
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Wednesday's widely expected ruling comes as the U.S. and others intensify pressure on the EU to delay the expansion of its emissions trading plan to include airlines on Jan. 1, or scrap it altogether in favor of a new international deal.
The U.S., China and others have threatened action if their airlines are forced to buy permits to account for their emissions of carbon dioxide, a move that trade groups claim could cost €20 billion ($26 billion) to the end of the decade. The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, has estimated that the plan could increase the cost of a single trip ticket by between €2 and €12, depending on the length of the flight.
"The directive including aviation activities in the EU's emissions-trading scheme is valid," according to a statement issued by the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice shortly after its ruling. The court, whose ruling can't be appealed, was expected after a court advocate-general's opinion supported it earlier this year.
A new EU law includes airlines in the bloc's carbon-dioxide Emissions Trading System, beginning Jan. 1, when all airlines will have to hold permits to cover CO2 emitted by aircraft landing and taking off from EU airports.
The U.S. said 41 countries have registered objections to the ETS as a unilateral action in breach of international law. Lawmakers are pushing bills that would ban U.S. airlines from complying, and China has hinted the plan could affect orders for Airbus jets.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood wrote to the EU last week urging the bloc to suspend the program and negotiate with other governments on how to limit airlines' CO2 emissions globally. They said that if the EU didn't move that way, the U.S. "will be compelled to take appropriate action."
Critics of the EU favor a global plan to tackle emissions overseen by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a branch of the United Nations. However, the EU grew frustrated at decade-long efforts to establish such a program, and are wary of a pledge by ICAO that it could secure agreement on the framework of a global deal by the end of next year.
The EU court was called to rule on the case after AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, United Continental Holdings Inc. and the Air Transport Association of America, a trade group, challenged the law in a U.K. court in 2009. The U.K. court, in turn, asked the Court of Justice to rule on legality of the EU's plan under international agreements.
"The court did not fully address legal issues raised and has established a damaging and questionable precedent," Airlines for America, as the Air Transport Association is now known, said Wednesday. "Today's decision does not mark the end of this case and A4A is reviewing options to pursue in the English High Court."
Non-EU airlines are particularly hard-hit by the plan, which measures emissions for an entire trip starting or ending at an EU airport.
"We won't get agreement on a global approach if states are throwing rocks at each other because Europe wants to act extra-territorially," said Tony Tyler, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, the global trade group.
The ETS is the central plank of EU's environmental policy, which is focused on putting a price on carbon-dioxide emissions and capping their number. It aims to encourage companies to invest in clean technologies to reduce emissions in the long term, rather than buying more permits to emit more carbon dioxide.
An allowance traded on the ETS gives the holder the right to emit one metric ton of carbon dioxide.
The EU will distribute up to 85% of the airline industry's allowances free of charge. Above that level, carriers will need to buy carbon credits through the ETS.
According to the EU plan, airlines will have to hold permits to cover emissions for the whole length of a flight taking off or landing in the EU, a much-contested provision that critics say is an imposition of rules outside its borders. But in Wednesday's ruling, the court said it doesn't undermine the "full applicability" of the EU rules.
There also are concerns that the EU's action could disrupt the continuing deregulation of the industry.
The court said the EU isn't a party to the Chicago Convention, the treaty that has governed international aviation since 1944, so it isn't bound by it, even though EU countries, including the U.K. where the legal action was started, are bound by the convention
"It's a slap in the face for the Chicago Convention," said Brian Havel, director of the International Aviation Law Institute at DePaul University in Chicago.
—Doug Cameron and Daniel Michaels contributed to this article.
Write to Alessandro Torello at alessandro.torello@dowjones.com
Air Transport Association, The European Union, carbon dioxide, American Airlines, emissions trading, European Court of Justice, Court of Justice, The European Commission, United Continental Holdings Inc., airline industry, airline industry, International Civil Aviation Organization, International Air Transport Association, Chicago Convention
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