Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog

These are my links for November 18th through November 21st:

• Parties brace for ‘super’ fallout – Now, both parties are quickly trying to figure out how to turn the committee’s embarrassing failure into a political win for their side.

  The Democratic message: We stood up to Republicans looking to gut Social Security, slash Medicare and permanently extend the Bush-era tax cuts for high income Americans.

  The Republican counterattack: Democrats wanted little more than tax increases and refused to consider changes to deficit-driving health care entitlements. Both sides are positioning themselves as the party that compromised and sought a middle-ground.

  But will this political posturing work for a Congress that had a 9 percent approval rating in one recent poll? Or will it just back fire with voters? Many lawmakers are worried about what the supercommittee has wrought for both sides.

• Lawmakers already taking aim at auto-cuts – Failure by Congress’ debt-cutting supercommittee to recommend $1.2 trillion in savings by Wednesday is supposed to automatically trigger spending cuts in the same amount to accomplish that job.
  But the same legislators who concocted that budgetary booby trap just four months ago could end up spending the 2012 election year and beyond battling over defusing it.

  Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., say they are writing legislation to prevent what they say would be devastating cuts to the military. House Republicans are exploring a similar move. Democrats maintain they won’t let domestic programs be the sole source of savings.

• Deficit Deal Fell Apart After Seeming Agreement – Called away from dinner tables, the Jets-Patriots game on television and, in one case, a soccer team party, several Democratic members of the special Congressional committee on deficit reduction raced to the office of Senator Patty Murray for a hasty 8:30 meeting to discuss the outlines of a potential agreement. Crucially, it appeared to have the backing of at least one Republican on the 12-member panel even though it included a tax increase.

  As the members spoke, they began to see the outlines of a deal, tentatively agreeing on tax rates, revenues, spending cuts and changes to Social Security and Medicare, according to interviews with members of the committee and their aides.

• Supercommittee blame everywhere – A full-scale blame game erupted into public view Sunday after nearly three months of secretive negotiations on the supercommittee that failed to resolve an impasse to cut at least $1.2 trillion in deficits over the next decade.

  Fanning out across the Sunday talk shows just hours before the supercommittee’s deadline, Republicans insisted that Democrats wanted to institute a $1 trillion tax hike, while Democrats argued that the GOP wanted to gut popular entitlements and protect the rich. And both sides insisted they were willing to compromise when the other refused to move off their partisan positions.

• Where in the world is Obama? – The president was in Hawaii while the supercommittee hit stall speed. What is new about this? Very little.

  Throughout his term, President Obama has avoided leading on the issue of fiscal responsibility. He walked away from his own commission, the one led by former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, when he found its report filled with inconvenient choices.

  Now in a week when leadership is needed to push this critical committee to do something big and bring the nation’s fiscal house back into order, the president once again disappears. It causes one to wonder, why?

• Obama has work cut out for him in order to win Michigan in 2012 – President Barack Obama says he saved Michigan’s auto industry, but that isn’t helping his 2012 re-election bid in Macomb and Oakland counties, where Republican front-runner Mitt Romney’s strength helps give him a 5-point lead in the state a year before the election, a Free Press poll shows.

  There’s time for the president to woo voters, but without the two key suburban Detroit counties, it would be difficult for Obama to win Michigan, a state whose voters have backed Democratic candidates in the last five presidential elections.

  In a head-to-head matchup statewide, Romney tops Obama 46%-41% in the poll.

  In Macomb, where Obama received 53% of the vote in 2008, the president trails Romney, 68%-20%. Even controlling for a high margin of error because of a small sample size in the county, Obama trails Romney in Macomb by at least 20 percentage points.

• Methamphetamine Use Linked to Schizophrenia – Heavy methamphetamine use may be associated with an increased risk for schizophrenia, new research suggests.

  A large cohort study of California inpatients without a history of psychiatric disorders found that those with methamphetamine-related conditions were 9 times more likely to have a subsequent schizophrenia diagnosis than non–drug users, and an almost 1.5- to 3-fold diagnosis risk compared with heavy users of cocaine and opioids, but not cannabis.

  “This provides the first world-wide evidence for a long-standing debate that suggests that methamphetamines may facilitate the development of schizophrenia in a small subset of users,” lead author Russell C. Callaghan, PhD, research scientist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Canada, told Medscape Medical News.

