April 6, 2015

Dentist Accused of Medicaid Fraud, Erecting Backyard Water Park, Is Losing a Media Fight

Dr. Richard Malouf's Preston Hollow estate/amusement park/lawsuit factory.

In many ways, Dr. Richard Malouf is the very picture of success (See: "On Being Successful"; RichardMalouf.com). Born to Lebanese immigrants, he built a multi-million dollar chain of dental clinics from the ground up. He bought a French chateau on Strait Lane in Preston Hollow and set to work building a water park in the back. Through hard work, dedication, and top-notch SEO skills, he has even managed to knock unflattering news articles from the top of his Google search results.

Alas, with ostentatious success comes great scrutiny. Malouf -- and we have to be careful how we phrase this because as we'll detail in a moment, the man files defamation lawsuits the way other dentists hand out free samples of dental floss -- was accused a few years back of defrauding Texas of millions in Medicaid dollars. His company, All Smiles Dental and Orthodontics, collected tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid for putting braces on poor children, more than a thousand of them under 12 years old. In 2010, for instance, it billed the state for $10.2 million for orthodontics work performed at its 51 dental clinics, or three times the amount paid out for braces by the Medicaid program in Georgia. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott sued Malouf and All Smiles in the summer of 2012 over allegations of Medicaid fraud.

Not long after the lawsuit was filed, real estate blogger Candy Evans noted on her blog that Malouf was building the backyard water park, complete with a bowling alley, rock-climbing wall, lazy river and 35-foot water slides. Malouf's brazenness -- here you have a dentist accused of simultaneously exploiting poor kids and Texas taxpayers using his millions to build his own private wonderland -- proved irresistible to many media outlets including The Dallas Morning News, WFAA, CultureMap, an AOL real estate blog called Curbed.com, and the Dallas Observer.

Malouf responded by suing 1) Evans, whom he accused of trespassing and being a terrible journalist; 2) almost every media outlet that mentioned the backyard water park, with the exception of the Observer, for defamation; and 3) movie star Owen Wilson's mother, who lives next door, for abetting the paparazzi. (In a separate lawsuit that was recently dropped, Malouf claimed that Wizard Works Product Development Co., the supplier of a half-million dollars worth of "aquatic recreational equipment" for his home, had defrauded him.)

Read more: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2015/04/richard_malouf_dentist_medicaid.php

April 6, 2015

Texas AG Paxton Makes Sure Texas Is On the Wrong Side of Same-Sex Marriage History

In 1967, T.W. Bruton of North Carolina was the only state attorney general willing to do what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and fourteen other state's attorneys general did on Thursday. Bruton filed a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court urging that it uphold Virginia's prohibition against interracial marriage struck down in Loving v. Virginia. Paxton has joined author Buddy Caldwell of Louisiana and 12 other pals to ask the Supreme Court not to extend marriage rights to the gay community.

Paxton and Caldwell -- joined by the attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and West Virginia -- assert in their brief that the Roberts court shouldn't legalize same-sex marriage across the United States for a couple of reasons. First, they say, gays do not deserve the same 14th Amendment-based equal protection rights as other Americans and, second, the court legalizing marriage in the backwaters where it isn't currently legal would undermine the tremendous electoral victories won by the same-sex marriage movement in recent years.

"Many Americans believe in a new conception of marriage that would extend to same-sex relationships. Many do not," Caldwell says in his brief.

Those who don't, Caldwell argues, are entitled to respect because they maintain a long-held notion of traditional marriage. In 1664, Maryland became the first colony to criminalize interracial marriage. In 1958, 94 percent of white Americans were against of interracial marriage. Interracial marriage was illegal in Texas from 1837-1967, a 130-year tradition.

Read more: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2015/04/texas_ag_paxton_signs_onto_anti_same-sex_marriage_supreme_court_brief_places_state_on_wrong_side_of.php

April 6, 2015

Texas lawmakers want to close 'bypass' for teen abortions

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas, like many other conservative states, has strived to make it difficult for women to have abortions. Recent state laws have forced dozens of clinics to close and left some regions without a place for women to go.

But Texas has one option that makes abortions relatively accessible, and that between 300 and 500 pregnant teenagers use every year. Instead of seeking parental consent to terminate a pregnancy, girls younger than 18 can ask a court for approval under legal conditions less stringent than in many other states.

About 20 percent of the abortions performed on minors in Texas in 2013 came through this court process, about double the proportion elsewhere.

Soon, though, the so-called "judicial bypass" may become less accommodating.

