By DAN POPKEY — dpopkey@idahostatesman.com
Posted: 12:00am on Apr 7, 2012

“I couldn’t get a job,” said Gov. Butch Otter.
But he does now have confidence he won’t be ruining any more horse trailers.
Otter already knew how to weld steel but wanted to learn the tougher art of aluminum welding.
He decided to take the two-day-a-week class after a mishap with his horse trailer.
“I started out with a little hole, trying to patch it one day, and when I ended up, the horse could walk through.”
The College of Western Idaho class, taught by Brett Van Buskirk, was on the Boise State University campus. It finished Thursday.
Otter said he’s proud to have passed the “destructive test.”
“After you weld something together, they put it in a vise and then they get a linebacker-looking guy to come in with a big sledgehammer,” Otter said. “I haven’t had a weld tear now for about three weeks.”
Otter showed off several welds to reporters in his office last week, saying, “Look at those beads!”

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/04/07/2066490/butch-the-welder.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/04/07/2066490/butch-the-welder.html#storylink=cpy

• March 9, 2012

A series of late night text messages received on cellular phones throughout the region have people calling BBB to verify if they are real. 

    Walmart officials state the messages, which offer free Walmart gift cards to consumers are fraudulent and recipients should not click through. 

    BBB has received several calls already this morning from individuals who report receiving text messages in the middle of the night.

     ”This is a phishing scam and has no connection or affiliation to the company,” says Robb Hicken, chief storyteller for the BBB. “If you go to the website to signup for your gift card, it takes you to a site that asks for your personal information.”

     In addition, BBB has had reports of  request for credit card information to pay for shipping and handling fees. 

     BBB advises do not go to the site, click through any links or give out information. 

     Walmart will never initiate a phone call or text message that asks for sensitive personal data like credit card information or social security numbers. 

Thirty years ago, I attended medical school in New York. In the key lecture on pain management, the professor told us confidently that patients who received prescription narcotics for pain would not become addicted.

While pain management remains an essential patient right, a generation of health care professionals, patients, and families have learned the hard way how deeply misguided that assertion was. Narcotics – both illegal and legal – are dangerous drugs that can destroy lives and communities.

Millions of Americans struggle with substance abuse. Across the United States, overdoses involving opioid painkillers – a class of drugs with narcotic effects that includes hydrocodone, methadone, oxycodone – have skyrocketed in the past decade.

Today, the United States consumes most of the world’s supply of opioid painkillers. By 2010, enough opioid painkillers were prescribed to medicate every American adult around-the-clock for a month. And every year, nearly 15,000 people die from overdoses involving these drugs… more than from heroin and cocaine combined.

Studies by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and elsewhere show that most of these deaths are not the result of people taking small doses of opioids for a short time. Typically, problems arise when people take large amounts of painkillers or use them over a long period of time.

About 1 in 20 people in the United States age 12 or older reported using opioid painkillers for non-medical purposes in 2010. Some of these people engage in doctor shopping – getting prescriptions for commonly abused drugs from several practitioners in a short time and having the prescriptions filled at several pharmacies. In this way, people can obtain dangerous amounts of a prescription drug rapidly.

And in addition to the heavy toll this can take on lives and communities, non-medical use of prescription painkillers costs health insurers up to $72.5 billion annually in direct health care costs.

We can do more as a society to help prevent overdoses involving prescription painkillers while making sure patients who need them have access to safe, effective treatment.

Health care providers should prescribe opioid painkillers only under specific conditions, as in the treatment of chronic cancer pain when other treatments have not worked, and in limited quantities.

Providers can also screen patients for risk and history of substance abuse before prescribing opioid painkillers. Drug addiction is a disease of the brain that can be treated.

But health care providers aren’t the whole answer. Insurers and health care institutions must set up systems to identify and take action when providers or patients are using prescription drugs in dangerous ways. Some states have passed laws to rein in rogue pain clinics (“pill mills”) run solely for profit, that attract drug shoppers from other states.

