4A - Monday, October 1, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 4A - Monday, October 1, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com TIMOTHY RABB JOSEPH LICHTERMAN and ADRIENNE ROBERTS ANDREW WEINER EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. Texas messes Schools should abandon corporal punishment When a student violates a school policy in Texas, the pun- ishment, depending on their action, could be as far- reaching as the paddle. At least this is what happened in Springtown, Texas, last week when a 15-year-old girl was pad- dled by her school's assistant principal. As a result, the girl's moth- er brought the issue to the school board, who then expanded their corporal punishment policy. This decision should be reversed and corporal punishment should be restricted to allow for only same- gender punishment, if any at all. @UMich proud to be entering our 123rd year of editorial -freedom on campus #DailyBday -@michdailyoped MANISH PARIKH I Observing Mid-Autumn Festival 0 0 On behalf of your Central Stu- dent Government, please allow me to extend my warm wishes to you on this auspicious Mid-Autumn. Festival. Here at Michigan, we have a considerable East Asian popula- tion and we want you to know that your traditions and culture enrich our campus community and are very important to us. We know that this day is among the most important holidays in the Chinese calendar and it's also celebrated widely in Vietnam and Taiwan, among other places. This ancient holiday started at least dur- ing the Tang dynasty, so it's truly a very rich tradition, passed down from generation to generation. This year, your Central Student Government will strive.to be even more inclusive and welcoming. We would love to celebrate the wonder- ful holidays and festivals that are meaningful to all members of our student body. Our outstanding Chair of the Minority Affairs Commission, Julia Papiyants, would love to hear from you regarding how you cel- ebrated your Mid-Autumn Festival - so please e-mail her at jpapiyan@ umich.edu, and feel free to ask her how you can join this Commis- sion as well! If there's anything that I can personally do to make your Michigan experience better, I'm always just an e-mail away - mrparikh@umich.edu. "May we live long and share the beauty of the moon together, even if we are hundreds of miles apart," says a beautiful ancient poem. Today, many of you are away from your families, and whether you choose to light a lantern or follow some other rich traditions of the day, we thank you for making our community so rich and diverse, and hope you have a wonderful Mid- Autumn Festival, filled with happi- ness, celebration and laughter. I join members of your elected Assembly, your vice president Omar Hashwi,your Minority AffairsCom- mission chair Julia Papiyants and everyone else from our CSG family, in sending our warmest wishes. Manish Parikh is CSG president. Texas is one of 19 states that haven't banned corporal punishment. According to Texas law, there's no comment on the gender or age of the student being punished, and in order for a child to avoid corporal punishment the par- ent must opt-out in writing. In this particular incident, the mother complained, not because the school subjected her daughter to physical punishment, but because she was paddled by a man, and left with severe welting. When it was brought to the attention of the school board that their same-gender corporal punishment policy had been violated, instead of punishing the assistant principal, the board expanded the policy to allow it across genders. Thistype of violent and humiliating pun- ishment has no place in an educational envi- ronment. According to a 2010 report by the Center for Effective Discipline, 75 percent of states that allow corporal punishment are below the national average in ACT scores and 75 percent of the states that have out- lawed corporal punishment are above the national average. Furthermore, the 10 low- est-performing states on the ACT are states allowing corporal punishment. While it's dif- ficult to correlate corporal punishments and test scores, educational achievement clearly needs to be the focus. In order for a child to avoid corporal pun- ishment under the current Texas law, their parent has to send in a letter specifically requesting that their child is exempt. Even if corporal punishment has the support of Texas voters, the policy should have to opt-in rather than opt-out of it, if allowed at all. Furthermore, the lack of policy regarding age limits or gender restrictions creates inap- propriate situations. When a middle-aged man spanks a teenage girl, there is an inher- ently inappropriate dynamic added to the sit- uation. Neither students nor teachers should be subjected to this type of educational envi- ronment. Many students who are subjected to this punishment are young adults who under- stand why their behavior is wrong and do not require physical discipline. Striking children in schools is not only wrong, but also detrimental to their educa- tion. Corporal punishment is not acceptable in any educational situation and is particu- larly inappropriate when administered to an older age group or when adults of the oppo- site sex are involved in the punishment. An educator's job should not be expanded to include physical punishment. