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FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2013
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The Parthenon, Marshall University’s student newspaper, is published by students Mondays through Fridays during the regular semesters, and weekly Thursdays during the summer. The editorial staff is responsible for news and editorial content.
n I’m worried
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THE FIRST AMENDMENT
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Which NCAA team do you think will win the national championship? n Michigan n Wichita State n Louisville n Syracuse
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n What’s going on in North Korea?
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MARCUS CONSTANTINO
PHOTO EDITOR
n We have nothing to worry about
TYLER KES
SPORTS EDITOR
| MARSHALLPARTHENON.COM
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Editorial: Sen. Manchin out of character in gun debate Wednesday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) introduced a bi-partisan gun control bill alongside Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in a move that will likely raise the eyebrows of National Rifle Association members in West Virginia. Manchin, a life long member of the NRA who has distanced himself from President Barack Obama’s left-leaning gun control policies, has shifted his stance and has taken a middle-ground approach in the months after the Sandy Hook massacre. “It [Sandy Hook] has changed me,” Manchin said in a MSNBC interview in December. “We can protect Second Amendment rights, and we will protect it, but we can also look at ways that we can make our country and children more safe.” Manchin is not the only one to re-evaluate gun control in the wake of Sandy Hook, which fired up an already heated debate on Capitol Hill. Four months after the massacre, it seems as if Washington is as divided as ever. Bridging the divide on Capitol Hill is no small task, but Manchin’s deal may be enough to push expanded gun control laws
over the bloated hill. Fresh off of a re-election, Manchin’s senate seat is secure until 2018, which is probably a good thing considering West Virginia has a subversive “gun-culture” where it is all about God, guns and guts. Manchin is a smart politician — his rise to power from the West Virginia House of Delegates to the United States Senate shows that — but his waffling on gun control is out of character considering his staunch pro-gun stance. In 2010, Manchin ran an ad where he claimed he would take “dead aim” and shoot down Obama’s Cap and Trade Bill. The ad depicted Manchin firing a rifle round into a copy of the bill. That does not sound like someone who would be at the forefront of gun control legislation. Has Sandy Hook really changed Manchin, or is this a strategic political maneuver to gain national attention? While Manchin’s bill is a watered down compromise compared to the harsh assault weapons ban Obama wanted, it is a step in the right direction to legally expand background checks for gun buyers at gun shows and Internet sales.
Column
MU students deserve a transparent administration By HENRY CULVYHOUSE
COLUMNIST The beauty of American democracy is tax funded, public institutions are open to public inspection and their actions are easily documentable, but at Marshall University this week, we have learned that is not always the case. The budget sweep, reducing each Marshall college’s accounts to $5,000, leaving in the hands of the university proper, rocked faculty, students and staff like a midsummer thunderstorm. Everyone was already used to tightening their belts, but now they have to go out and buy a smaller one. No one saw this coming. Talking with faculty today, I found out that the accounts were already swept Tuesday at 9:11 a.m., and all employees received an email informing them about it. I found out professors in College of Liberal Arts want to protest the sweep at noon April 19, but the only room available to air their grievances is in the Catholic Newman Center, which is conveniently located across the street, away from anyone who might hear. Talking to the nice secretary in the COLA office today, I found out Dean Pittenger would give no comment on the issue, having denied another reporter an interview on the same matter. Kopp is refusing to comment as well. The best way to anger a whole university is to make a drastic move with its finances and then refuse to address it. If there is nothing to hide, then why act like there is? If this is such a wise move necessary for Marshall University’s financial survival, then why was this not done out in the open? Why was there no warning? No notice? If this is the best thing for the university, then why was it not
exposed to the arena of public opinion? If a policy is sound, then it will naturally prevail when exposed to other options. But I guess Kopp and company thought otherwise. I understand the president’s office needs to make executive actions to steer the boat away from a rock at a moment’s notice. A decision like this, however, requires much planning and preparation, and should include debate outside the presidential office. This affects every student, faculty, staff and member of the Huntington community. It affects the Thundering Herd, and the Herd should have seen it coming. But I guess the top administration thought otherwise. I am not saying we should fight these sweeps or support them — I do not know. But what we need to do is pry open this culture of secrecy the administration embraces. Ever try to find the budget in this institution? Not the summary, I mean the actual budget. Good luck jumping through those hoops. For a place where people learn information and engage in debates, there is a lot of administrative red tape for public documents and a lack of communication from the top. This is a major move, done behind our backs and announced before we at Marshall could have a say in the matter — we at Marshall, who love this school and do our best to get by, even with the rising tuition and the low pay. Thankfully, the college deans were told they could justify funds needed and have them returned, but what has me worried is the other decisions the administration has never bothered informing us about. Henry Culvyhouse can be contacted at culvyhouse@ marshall.edu.
