Posted on 02/16/2016 10:01:01 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
What can a case about ensuring healthy teeth for school kids tell us about the kind of president Ted Cruz might be? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
Long before he was a U.S. senator or a presidential candidate, Cruz was a senior official at the Federal Trade Commission. His brief but eventful tenure provides interesting insights into how he might govern. One particular episode - which, as fate would have it, took place in South Carolina - is especially revealing.
In 2003, as part of an initiative launched by a Cruz-led Task Force, the FTC filed suit against the South Carolina State Board of Dentistry. At issue was an "emergency regulation" restricting the ability of non-dentists to provide teeth cleanings, sealants, and fluoride treatments in school settings. The Board - whose 9 members included 7 practicing dentists - argued that the regulation was necessary to protect public health. The FTC countered that its true intent was to block competition from dental hygienists.
The Board insisted that, without the supervision of a dentist, a hygienist might seal in tooth decay, resulting in a dangerous abscess. When pressed on the issue, however, it could not provide a single example of this ever actually happening.
The FTC has always focused on anticompetitive restraints of trade. What Cruz brought to the table that was new, and what the Dental Board case illustrates, is a focus on government as the source of the restraint. Overreaching with respect to professional licensing is a classic example.
Such licensing can be a good thing. When you need open heart surgery, you want a licensed physician. But other examples - such as weeks of classroom instruction and years of apprenticeship to obtain a license to cut hair or arrange flowers - strongly suggest that it is the professionals themselves, rather than consumers, who are being protected.
The Dental Board case was ultimately resolved by settlement, with the Board agreeing to withdraw its emergency regulation - a great result that expanded access to teeth cleanings in South Carolina schools. But today the case is more important for what it tells voters about Senator Cruz:
Cruz fights for free markets and level playing fields - critics have asserted that Big Oil was behind Cruz's opposition to ethanol subsidies. Presumably this means that Big Sugar was behind his opposition to the Dental Board. In fact, both actions were driven by a consistent commitment to free markets. While at the FTC, Cruz opposed competition-distorting governmental preferences in a host of other professions, ranging from attorneys and funeral directors to opticians and mortgage brokers - experience that could come in handy with the U.S. falling from 6th to 11th in a recent ranking of the world's freest economies.
Cruz's approach yields benefits up and down the economic ladder - the Dental Board case primarily benefitted two groups, neither of which were Wall Street bankers or corporate CEOs. The first was dental hygienists - a profession consisting of 98 percent women, more than half of whom work part time. The second was South Carolina children from low income families. Unsurprisingly, these children are more likely to receive oral health care services in a school setting than in a traditional dentist's office. The FTC found that, in a sample of 4,000 children receiving hygienist-administered services, 3,000 were Medicaid-eligible.
Cruz gets results in spite of institutional constraints - Perhaps the most striking thing about the entire episode was the dramatic results Cruz was able to achieve with the relatively modest tools available to him at the FTC. In addition to the settlement with the Dental Board and repeal of the emergency regulation, the Cruz-led Task Force laid the foundation for two subsequent FTC cases that proceeded all the way to the Supreme Court. Both cases resulted in favorable clarifications of the law that have, in turn, spurred more than a dozen legal challenges to anticompetitive actions by industry-dominated boards and commissions across the country.
As the Dental Board case demonstrates, Cruz has proven adept at solving problems with the tools at his disposal. Indeed, in an era of gridlock, the South Carolina episode provides a compelling glimpse into what might be achieved by an outsider candidate with insider know-how.
I didn’t know about that.
Thank you.
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If you would like to be added to the
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This isn’t entertaining.
This isn’t a show.
Where is the psychodrama?
Locally the Barbers in town decided they had enough of unlicensed barbers cutting hair and giving them competition. It was a laugh, it is freaking hair cutting. They soon got shouted down on editorials and FB and silently withdrew their complaints. Ever since I have cut my own hair, the wife cuts our kids. Every time she does just a little better, and I still do a horrible flat-top that I cover with a cap for a few days afterwards.
THAT link isn't working for me now but luckily it has been posted in a thread on FR.
Exactly.