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Kaan Avdan, Sharik Bashir, Eli Cahan, Nirbhay Jain, Jesse Klein, Melanie Kruvelis, Patrick Maillet, Harsha Nahata, Timothy Rabb, Adrienne Roberts, Vanessa Rychlinski, Sarah Skaluba, Michael Spaeth, Gus Turner Cain the comedian My night with Herman The truth? You know, after Thursday night, I'm not so sure I can handle the truth. Or at least the College Truth Tour's version of it. Alright, backing up: Sept. 27, Herman Cain ! and the subsequent Cain/ train jokes stopped by the Power Center to have a little chat about the econ- omy. But don't be fooled, fool - though Cain's busi- MELANIE ness was all business, it KRUVELIS hardly took any time at all for the former Republican presidential candidate to get swept up in Wolverine spirit. "Aw, shucky ducky," Cain's speech began. "Now let me see if I'm in the right place - uh, Go Blue?" Ah, yes, Go Blue indeed. And what the hell, go red, too - after all, this was a cross-party fiesta. Just ask the uncomfortably pluralized Job Creators Solutions group, the organiza- tion that brought Cain and the College Truth Tour to Ann Arbor. According to their web- site, the College Truth Tour is a bipartisan initiative devoted to setting students straight on matters of the economy. And if you have any doubts about the bipartisan-ness of a lec- ture from a Republican presented by the Col- lege Republicans, never fear - the bleeding hearts got their word in. Specifically, from the back row of the auditorium, usually offer- ing a poignant rebuttal to whatever poignant point Cain made. Just listen: "The United States does not have a sugar daddy," Cain yelled. "Who we gonna borrow from?" "Australia!" someone shouted from the crowd. "Germany! China!" And the geography lesson continued for another thirty seconds. Actually, there were a lot of lessons to be learned Thursday night, courtesy of the god- father of Pizza and the Truth Tourers. For instance, after the speech, I added "Tax- mageddon" to my growing list of reasons to hide my kids and hide my wife for indefinite periods of time. "The Taxmageddon is com- ing!" Cain warned the crowd. "I don't know when it's at but ... it's coming." And another moral culled from the evening: History is what you make of it. Or, perhaps more accurately, what you feel like making up about it. "The Founders had the vision to write ... 'All men and women are created equal,"' Cain argued in his defense of the Declaration of Independence. "Actually, that's a lie," responded a voice from the crowd, referring to the exclusion of women's rights in the document. You know, the little missing piece that resulted in an ongoing struggle for gender equality. "I know the Declaration of Independence, thank you," Cain retorted. Then he started rat- tling off other lines from what he described as "the greatest document next to the Bible." But like always, Cain got back on his feet, because dammit, this event was all about the truth! We wanted the facts, and boy, did he give them to us. "A trillion is a million, million!" Uh, no, not that one, I meant - "I did that job for nine months. Then for three years." Ah, ok, not what I was talking about but - "I used to watch 30-minute sitcoms!" Well, you get the idea. But in all seriousness folks, if we get beyond the "USA" chants, the shouts for pizza and pretty much all the jeers from ine- briated Obama fans looking for a good laugh, Cain really did have a message that we can all get behind - inform yourself. "Stay informed," he told the audience. "Because stupid people are ruining Amer- ica." Harsh? Maybe. But there was no way this crowd could get offended - I mean, do you really think stupid people show up to the College Truth Tour? No, the Cain- Trainwreck argued. America needs heroes. Dreamers. Winners. And we're not going to get those if we don't educate ourselves. So stay informed, he told us. Find out what's going on in America and not-America. Read a news- paper. Flip through a book. Better yet, try Fox News. w had the distinct pleasure of seeing former presidential can- didate Herman Cain speak at the University on Friday. Consid- ering the crowd was noticeably filled with rag- ing liberals, Cain _ did a pretty good job of working the crowd with PATRICK his "truth talk." MAILLET Although his epic quote