MCT CAMPUS
Column: Can Obama Sell ‘Chained CPI’?
W
By DOYLE MCMANUS
LOS ANGELES TIMES President Obama didn’t release his proposed budget for 2014 until Wednesday, but liberals and AARP have been howling all week about something they expected to be in it. What has our president done to provoke such outrage among his supporters? He’s chained CPI. In an attempt to meet Republicans halfway in the battle over taxes and spending, Obama has offered to change the formula for calculating Social Security’s annual cost-of-living increase — an “entitlement reform” GOP leaders have long asked for. The result would not change current Social Security benefits, but it would reduce future raises by an estimated three-tenths of 1 percent in the first year, or about $42 for the average beneficiary. Over the long run, thanks to the magic of compounding, a lower rate of increase would have a substantial effect. After 20 years, estimating very roughly, a retiree might be looking at a yearly payout more than $1,000 less than he or she would have received without the change. To progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that’s an unconscionable cut. But others, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are willing to back Obama on this one. “Let’s take a look at it,” Pelosi said recently. If you’ve read this far, you’re ready for the technical explanation, which requires some background. When Congress enacted Social Security in 1935, there was no provision for increases. Until 1950, benefits didn’t rise at all, but since 1975, annual cost-of-living adjustments have been automatic, based on the consumer price index. The problem is there’s more than one way of calculating the consumer price index. Right
now, Social Security increases are based on the Bureau of Labor Standards’ CPI-W, for urban workers. But the agency also calculates the index in other ways, including one known as C-CPI-U, or “chained CPI.” The old-fashioned CPI is based on a fixed “market basket” of commodities. When their prices rise, the index rises proportionally. Chained CPI adds in something called the “substitution effect”: When prices go up, people change what they put in the basket. When the cost of beef increases, for example, consumers switch from steak to chicken, which means their cost of living doesn’t rise as fast as the old-fashioned CPI would suggest. As a result of the calculation differences, chained CPI rises a little more slowly than regular CPI — by about one-quarter of a percentage point less per year over the last 10 years, according to Robert Greenstein at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Many economists say chained CPI is a more accurate way to measure the cost of living for retirees and therefore it should be the basis for Social Security adjustments. Greenstein, the patriarch of liberal budget experts, doesn’t agree. In fact, in a paper he issued on Tuesday, he argued that chained CPI is probably less accurate as a measure of inflation’s impact on the elderly and the poor. Older people spend more on health care than on chained CPI measures, he noted. And poor people — who gave up steak long ago — can’t substitute cheaper goods as easily as the middle class. And yet Greenstein, like Pelosi, has decided that Obama’s proposal for chained CPI is worth a try. The reason, he said, is that if you’re looking for entitlement cuts as part of a grand bargain on the budget, it’s better than the alternatives. The question now: Will Republicans buy in?
page designed and edited by JOHN GIBB | gibb@marshall.edu
Last year, when the issue first came up, GOP leaders in Congress said chained CPI was an important test of whether Obama was serious about making cuts in Medicare and Social Security and suggested that such a move might make them more willing to compromise on revenue increases. But last week, when White House officials leaked the news that chained CPI would be in the new budget, Republicans seemed unimpressed. House Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, dismissed the proposal as insignificant — and certainly not enough to deserve a GOP concession on taxes in return. Obama is hoping the plan will get a better reception from the GOP senators he’s been having dinner with over the last two months. They, not Boehner, are the Republicans he hopes to make his partners in a grand bargain. Even if GOP leaders buy in, the public will take some convincing. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 55 percent of Americans think preserving Social Security and Medicare benefits is more important than cutting the deficit, including 73 percent of Democrats. (A slim majority of Republicans, 52 percent, believe cutting the deficit is more important.) If the public doesn’t want the change, and some people in his own party are also opposed, why is Obama moving forward? For one thing, he isn’t running for office again. Proposing a change in the formula for Social Security increases is the kind of thing a second-term president can do. More important, the proposal is evidence that Obama, despite his failures in 2011 and 2012, still yearns for a grand bargain on the budget. And now that he isn’t running for reelection, he’s willing to take risks, endure complaints from his own party and buck public opinion to try to get it.