OUR VIEWS

End the cheating

As outlined in the Birmingham Post-Herald series, Investigating the NCAA, that concludes today, cheating is entirely too common among the large university sports programs. Coaches, administrators, athletes and perhaps most of all boosters almost routinely bend and break the NCAA rules. Rules that are supposed to keep competition fair and ensure that sports programs remain tied to the educational mission of colleges and universities.

The penalities that are currently imposed for rules violations have not curtailed the cheating. If anything, the attitude is spreading that everybody else cheats, so why shouldn't I?

Too many of those involved in college sports are coming to view NCAA penalties as a minor price to pay for winning records. Respect for the rules is further eroded when the NCAA imposes penalties on institutions after the cheaters are gone. Fans perceive this as unfair punishment for the people who join the sports programs after the cheaters have left or those who had nothing to do with the wrongdoing.

This erosion of respect for and obedience of NCAA rules has to reversed. Sports programs are supposed to advance the educational mission of colleges and universities in part by helping to build good moral character among participants. Winning by cheating builds bad moral character.

The best way to restore integrity to intercollegiate athletics may be to submit cheating programs to the shock of the NCAA death penalty, a punishment last imposed in 1987.

Banning a university from participating in one or more intercollegiate sports for a one or more years would get the attention of administrators who looked the other way when the cheating took place. It would prevent a cheating program from compiling a winning record in the aftermath of being caught, thereby taking away the incentive for boosters to cheat.

Without radical surgery, cheating is a malignant disease that will only continue to spread through intercollegiate sports. It is time to take the patient to the operating room.

UAB's maturity

She has the potential to be an excellent leader for the academic, research and health-care institution, with some experience in all three areas.

Certainly, Garrison has made a big impression on University of Alabama System Chancellor Malcolm Portera and the system's board of trustees. We look forward to seeing her fill in details of her vision of what UAB needs to maintain, change and improve in the years ahead.

However, one of the more interesting aspects of Garrison's past is that she started her career at UAB, earning a master's of science in nursing and a pediatric nurse practioner certificate in the 1970s. She also taught some in the nursing school before leaving to obtain her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The fact that a former UAB student has returned to become its president is a sign that the school can no longer be considered an upstart institution. The university has reached a new level of maturity.

Euro dreams

When the European Union's currency was unveiled Jan. 1, 1999, backers hoped it would rival the dollar and maybe even surpass it as a world currency. That seemed possible three years ago. The euro's opening value was $1.18 but then it made a long, dispiriting slide into the 80-cent range.

Since April, the euro has rallied from that humble state and now trades within fractions of a penny of the dollar — but not because of anything the EU has done. It's because foreign investors are as worried by the careening U.S. financial markets and serial corporate scandals as Americans are.

However, as long as there isn't a mass bailout on the dollar and U.S. stocks and bonds, the weaker dollar is no bad thing, except for tourists. It has an anti-inflationary effect in Europe by making American goods cheaper and it has a stimulative effect here by making American exports more competitive.

Giddy Europeans believe the euro is on its way to its "natural" level of $1.10 to $1.15 and that this strong performance will entice holdouts Britain, Denmark and Sweden to embrace the euro.

Alas for euro lovers, that won't happen if U.S. central banker Alan Greenspan is right. As far as economic growth, the euro zone barely has a pulse while Greenspan says the U.S. economy will grow at a healthy 3.5 to 3.75 percent this year on the way to a full recovery. That means the euro will remain a second-string currency.

OTHER VIEWS

New California auto emission law a farce

By JAY AMBROSE
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

Excuse me, but may I make a point? The law is a farce.

California Gov. Gray Davis says he signed the law because global warming threatens us all and because the Bush administration backed off from the Kyoto accord. California, he tells us, had to get out there and show the way.

And, since California is 10 percent of the auto market and it is nigh impossible for Detroit to do one thing for that 10 percent and something else for the rest of the nation, what the state wants is what the rest of the nation may get.

But if the law is supposed to help save the world, it's going about it in a half-hearted way. The California Air Resources Board will have three years to figure out the emission standards, and then, four years later, everyone will have to comply. The law, however, does not permit the board to require trip reductions or auto-weight reductions (although weight reductions could be a consequence).

The law further says everything has to be done so that the voters out there won't be horribly hurt in the pocketbook. Uh huh.

Here is a problem for the new law. While carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas of concern, there's no technical way of altering gas-burning engines to reduce its emission. That leaves you with solutions like different kinds of tires, but that's not much of a solution. And then there's more mass transit, only you can't persuade more than a tiny percentage of people to give up the freedom and privacy of a car.

What you are almost certain to come to is smaller cars, and the smaller a car, the more dangerous it is. Even if you figure out a way to make them with really strong, light stuff, they would still be more dangerous than bigger cars made of really strong stuff.

What you also come down to is cars that are also a whole lot more expensive, despite the law's promises of economic feasibility. New cars that are hugely expensive have a way of causing people not to buy them. They tend to stick with their old cars as long as they can, meaning that the most highly polluting vehicles get driven far more than would be the case without the law. So you've achieved what?