from a Pokdmon movie eventually stole the show, his stance on tax reform predictably riled up the crowd. Like many conservatives, Cain supports an overhauled tax code that simplifies the entire process and lowers rates for at least some Americans, if not all. As Cain rein- forced during his speech, it's Amer- ica's "record-high" - they're not - taxes that have caused the econ- omy to be financially dis- traught; the only reason Amer- ica was able to succeed sin the a 1950s is because of the ;. low, sim- plified taxes. As if this statement wasn't gener- alizing enough, Cain then involved the crowd by asking: "Who here thinks raising taxes raises govern- ment revenue?" He was quickly dis- appointed by the people who raised their hands in massive amounts. "No, no, no!" Cain yelled, "You're wrong, we need to lower taxes like Reagan did!" Although I found myself laughing throughout most of Cain's speech, it was after he made this string of statements that I found myself practically falling in the aisle., Let's look a little closer at these claims to fully appreciate thehilari- ty. First, let's acknowledge the selec- tive memory that Cain and many. of his fellow conservatives have, including Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Why is it that the economic boom of the 1990s that involved a record reduction in poverty, incredibly low unemploy- ment rates, and massive government surpluses always seems to be coinci- dentally forgotten by any prominent Republican? Instead, we have to look at the "Reagan Years" or some distant time period like the 1950s to fully understand why the economy is as bad as it is. The reason for this selective mem- ory is simple. Republicans hate to admit that from 1992 to 2000 when Bill Clinton was president, America saw some of its most financially suc- cessful years. Republicans simply hate to admit that a crazy "tax and spend" Democrat could have done a better job handling the American economy than Ronald Reagan or other recent Republicans. What really ticks off Republicans isn't necessarily that it was a Democrat who helped generate this financial boom - it was the way he did it. Under Clinton, tax rates for the wealthy rose from 31 per- cent to 39.6 per- cent, all while the GDP grew by an average of 5 percent per year. Today, the tax rate on America's highest earn- ers is 35 per- cent thanks to President George W. Bush's tax cuts, and the effective cor- porate tax rate is 12.6 percent - a 60-year low according to the Congressional Budget Office. Moreover, GDP grew by approxi- mately zero percent from 2000- 2010. Taxes are not at a record high, nor do high taxes simply cause eco- nomic recessions. You'll often hear Republicans praise Reagan as the great tax cut- ter of American history, thus caus- ing the economic success during his presidential tenure. Reagan certainly was a tax cutter in many instances, but during his eight years as president, Reagan increased taxes a total of 11 times, all while keeping the government revenue at a steady 18.2 percent of GDP. As most Reagan insiders acknowl- edge, Reagan realized the threat of a growing federal deficit and under- stood that in order to pay some of America's debt, he was goingto have to couple tax hikes with spending cuts. Reagan was also quoted mul- tiple times saying that $10 in spend- ing cuts coupled with one dollar in tax increases is a fair deal that any Republican should take. During one of the early Republi- can debates in 2011, the candidates were asked the question "Would you ever raise taxes if you were president?" Every single Republican candidate said that under no cir- cumstance would they ever consider raising taxes. Unfortunately, modern-day Republicans are too politically hamstrung to even acknowledge. the concept. I'm not saying that raising taxes causes economic booms nor will it be the sole solu- tion to paying off America's debt. But I am refuting the Republican myth that in order to see finan- cially successful times, taxes must be as low as possible. Don't get me wrong, our government needs to lower its speiding, especially in areas of defense, but taxes are a vital government function and they must be part of the solution for pay- ing America's ballooning debt. Considering that Cain's candi- dacy went down in flames and he's about as close to the presidency as John Edwards is, it is okay for him to quote Pokemon and discuss a "Sim City"-inspired "9-9-9" tax code. But other prominent Repub- licans, especially Romney, need to understand that tax increases are not necessarily going to cause the next recession. In fact, they very well could lead to economic recov- ery. Instead of gaining advice from such lovable characters as Pikachu, I think it's time for Republicans to take tax reform seriously. - Patrick Maillet can be reached at maillet@umich.edu.