Conservatives are now targeting the teenage cases as part of their latest legislative assault on abortion. New bills introduced in the current session would make it harder for girls to prove they shouldn't have to seek parental permission and more difficult for courts to give approval.

Read more: http://www.statesman.com/ap/ap/texas/texas-lawmakers-want-to-close-bypass-for-teen-abor/nkndy/

April 6, 2015

$33.8 million awarded to Fort Worth man who fell through skylight

FORT WORTH — In 2010, maintenance man Steven Landers was working on the roof of a Williamson-Dickie building on Blue Mound Road when he fell headfirst through an acrylic plastic skylight.

He landed 35 feet below on a concrete floor.

His broken right leg was eventually amputated; his back, some ribs and his left arm were broken; and a lung was punctured.

Landers’ lawsuit against the skylight manufacturer, Wasco Products of Wells, Maine, went to trial March 23 in 48th state District Court. His attorneys asked the Tarrant County jury for a $15 million judgment.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article17336579.html#storylink=cpy

April 6, 2015

“Bad Bank” Mania Spreads in Europe

One thing that the world is not in short supply of these days is bad banks. They are everywhere, it seems. But there are bad banks, and there are Bad Banks. This article is about the latter, the officially dubbed “Bad Banks” launched by governments and central banks to conceal the rising tide of triple-F toxic junk (derivatives, securitized debt, non-performing loans…) that threatens to engulf the world’s financial system.

As Bad Banks go, few are as bad as Spain’s SAREB, the public-private company responsible for managing assets transferred from the four nationalized financial institutions BFA-Bankia, Catalunya Banc, NGC Banco-Banco Gallego, and Banco de Valencia.

In theory, SAREB was never meant to exist: “There will be no Bad Bank in Spain, and we will establish procedures that will not be burdensome for taxpayers.” Those were the famous words of Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy during the first few months of 2012. The promise was made on numerous occasions, and not just by Rajoy but also by his Minister of Economy (and former Lehman advisor) Luis de Guindos.

But in politics, promises are not made to last; they are there to be broken. By December of that same year, Sareb was born and Spanish taxpayers were left holding the tab for the biggest bank bailout in Spanish history.

Read more: http://wolfstreet.com/2015/04/05/don-quijones-spains-bad-bank-sareb-gets-worse/

April 6, 2015

Potty Parity and Other Useless Bills in the TxLege

By Carol Morgan

I thought the reason for a legislative session was to solve problems for the people of Texas. I was wrong.

The 84th Legislature is actually creating problems instead of solving them.

Monday’s vote in the Senate will decide SB 185, the so-called Sanctuary Cities Bill which is nothing more than a law that makes racial profiling legal.

As Senator Jose Menendez remarked, “the state is working just fine without these bills.” Texas has a myriad of stop and identify statues, why do we need another bill on top of another bill?

Law enforcement is against it. It seems everyone is against, except for the Texas GOP. How shameful would it be for a military veteran, who fought for us in war and who just happens to be Hispanic, to be stopped and asked to prove they are an American?

Another controversial duplicate law is the religious freedoms bill. Texas already has a religious freedom law that was passed 15 years ago. The extreme faction wants another, but do we really need one? Has anyone been denied the freedom to practice their religion? State Representative Matt Krauss wants to strengthen the law and is proposing a religious freedom amendment to the Texas Constitution, but actually has nothing to do with religion.

It’s merely the Texas version of separate drinking fountains.

Dallas Morning News has a nice map which shows that the majority of states that have religious freedom laws are in the south. Doesn’t that make Texas proud? To align ourselves with states like Mississippi and Alabama?

Or how about the one that declares that #txlege is the official Twitter hashtag for the Texas Legislature? Or the campus carry bill? (by the way, if you oppose this, come join a rally in front of Representative John Frullo’s office (4601 50th St # 216) on Wednesday, April 8th at 3:00.

And there’s so many more bills in the coming weeks (courtesy of Texas Vox) proving the trivial mindset of the extremists in our legislature.

Senate Bill 635 by Senator Campbell would prevent wind developments from receiving any state incentives if the receive federal incentives. This would unfairly increase the costs of wind developments at a time when renewable are on their way in and fossil fuels are on their way out.

The most vexing (and cruel, too) bills are HB 1747 and 1748 which have been introduced by Representative Debbie Riddle (remember her embarrassing rant about "terror babies" on CNN?) And this pair of bills would criminalize the use of bathrooms by transgender people. There would be jail time not only for the offender (whose only crime is needing to pee) but businesses who make bathrooms available for them could serve jail time as well.