  “Methamphetamine users often present to clinical and emergency department settings with psychosis. And our findings suggest that these people need to be monitored closely for an attenuation of their psychotic symptoms. Also, given the side effects with antipsychotic medications, I think we really need to prescribe those treatments judiciously,” said Dr. Callaghan.

  He added that the study findings do not apply to patients who take lower and controlled doses of amphetamines for medical purposes, such as for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

• How I ended up leaving Poynter JIMROMENESKO.COM – “How did this go off the rails?” Poynter’s attorney asked me during a Nov. 12 phone conversation about my threat to file a cease and desist order against the institute for using my name on their website after being taken off the payroll.

  Read it all

• @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-20 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-20 #tcot #catcot
• Capitol Alert: Think Long coalition to propose California tax overhaul – California Think Long Tax Increase = Think STUPID and will fail at polls. Think Long = bipartisan #FAIL
• Rep. Elton Gallegly: Our Friends in Israel Deserve Better | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Rep. Elton Gallegly: Our Friends in Israel Deserve Better #tcot #catcot
• foursquare :: Gregory Flap @ Ronnie’s Diner – With LA Roadrunner’s Alice, Nancy, Tara, Mary after 13 Miles (@ Ronnie’s Diner)
• Off soon to Venice Beach with the LA Roadrunner’s & … on Twitpic – Off soon to Venice Beach with the LA Roadrunner’s & LA Marathon Training. Today = 13 miles and then Ronnie’s Diner
• @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-19 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-11-19 #tcot #catcot
• U.S. Facing What Some Call a Dental Crisis – Roughly half of all Americans don’t have dental insurance, and PBS NewsHour correspondent Betty Ann Bowser is calling it a dental crisis. She states in the report that:

  The federal government has identified more than 4,500 areas of this country, like Grundy, Va., where there are not enough dentists. It says nearly 10,000 new providers are needed to meet the need.

  The state of dentistry today is at a point where many are calling for change, and soon.

• Video: Millions of Americans Face Life Without Dental Care – The lack of access to dental care is a problem that affects millions of Americans. Health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser reports.
• Is General Dentistry Dead? – Correct. The ADA has been, and still is against a mid-level provider. Feeling that the patient deserves treatment by a dentist.

  The push for a mid-level has come from a combination of legislators being pushed by “patient advocacy groups” (then again one can ask them the question if they’ve ever actually asked the folks their apparently advocating for if THEY want to be treated by a “second tier” provider or a dentist – answer – they haven’t). Groups such a Kellog and Pew who tend to fund many of these studies when looked at closely, aren’t exactly the most impartial of groups (remember who with a research paper one of the 1st things yu should do is not look at the results, but look at who is funding the research in the 1st place to see if from the start the potential for bias exists).

  Additionally on the legislative front, if you ever have the chance to talk with one of your elected officials about this (and I would encourage you to, since they like to listen) is that what dentistry needs to do is not get into the whole “access to care” issue, but the UTILIZATION of care discussion. Access to care in theory would provide access to 100% of people. However, the reality is that even with *cough*free*cough* care the UTILIZATION rate is at best about 60%. The reality is that unless your talking a military style system where going to the dentist is mandatory, there is a very significant portion of the populaton that will not seek out dental care (unless its an EXTREME emergency situation) no matter what. There is plenty of dentists available to handle to demands of the populatin with its current utilizaton rates. Trying to develop a system for 100% access will just end up wasting dollars on that significant population that won’t seek care. If those dollars are directed at existing providers to make the reimbursement rates FAIR, that will have a much greater impact on access. The bottomline is that the overhead for a mid level won’t be any less than that for a dentist, and if a midlevel is getting the same rates for a procedure as a dentist is (and one would sumise that would be the case since in the medical world a nurse practitioner gets the same reimbursement for suturing up a laceration as an MD/DO does) then they’ll have te same problems meeting overhead as a dentist would. The key is that dentistry, when talking about this issue needs to stick to the objective data, which can be tough when the opposing side tends to have mor emtoional “data” than objective data

• The Afternoon Flap: November 18, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Afternoon Flap: November 18, 2011 #tcot #catcot

These are my links for May 1st from 13:50 to 14:20:

• Untitled (http://www.sacbee.com/2011/05/01/3592230/dan-walters-steinberg-proposes.html#mi_rss=Dan%20Walters?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter) – Darrell Steinberg proposes sensible California tax plan?
• Darrell Steinberg proposes sensible California tax plan? – They had no way of knowing it, but when voters approved Proposition 13 in 1978, they created a nettlesome juxtaposition of sociopolitical megatrends.