Individuals can help protect themselves and others by doing the following:

– Talk with your provider about alternatives to opioid painkillers.
– Use opioid painkillers only as directed by a health care provider.
– Make sure you are the only one to use your painkillers. Not selling or sharing them with others helps prevent misuse and abuse.
– Store opioid painkillers in a secure place and dispose of them properly.

To learn more about prescription painkiller overdoses, join Dr. Frieden on Twitter @DrFriedenCDC today at 2 p.m. ET

By Adam Samson

Published August 08, 2011

| FOXBusiness

After closing out the worst week since 2008, Wall Street was once again pummeled on Monday after global sovereign debt and economic fears sent traders fleeing equities with few shelters in sight.

Today’s Markets

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 635 points, or 5.6%, to 10,810, the S&P 500 tumbled 79.9 points, or 6.7%, to 1,119 and the Nasdaq Composite dipped 174.7 points, or 6.9%, to 2,358. The FOX 50 sank 50.7 points, or 5.9%, to 814.

Volatility has been extremely high in recent trading sessions. The selloff over the past two weeks has been so furious in fact that “its force now rivals almost anything we’ve seen in the post war era,” according to Daniel Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG. The VIX, often referred to as a fear gauge, spiked 45% to a 52-week high.

The selloff was broad, with every major sector taking deep losses.  In a sign of the depth of the selling, 98% of the volume on the New York Stock exchange was in declining shares. The Dow closed below 11,000 for the first time since October 2010, and every blue chip ended in the red.

Financial shares like Dow-component Bank of America (BAC: 6.51, -1.66, -20.32%) and Citigroup (C: 27.95, -5.49, -16.42%) took the biggest hit.  The cost to insure the debt of major banking institutions skyrocketed as concerns spread that the institutions may need to seek fresh capital. Bank of America quickly spoke out against the concerns, saying it has sufficient capital, but it couldn’t stem the 19% slide its stock took.

Despite the steep retreat from equities, some market participants were optimistic that markets are in the process of bottoming out.

“We’re experiencing the market bottom right now,” Paul Dietrich, CEO and co-chief investment officer at Foxhall Capital Management, told FOX Business. He cited leading indicators like auto sales and sales tax revenues.

“I think we’ll bounce around the bottom for a while but I believe over the next quarter or two you will start seeing a movement up of consumer spending.”

For the first time in history, S&P cut America’s top-notch credit rating one notch to AA-plus from AAA after the close of trading on Friday.  The ratings company also said Monday it would slice Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s debt rating because the mortgage companies directly rely on the U.S. government.

S&P’s move came as a result of concerns over the country’s substantial public debt burden and deep divides within Congress that almost sparked an unprecedented default on U.S. sovereign debt.  Moody’s Investor Service, another ratings company, affirmed American’s AAA rating, while Fitch is still performing a review.

Many large investors noted the short-term impact of the downgrade may be muted, however, it could foreshadow deeper economic issues.

BlackRock said in a release the move by S&P “does not imply a fundamental increase in risk” and shouldn’t prompt investors to “change their behavior solely on the downgrade.”  However, the company that manages $3.7 trillion in assets warned that “continued economic weakness and regulatory uncertainty … may provide a signal to some investors to reassess their risk appetite.”

A round of disappointing economic data, capped with a mixed monthly employment report has weighed heavily on sentiment in recent weeks.  There are only a handful of data releases scheduled for the first half of the week, however, traders are expected to pay close attention to the Federal Reserve’s statement on Tuesday to see if the central bank signals another round of quantitative easing.

Market participants will also be watching a slew of economic data slated for release by China overnight, according to Peter Boockvar, managing director at Miller Tabak+Co. China is one of the world’s largest economies and can have a drastic impact on global markets.