As an educator, I recall that conferences and convocations were always problematic for women educators. The lines to the women’s bathroom would be a mile long, while there was no line at the men’s. We solved the problem by having a man stand at the door, while all of us women used the men’s facilities.

So would we be arrested for independently solving our group’s problem?

All kidding aside, read the sad story about Caomhán Ó Raghallaigh, a woman transitioning to a man while he worked in the Texas House.

Why isn’t the Legislature focusing on the real problems of Texas, instead of creating non-existent ones? Our state has plenty of problems available: education, health care, infrastructure, and ethics.

It’s time for you to get to work.

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Carol Morgan is a career/college counselor, a freelance writer, and former Democratic candidate for the Texas House. She is the award-winning author of two books: Of Tapestry, Time and Tears and Liberal in Lubbock. Email Carol at elizabethcmorgan@sbcglobal.net , follow her on Twitter and on Facebook or visit her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org

http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/carol-morgan/2015-04-06/potty-parity-and-other-useless-bills-txlege#.VSIljeHy3SI

Permission granted to post Carol's blog in its entirety.

April 6, 2015

Agriculture appointees connected to waived political fees

A political consultant for Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller donated nearly $40,000 worth of his services to the candidate during the Stephenville Republican’s run for the office last year — and then was appointed to a $180,000-a-year job Miller created when he took office.

A second political consultant donated $76,000 worth of his services during Miller’s campaign, even though he was experiencing personal financial stress at the time. His wife was appointed to another newly created $180,000-a-year job when Miller took office.

Read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/agriculture-appointees-connected-to-waived-politic/nknMc/ (subscription required)

[font color=green]In the business world this is known as ROI--return on investment. It looks like these consultants gambled and received a much higher payout than would be found at the race track.[/font]

April 5, 2015

Principal says gay student can't wear tuxedo to prom

MONROE, La. (AP) — A gay student in Louisiana says she is going to skip her prom because the school principal won't let her wear a tuxedo.

Claudettia Love, a senior and one of the top students at Carroll High in Monroe, said she was planning on going to the prom with a group of friends, but now they are staying away.

"I told my mom, 'They're using me. They put me in all these honors and advanced placement classes so I can take all of these tests and get good grades and better the school, but when it's time for me to celebrate the fact that I've accomplished what I need to accomplish and I'm about to graduate, they don't want to let me do it, the way I want to,'" she told The News-Star (http://tnsne.ws/1GcGMhr).

The decision is part of the school's dress code and not anything personal, principal Patrick Taylor told The News-Star.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Principal-says-gay-student-can-t-wear-tuxedo-to-6179412.php

April 5, 2015

Perry prosecutors fight Paxton open records decision

A Houston lawyer, for reasons unknown, is trying to get the detailed billing records submitted by special prosecutors pursuing felony charges against former Gov. Rick Perry, opening another front in the tangled legal saga.

While the likely presidential candidate waits to hear if an appeals court will throw out the charges against him, special prosecutors Michael McCrum and David Gonzalez are now suing state Attorney General Ken Paxton on the side. They are fighting an open records ruling that might force them to disclose details of their investigation, including whom they have interviewed while building their case against Perry.

This new sidebar in the Perry case began Dec. 17 when Houston lawyer Trevor Sharon filed a public records request with Travis County court officials asking, among other things, for copies of all invoices prosecutors have submitted in the case. (Because of various conflicts, McCrum was brought in as special prosecutor, and bills the county for his work.)

Why does Sharon want the records? Repeated calls and emails sent to Sharon received no responses. He is listed as an associate with Paul Doyle & Associates in Houston.

On March 12, Paxton’s office ruled that the invoices are public records and must be released.

Read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional/perry-prosecutors-fight-paxton-open-records-decisi/nkm8n/

April 4, 2015

H-E-B pulls Blue Bell products

A voluntary recall of some Blue Bell ice cream products prompted San Antonio-based H-E-B to withdraw all products from the Texas creamery due to food safety concerns.

H-E-B issued a statement Saturday that said the grocer would work with Blue Bell to replenish “our shelves with new product as soon as feasible.”

Customers with concerns may return Blue Bell products to H-E-B stores for refund.

Blue Bell Creameries suspended operations at an Oklahoma plant last week and voluntarily recalled products from that facility after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that ice cream made there likely caused a foodborne illness linked to the deaths of three people.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/H-E-B-pulls-Blue-Bell-products-6179244.php