  The measure – which imposed a tight limit on local property taxes – was enacted just as California began to undergo massive demographic and economic shifts, and as the state Capitol's culture was changing.

  The unintended consequence was that fiscal power of an increasingly complex state was shifted from local voters and officials into a Capitol that was becoming more crassly political, more ideologically divided and ill-equipped to make effective policy.

  The result, more than three decades later, is political paralysis, as the chronic budgetary imbroglio attests.

  It is impossible for the governor and the Legislature to make one-size-fits-all fiscal policy for the most complex society in the Western Hemisphere.
  Jerry Brown, who was governor when Proposition 13 passed and is back in the gubernatorial saddle again, acknowledges this fundamental problem by proposing what he calls "realignment" – pushing some programs back down to county governments.

  ========

  Read it all….

  Uh No.

  Dan Walters forgets what happened prior to Prop 13. The cities and counties would tax and spend like drunken sailors. So, would the state – hence the current state of affairs.

  Education funding must be equalized because of Serrano Priest so taxpayers will leave heavily taxed counties to less taxed ones and demand the same services.

  The Problem today is the failure to reform the welfare system, education system, and illegal immigration.

  Without those reforms, taxes may be shifted from state to counties and taxes will massively increase for all. More businesses and young taxpayers will leave for less heavily taxed states.

These are my links for April 26th from 13:01 to 16:59:

• S&P sticks with ‘negative’ outlook for California – One of the nation’s leading credit-rating agencies continues to hold a “negative” outlook for California, citing the state’s sizable deficit and its leaders’ persistent inability to close that gap.

  With budget talks between Gov. Jerry Brown and Republicans still at a standstill, Standard & Poor’s said in a report Monday that “the path forward is unclear” for California, leaving the state at risk of issuing IOUs if the stalemate lasts into the summer.

  The firm gave high marks to the state’s economy generally. Its strengths include “a well-educated workforce, a capacity to attract venture capital, and prominence in the growing biotechnology and alternative energy industries,” the report said.

  But the agency cited the potential for gridlock in Sacramento — “a fractured budget negotiation process that currently lacks a clear path to balance or political resolution” — as the chief rationale for the negative outlook.

  ======

  Nothing about the public employee pension unfunded liabilities?

• Untitled (http://www.sacbee.com/2011/04/26/3578243/dan-walters-budget-nut-remains.html#mi_rss=Dan%20Walters?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter) – California budget nut remains uncracked
• Flap’s Links and Comments for April 26th on 12:32 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for April 26th on 12:32 #tcot #catcot

These are my links for April 26th from 12:32 to 12:53:

• California budget nut remains uncracked – Jerry Brown's insider attempt to crack California's budget nut has been no more successful than Arnold Schwarzenegger's outsider attack.

  Both relied on unrealistic assumptions about Capitol reality – Schwarzenegger because he was a newbie and Brown for reasons known only to him.

  Brown offered a complex mixture of spending cuts and tax extensions tailored to the supposed predilections of a disaffected California electorate.

  Nearly four months later, however, the Capitol is stalemated – and not merely because of its deep ideological divisions.

  For weeks, Brown negotiated with a few Republican senators who were evidently willing to place an extension of temporary taxes before voters if public pension and budget reforms were part of the ballot package.

  The talks eventually collapsed. Brown says, in effect, the Republicans demanded too much, but it's also evident that he, Democratic lawmakers and their allies, especially public employee unions, got cold feet.

  Private and public polls indicated that if taxes, pension reforms and a spending limit were placed on the ballot, voters might easily reject the taxes and pass the two others.

  A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll underscores the Democrats' dilemma, finding voters' support for a tax election and pension and budget reforms is very high but for taxes is barely 50 percent.

  ======

  California's budget will remain uncracked until either voters pass tax increases by voting for them at the ballot or the Democrats get serious about cutting spending.

  I see neither anytime soon and California's economy will stay in the doldrums.