One consequence of the law could be that Detroit takes it on the chin. Everyone who knows absolutely nothing about the auto industry (politicians, environmentalists) love to tell all those who do (the people in the industry) that it won't be any problem for them to adjust to new demands.

But reconfiguring cars will have great costs, and if people then don't buy them, there will be layoffs and hardship and a blow to the economy, industry spokesmen say.

Oh, industry spokesmen have complained before and all has gone swimmingly, reply the environmentalists. Wrong, wrong, 100 percent wrong.

I discussed this law with Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and someone who has pointed again and again to how the federal fuel-limit standards of the mid-1970s led to downsizing of automobiles and how the smaller cars resulted in thousands of more deaths than would otherwise have occurred. It's not just Kazman talking. This is the conclusion of a Harvard-Brookings Institute study and of research by the National Academies of Science.

If California can really do this thing, why can't another state — Texas, for instance — require that everybody drive large SUVs? The Texas legislature wouldn't put it quite that way, of course. It would simply mandate that all vehicles sold in Texas be as safe as the safest passenger vehicle now on the road, and that would be large SUVs.

But Kazman doesn't think California can do this thing. He thinks the federal fuel-limit standards likely will pre-empt the law, and that it will go away in a court challenge. Maybe the state that figured out a way to give itself an energy crisis a couple of years ago will not be successful in giving the rest of us an automobile crisis.
Jay Ambrose can be reached
at Scripps Howard News Service
1090 Vermont Ave. N.W., Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20005-4906
or AmbroseJ@shns.com

Working up a sweat

By ARGUS HAMILTON
THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN

Old Spice says San Antonio, Dallas and Houston are the three sweatiest cities in America. Air conditioning is no help. Until these Halliburton and Enron scandals blow over, people in all the nice neighborhoods are sweating bullets.

Fenway Park's tribute to Ted Williams wasn't attended by his daughter or his son. One wants him cremated and the other wants him frozen. In an effort to please both kids, the event was sponsored by Fire and Ice muscle ointment.

Colin Powell spent all weekend on the phone mediating between King Mohammed of Morocco and Spain's foreign minister. The time was right. MCI customers are calling everybody they know thinking they won't get a bill at the end of the month.

The Daily Planet brothel in Australia announced plans to go public and sell stock in the company. Let's hope it's not listed on the New York exchange. The last thing Arthur Andersen needs right now is a fresh approach to accounting tricks.
— Scripps Howard News Service

Argus Hamilton can be reached
at argusjokes@aol.com

YOUR VIEWS

Poverty is symptom, not real problem

I read this as a kind of vindication for the attacks on us by terrorists and justification for their hatred. If Carter wants to labor under a huge guilt trip, that's his burden. But don't try to shift it to all of us.

The notion that the haves got it at the expense of the have-nots is the seed bed for demagogues who use it to foment hatred. Personally, I see poverty as a symptom of the underlying problem, not the problem itself. I'm proud to be a part of our 21st century nation and believe we got here by brains and hard work.

We should be willing to help those who show some interest and ability to help themselves. But I don't subscribe to the notion that we should all share equally the benefits of the Earth regardless of the efforts and brains used to reap those benefits. Carter's remarks bear the distinct odor of socialism and I say, "No, thanks."

Frank Powell
259 Woodcastle Drive
Florence

Joke was revealing

The affair was the apolitical 55th annual "Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner," a fundraising event for the Archdiocese of New York to raise money for Catholic health care. In 1928, Al Smith was the first Catholic nominated for president but lost to Hoover. About 1,300 people paid $800 each to attend the affair.

Simmons would have us believe that laughter at Bush's remark means that it was a false statement. Yet, if one examines Bush's statement in the context of his entire political career, you find it is true.

Yes, the audience laughed when Bush referred to them as the "haves and have-mores" and the "elite" but they were laughing at the truth not a false statement. They laughed when they raised $101 million from individuals for Bush against Gore's $46 million. They laughed even louder when Bush gave them a tax cut shortly after taking office. They are laughing now at the growing budget deficit, possible repeal of estate taxes, and prospects for more business deregulation.

How many members of "We the People" would laugh in today's economy at the joke Bush and his "elite base" pulled on "We the People"?

Bush is not renowned for his intellectual prowess and his so-called joke revealed his true character. Bush acts like the working class is second class and neither laughter nor anything Simmons says will alter that fundamental fact.

Joe Boyett
3807 Rouse Ridge Road
Montgomery

Helping rich

As a senior citizen, I believe the Republicans in Congress will support the cheapest prescription drug bill they can get by with. The Republicans have to leave room to help the rich every chance they get.

Since this is election year, I believe next year we will see the Republicans want to cut back on many programs to make up for the rich man's tax cut.

As a veteran, I believe George W. Bush wants to play the John Wayne part and send American sons and daughters out in very dangerous places across the world.

In my opinion, Bush sending our troops in other countries will cause more terrorists on our country. This country will never be able to take out all of the terrorists around the world.

It seems Bush is a much braver man now than he was during the Vietnam War when he joined the National Guard to keep from going to Vietnam. Some naive right wingers want us to believe all Republican politicians are super Christians and almost angels. I still don't believe that.

Cress Joiner
116 E. Damon Ave.
Talladega

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