-- I may have some details wrong. --
Last year, Davis fired the entire board, and then installed his own chosen yes-men who were all obscure or barely-known dentists. The board last month, on its first meeting, lent the group's entire reserve fund to California. The group is funded by (mandatory?) contributions from every dentist and hygienist in the state (or in its membership?), and either has influence over licensing or is in charge of licensing.-- I'll get the details off his archive next week. --
Dump Davis!
I'll bet a lot of dentists are gritting their teeth!
And I just wanted to get to this, because people said, 'Roger, what? You say they stole the dental money?'I could not tell from listening to the archives whether the loan to the governor was to his reelection fund or to his office.
I got this from a dentist who says, 'look, the California Dental Association is governed by something called the Dental Board of Examiners. It's a State of California division of the Department of Consumer Affairs. They supervise licensing of people in the dental profession in California.'
And he says, 'the board has always been made up of prominent dentists, many of whom are clinical instructors in dental schools, along with some public members and representatives from dental auxiliaries. The board with its strict oversight has been very successful and effective in maintaining high standards in the dental profession.
'The board collects a $365 license fee for every two years from every dentist and a lesser fee from hygienists and auxiliaries. With about 50,000+ dentists in the state, the board's budget is quite large.
'All this changed,' he writes, 'about nine months ago when our governor personally fired the entire dental board. After scraping the barrel of potential yes-men for several months, the new dental board, handpicked by the governor, is composed of dentists with little prominence.
'As you would expect, the board's first act -- at their very first meeting of the new board, April 24 -- was to loan [sic] their entire reserve funds of the Dental Board to the governor.'
He's looting every nook and cranny, dumbing down and destroying ... even the consumer protection part of the state government that he professes as a liberal, of course, to support. He's even going to the position here of emasculating the oversight board for dentists.
So, I don't know, these Dufuss updates -- I don't know how much farther I have to go, and I sure don't know what's going on with Bill Simon. How come he's not raising these issues?