• Lamar Alexander: The White House vs. Boeing—A Tennessee Tale – The National Labor Relations Board has moved to stop Boeing from building airplanes at a nonunion plant in South Carolina, suggesting that a unionized American company cannot expand its operations into one of the 22 states with right-to-work laws, which protect a worker's right to join or not join a union. (New Hampshire's legislature has just approved its becoming the 23rd.)

  This reminds me of a White House state dinner in February 1979, when I was governor of Tennessee. President Jimmy Carter said, "Governors, go to Japan. Persuade them to make here what they sell here."

  "Make here what they sell here" was then the union battle cry, part of an effort to slow the tide of Japanese cars and trucks entering the U.S. market.

  ======

  Read it all…..

  This example explains why America has lost its manufacturing might…..

These are my links for April 16th from 04:59 to 13:26:

• Santa Monica at Daybreak | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Santa Monica at Daybreak #tcot #catcot
• Los Angeles Running Club – Looking at Malibu | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Los Angeles Running Club – Looking at Malibu #tcot #catcot
• Flap’s Links and Comments for April 15th on 19:41 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for April 15th on 19:41 | Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
• @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-04-16 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-04-16 | Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
• President Obama Issues “Signing Statement” Indicating He Won’t Abide by Provision in Budget Bill – Political Punch – President Obama Issues “Signing Statement” Indicating He Won’t Abide by Provision in Budget Bill
• President Obama Issues “Signing Statement” Indicating He Won’t Abide by Provision in Budget Bill – In a statement issued Friday night, President Obama took issue with some provisions in the budget bill – and in one case simply says he will not abide by it.

  Last week the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans were involved in intense negotiations over not only the size of the budget for the remainder of the FY2011 budget, and spending cuts within that budget, but also several GOP “riders,” or policy provisions attached to the bill.

  One rider – Section 2262 — de-funds certain White House adviser positions – or “czars.” The president in his signing statement declares that he will not abide by it.

  “The President has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority,” he wrote. “The President also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it. Legislative efforts that significantly impede the President's ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the President's ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

  Therefore, the president wrote, “the executive branch will construe section 2262 not to abrogate these Presidential prerogatives.”

  In other words: we know what you wanted that provision to do, but we don’t think it’s constitutional, so we will interpret it differently than the way you meant it.

  During his presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama was quite critical of the Bush administration’s uses of signing statements telling the Boston Globe in 2007 that the “problem” with the Bush administration “is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation.”

  Then-Sen. Obama said he would “not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.”

  The president said that no one "doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president's constitutional prerogatives; unfortunately, the Bush Administration has gone much further than that."

  =======

  Shocking……

  Something the GOP should keep in mind during the next two budget fights. Obviously, they didn't this time…..

These are my links for April 14th from 13:00 to 13:23:

• Gov. Mitch Daniels calls for immigration reform – Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels called on state lawmakers Wednesday to pass a proposal aimed at implementing immigration reforms in the state, adding that changes in the bill were necessary before passage.

  Mr. Daniels says a bill aimed at implementing an Arizona-style law should focus more on Indiana employers and less on law enforcement. The Indiana governor is the latest governor to call on state lawmakers to implement immigration reforms.

  “I think that legislation will be changed,” Mr. Daniels said Wednesday. “I support this, to drop the law enforcement provisions that have been the ones that have bothered most people.”

  The Indiana Republican and potential Republican presidential candidate says he hopes the law enforcement provision is remove, refusing to note whether that provision would cause him to veto the bill.

  “The idea I like is to deny them the tax deduction if they’re caught doing it,” he said. “It’s a fairly clean way to get at it, and really employment is the magnet that leads to the illegality.”

  ========

  Again, the right will go wild here but Daniels is practical again.

  The Arizona law will be declared unconstitutional since the states are precluded from immigration enforcement – it is a federal responsibility.

  But, E-verify or state laws that give a disincentive to employers who hire illegal immigrants is a practical and realistic goal.

  Daniels should he run for President will be able to elaborate in a debate against the others.

  In the meantime, the Tom Tancredo right will go crazy against Mitch.

• California Teachers’ Union plan built on emotion – The California Teachers Association this week declared a "State of Emergency" over the state budget and potential deep cuts to schools. It posted a 15-page "plan of action" on its website to help teachers, parents – and apparently children – lobby for tax extensions.

  Some of the union's ideas went beyond the usual letter-writing and rallying:

  • Attempt to close a major artery into town/cities.

