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This month, the UTSA art gallery features work with themes from the border pg 6 UTSA earns a win against Nicholls in the 11th annual Ramada WorldWide Bracketbusters. pg 7
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Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio
{SINCE 1981}
The FBI has launched a probe to investigate whether former UTSA contractors and developers committed more than $1 million dollars in fraud through a bid-rigging scheme.
{Arts}
Argo won Best Picture at the Oscars, while Life of Pi won awards for Adapted Screenplay and Direction.
{UT System}
Rick Perry has appointed two new members to serve on the UT Board of Regents, who oversee the entire University of Texas system.
{WWW.PAISANO-ONLINE.COM}
President calls for minimum wage increase News Assistant
Gov. Rick Perry has called on state lawmakers to find room in their budget to help fund the $16 billion I-69 project, which would carry traffic from southern Texas to Michigan.
Issue 7
Food stamps and gun classes: take a look at some of the bills being debated in the Texas Legislature. Page 2
Corey Franco
{Texas}
February 26, 2013
news@paisano-online.com In his State of the Union Address on Feb. 12, President Obama called upon lawmakers to raise the current federal minimum wage. The president said in the address, “Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong.” According to the latest release from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the poverty line, or poverty guideline, for 2012 in the U.S. was $11,170 for a one person household, and for each additional occupant that number increased by $3,960. Obama said, “Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour. This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank, rent or eviction, scraping by or finally getting ahead. For businesses across the
country, it would mean customers with more money in their pockets.” “[Raising minimum wage] would help strengthen the economy and lift many of the 15 million workers who rely on the wage out of poverty. Obama also wants it tied to inflation so it keeps pace with the cost of living,” Politico said. The current minimum wage rate is $7.25 an hour as a result of Congress’ vote to increase it from $5.15 in 2007. This rate equates to a $15,000 salary for a full-time employee. Congressman Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) stated in a release that, “Despite this, the real value of the minimum wage today buys less than it did in 1956. In addition, workers who rely on tips haven’t seen an increase in their wages since 1991.” The minimum wage requirement for tipped labor force is $2.13 an hour. According to the Huffington Post, “the minimum wage has fallen in value because Congress hasn’t raised it to keep up with inflation. At its peak in 1968, the minimum wage was equal to about $10.50 an hour in today’s dollars. That’s a 25 percent decline in buying power.”
The most recent release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that, in 2011, 1.7 million Americans earned the prescribed Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, while an additional 2.2 million earned wages below the minimum. These 3.8 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 5.2 percent of all workers paid hourly, who, in turn, comprise 59.1 percent of the entire wage and salary workforce. Nineteen states already have minimum wages over $7.25 an hour. The highest is in Washington state, where the minimum wage is $9.19 an hour. According to Forbes, “The impact of increasing the minimum wage goes well beyond the 3.8 million Americans directly affected as it is estimated that some 28 to 30 million Americans would be benefited as those working above the minimum wage level would experience increases in pay to keep them ahead of those on the lower rungs of the company employee ladder. In many ways, the debate is the perfect stage for expressing the core philosophical differences that exist between Progressives and Conservatives in 2013 America.” See MINIMUM WAGE, Page 3
{History} This week in 2002, UTSA announced that it would create an Honors College for top undergraduate students.
71: The percentage of Americans who support raising the minimum wage to $9, according to a USA Today/Pew Research center poll.
{Basketball} UTSA will take on Seattle University on Saturday, March 2. The men play the Redhawks at 6 p.m. in the Convocation Center, while the women play on the road with a 9:00 p.m. tip off.
Will Tallent/The Paisano
{Numbers}
Pete Souza/The White House
{San Antonio}
Volume 48
President Obama listens to Joe Biden at a policy meeting at the White House on Jan. 14.
Federal government faces mandatory spending cuts David Glickman News Assistant
news@paisano-online.com As March 1 nears, Congress still appears to be nowhere close to solving the sequester, a budgetary situation that would result in mandatory spending cuts by the federal governent. If Republicans and Democrats cannot come to an agreement over budgetary matters, $85 billion in cuts to both the military and domestic programs will immediately go into effect. The sequester was part of a deal reached during the debtceiling debates of 2011. Due to the parties’ disagreement on a deal to raise the debt-ceiling, they compromised on a stop gap measure, raising the debtceiling, but also agreeing to figure out a way to cut $1 trillion in domestic spending over the next 10 years under the Budget Control Act, according to the New York Times. A “Supercommittee” consisting of six members from each party were tasked with figuring out what form the $10 trillion in cuts would take. However, because the “Supercommittee” was unable to agree on spending cuts by Dec. 23, 2011, no deal was reached, and nothing was proposed to Congress. As such, a clause in the Budget Control Act would have
removed $85 billion in budget cuts on Jan. 1, 2013. “Together with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the payroll tax cut, this would have amounted to a giant fiscal contraction, almost certainly throwing the United States into another recession.” according to the Washington Post. However, deals with the tax cuts were reached and the sequester was pushed back until March 1 of this year. Currently, President Obama is fighting for an even split between domestic cuts and tax increases to replace the sequester cuts. Republicans have held steady against tax increases and proposed shifting the sequester cuts to programs such as food stamps and Medicare along with spreading them out over 10 years according to CBS News. If a deal is not reached by March 1, effects will be felt within a month in the U.S., according to the Washington Post. In particular, people receiving unemployment benefits will see a likely 9.4 percent reduction in their check. The Department of Defense is expected to begin furloughing large quantities of their civilian task force due to the sequester. Payments to doctors and other medical professionals who treat Medicare patients will drop as well.
UTSA gaining access to city’s improved broadband network Chance McDevitt Contributing Writer
news@paisano-online.com UTSA is gaining more access to the San Antonio Area Broadband Network (SAABN) through agreements made between the City of San Antonio and CPS Energy, allowing the campus to have an increased level of interconnectivity between the UTSA Main, Downtown and HemisFair Park campuses.
The expanded network will improve the speed and reliability of the networks that UTSA libraries and classrooms use, reducing the hiccups experienced when massive amounts of data are being accessed, such as video media. This will not have an effect on the Air Rowdy service, although UTSA Chief Information Officer Kenneth Pierce said, “The Air Rowdy system was also recently upgraded.” On Feb. 13, Mayor Julián Castro and City Councilwoman Leticia Ozuna of District 3 an-
nounced an initiative that will allow several local libraries, hospitals, government agencies and universities to have access to the SAABN. Pierce said, “SAABN provides a higher level of connectivity between the Downtown, 1604 and Texan Cultures Institute.” With this greater connectivity between campuses comes the opportunity for new partnerships and research that would require more bandwidth, similar to how many other colleges have used other bandwidth resources.
With the development of the university and its growing student body comes a greater demand for more information to be readily available, and this project is designed to meet the needs for “faster data acquisition and access to video media,” said Pierce. The infrastructure currently in place will allow UTSA to continue to thrive with increasing enrollment. The initiative, announced by Castro and Ozuna, will utilize infrastructure that CPS Energy installed in the late 1990s.
Until now, this infrastructure, consisting mainly of fiber optic network that allows more information to be transferred simultaneously, had remained largely unused. Since this infrastructure is already in place, costs involved in accessing it will be low and, according to Pierce, “the links [that] are already in place for the Downtown Campus” will continue to be implemented in the near future.