: )
Maybe if you paid more, your wife would be willing to cut your hair, too? ;-)
This is a great example of a government bureaucrat, producing nothing, who creates more oligarchical bureaucracy, inserting itself into the free market, with all the bureau’s costs paid by taxpayers, when a free market solution could be found OR we have COURTS for aggrieved parties to use in cases like this. This is a PERFECT example of what the nanny state does NOT need to be doing. And it does speak volumes about Ted, fighting for his place at the trough of plunder that is government.
Nov 10, 2014: Cruz: 'Net Neutrality Is Obamacare For The Internet'
May 14, 2014: Ted Cruz bill would ban 'FCC's latest adventure in net neutrality'
Sept 18, 2014: Limbaugh is Right, Net Neutrality Is An Attack On Free Speech -- So Why Is Comcast For It?
[snip]
".....Net neutrality is an idea that would give the FCC oversight of every Internet service provider in the country. Government could next expand because each Internet service provider needs clarification when applying new net neutrality regulations. Innovation, naturally would be diminished in such a new regulatory regime, as some of the Internet service providers' funds would have to go to hiring people to deal with the FCC, as well as to complying with regulations and lobbying for better regulations. Since the late 1990s private companies have spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing America's Internet. This money could dry up if the companies can't make profits from their investments.".......
Feb 24, 2015: Young Listeners Fall for Net Neutrality Lies -- But They Have No Idea What's in Obama's Plan
Jan 13, 2003: FTC Policy Planning Director Ted Cruz Appointed Solicitor General of Texas
Cruz served 5 years as Texas Solicitor General Appointed to the office of Solicitor General of Texas by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, Cruz served in that position from 2003 to 2008. The office had been established in 1999 to handle appeals involving the state, but Abbott hired Cruz with the idea that Cruz would take a "leadership role in the United States in articulating a vision of strict construction." As Solicitor General, Cruz argued before the Supreme Court nine times, winning five cases and losing four...........
........"What is circulating now is a story that Ted Cruz supports the federal regulation of homeschooling. There are two underlying causes of this story: rank dishonesty and pig-ignorance.........
Enter Mike Lee, Ted Cruz and S.306 and proof that no good deed goes unpunished. The bill itself is very, very simple:......
From this an assorted collection of poltroons and imbeciles have constructed the argument that this bill creates a "federal definition of homeschooling" and will subject homeschooling to federal regulation. That anyone would believe a bill written by Ted Cruz and Mike Lee would actually do that tells you all you need to know about the sheer number of idiots there are on the internet. Take this #ouchebaggery, for instance:.....
This non-troversy is being driven by a variety of Trump friendly websites, but even RedState is not immune to this cretinish #ouchebaggery ( here | here). Note that this bill is being defended by the Home School Legal Defense Association. That, alone, should tell you that the Trump-ish critique is dishonesty on stilts.
This is not an argument about the Constitution. It is not about the role of the federal government in education. It is a very simple concept. The Coverdell ESA is a federal program that could benefit homeschooling families. The current definition of whom is eligible to participate omits homeschooling families making use of that program potentially risky. The Cruz-Lee bill, S.306, simply includes homeschooling expenses as an eligible expense, it does not create a federal definition of homeschooling."
That’s why he’s for the totally Free movement of trade and labor.
More, in depth: What No One Seems to Know About Ted Cruz’s Past
Good read!!!
What is your position on Right to Work and Labor’s opposition?
I was not a Cruz fan, for 2 reasons:
I just started coming here, I found this website right before Iowa, and all the religious rhetoric (it seemed Cruz was trying to be more religious than Jesus for that Iowa vote) turned me off (I would not classify myself as a right-winger OR a left-winger), I found this site following a Trump link.
I know of Trumps accomplishments in the business world, but for the life of me, very little has been mentioned of Cruz’s accomplishments, other than being a lawyer, being from Harvard, the usual boiler plate stuff I read on these threads and on other forums. (and those are not assets to me, they won’t get me interested in a candidate).
But this article is great. If you Cruz guys posted more stuff like this, articles about his accomplishments (other than his INTENTIONS while being a politician), you would get people like me to a look at other GOP candidates besides Trump, and not rule them out so quickly.
Anyways, as a businessman who struggles with more regulations than dollars, THIS impresses me. How much scripture a guy can quote, or from what law school he came from, not so much.
Cruz gets two thumbs up from a Trump supporter.
Thanks BGS!
: )
And you are a perfect example of someone who would complain about having to pay taxes when you win the lottery.
And you are the most polite Trump supporter I have ever met!
Bravo
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