  • Turn fire/earthquake drill into crisis response drill to the budget cuts (involve students and the community).

  • "Penny drive" where kids empty piggy banks to support teachers and deposit in the state Capitol.

  • Pay for everything with $2 bills to show the true impact of teachers.

  • Have students create a BIG poster on a school bus that is sent to Sacramento.

  • Take mug shots of teachers and students to make the point that prisons receive better funding.

  By Wednesday, the more creative ideas on the list had been removed. CTA spokesman Mike Myslinski said the list was "brainstorming" from the union's 800-delegate state council, and that CTA is not suggesting students be used as props.

  ======

  Guess some of the leftists in the CTA (California Teacher's Association)thought the Wisconsin protests were a good thing?

• Thousands rally at Cal State University campuses to Protest Education Cuts – Decrying what they called an assault on higher education, thousands of faculty and students at California State University campuses across the state rallied, marched and held teach-ins Wednesday to protest steep funding cuts and rising tuition.

  Dubbed the Day of Class Action, events were held on all 23 Cal State campuses, featuring speakers, workshops, gospel singers, guerrilla theater and, on one campus, a New Orleans-style "funeral" march.

  The protests were largely peaceful and there were no reports of disruptions, although student groups staged sit-ins in hallways outside the offices of presidents Jolene Koester at Cal State Northridge and James M. Rosser at Cal State L.A.

  No arrests were made, and students left the buildings by the end of the day. Peaceful sit-ins were also held at campuses in Pomona, San Francisco and the East Bay.

  With education funding at risk and higher tuition possible in many states, students and faculty at public universities elsewhere also held rallies and teach-ins Wednesday, including at Portland State in Oregon, Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of Massachusetts' Boston campus.

  The goal, organizers said, was to raise public awareness of the consequences of continued disinvestment in higher education and to give faculty and students a greater voice in policy decisions.

  ========

  The students and faculty should really direct their protests to the Democrat Governor and Legislature who have been ruling California for decades now.

  For every action the left-wing California Legislature takes there is an equal and opposite reaction by private business who vote by their feet – and leave.

  Also, for every new entitlement program and cost of living adjustment the California Legislature makes, there is less money for other programs, including a heavily subsidized public university education.

  But, true to from the left faculty will try to convince their students that it is the rich who are refusing to pay their fair share or something.

  Sometimes the truth is hard.

• Texas reporter weighs in on California lawmakers’ visit – "People out here laugh at Perry walking down the main street of Dallas, waving a pistol around and talking about the crazy people in California who want to legalize marijuana," said veteran Democratic political consultant Chris Lehane.

  But some facts are clearly on Perry's side. Texas created more jobs last year than any other state: 253,900 vs. California's 89,400.

  Texas has no state income tax. It's a right-to-work state, so there are none of the collective-bargaining issues bedeviling states such as Wisconsin and (with high public-employee pensions) California.

  In the games that statisticians play, there are numbers favoring California, too.

  Texas has higher property taxes and oil extraction taxes. Its jobs pay less. It leads the nation in uninsured people and chemical pollution. And while Texas has created more manufacturing jobs, California's created more in semiconductors, computers, communications equipment and medical equipment.

  Texas has the Alamo; California has Disneyland . Texas has Ted Nugent ; California has Charlie Sheen.

  Which is to say we're different. So it's no surprise that Texas and California are taking different approaches to solving their budget shortfalls.

  ======

  California and Texas are different states with different demographics and priorities.

  If they both can learn from each other, this is great.

  But, I would not hold my breath.

These are my links for April 14th from 06:25 to 07:55:

• Freshmen shrugging off Tea Party primary threats over spending deal – House Republicans aren’t worried about primary threats from Tea Party activists, who are unhappy with the level of spending cuts in the 2011 budget deal and the possibility of raising the debt limit.

  Mark Meckler, co-founder of one of the nation’s largest Tea Party groups, said votes in favor of the budget deal and raising the debt ceiling will make for a toxic electoral combination for House Republicans.

  ======

  Read it all.

  The real battle royale will be the raising of the debt limit.

• Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise; PPI Climbs – CNBC – Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise; Inflation Pressure Grows
• The Uneven Senate Landscape of 2012 (and 2014) : Roll Call Opinion – The Uneven Senate Landscape of 2012 (and 2014)