Global Governments Act

Meanwhile, global governments acted on Sunday to try to stem market fears across the world.  The European Central Bank said it was prepared to “actively implement” a program by which it would purchase Italian and Spanish debt.  European credit markets have been rattled as debt worries have cascaded from smaller economies like Greece to more substantial ones like Italy.

The Group of 7 finance ministers also made a statement late Sunday, saying it was prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to calm global markets that were slammed last week.

Still, many market participants questioned what actions global governments would be able to take to tame tumultuous markets. The statement by G7 “sought to bolster confidence but offered only consoling words,” analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a note to clients.

The selloff on Monday comes on the heels of the steepest retreat for Wall Street since the financial crisis in 2008. The broad S&P 500 plunged 7.2%, the Dow shed 5.8%, and the Nasdaq plunged 8.1%.

In a sign of the uneasiness on Wall Street, gold, seen as a safe haven, has continually leaped to record highs.  The precious metal soared $61.40, or 3.7%, to $1,713 a troy ounce — breaking the $1,700-mark for the first time. In fact, gold prices surpasses platinum prices for the first time since 2008 on Monday.

Energy markets followed equity markets deep into the red.

Light, sweet crude dipped $5.57, or 6.4%, to a new 2011 closing low of $81.31 a barrel. Wholesale RBOB gasoline slid 11 cents, or 4.1%, to $2.69 a gallon.

The U.S. dollar gained 0.15% against a basket of world currencies, while the euro plummeted 1.2% against the greenback.

Prices at the pump moderated somewhat last week following the selloff in the futures markets.  A gallon of regular costs $3.66 on average nationwide, down from $3.71 last month, but considerably more than the $2.78 drivers paid last year, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge report.

Corporate News

Berkshire Hathaway made a $3.3 billion bid for Transatlantic Holdings (TRH: 48.31, +3.07, +6.79%), topping two other takeover offers.

Foreign Markets

The English FTSE 100 slid 3.4% to 5,069, the French CAC 40 tumbled 4.7% to 3,125 and the German DAX plunged 5% 5,923.

In Asia, the Japanese Nikkei 225 plummeted 2.2% to 9,098 and the Chinese Hang Seng sank 2.2% to 20,491.

By Jim Angle

Published August 08, 2011 | FoxNews.com

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President Obama and his Democratic allies have made clear they want additional tax revenues to be part of deficit reduction. Republicans have made clear they will not accept any increases in tax rates.

But there’s one possible strategy for both sides to get their way: cutting subsidies and deductions in the tax code.

“This is where the revenue deal is to be done,” said Donald Marron, director of the Tax Policy Center and a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush. “I don’t think there is the political will to do significant increases in tax rates. The deal to be done is to look at the tax preferences and walk them back in some intelligent way.”

Maya MacGuineas of the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget agrees.

“This is an elegant way to kind of thread this needle between those who don’t want to raise any revenues for the deficit and those who want to focus on more taxes,” MacGuineas said.

These tax breaks, known as “tax expenditures” or “tax preferences,” add up to about $1.3 trillion a year, more than all individual and corporate tax collections combined.

They’ve been a favorite of presidents and lawmakers for years, because they’re easier to implement than spending programs. But they make government larger than it otherwise seems.

“A lot of this that wouldn’t make sense if they were subject to a kind of scrutiny we apply to traditional spending programs,” says Len Burman, a Treasury official in the Clinton years. “They get a pass because they’re run through the tax code.”

Tax preferences were a favorite of President Clinton, Burman said.

“Every time President Clinton felt somebody’s pain, there was a proposal for a new tax credit. … They didn’t want to propose new spending programs, because then it would be ‘Bill Clinton, big-spending liberal, making government bigger,’” he said, explaining their thinking. ” But a tax credit or deduction, that’s a tax cut. That’s a good thing.”

In fact, just last week, Obama called for new tax breaks for veterans, a far easier lift than a new spending program.

The list of existing tax preferences includes some easy targets Congress has already sought to roll back, such as subsidies for ethanol.

And then, there’s one that Democrats rail about day after day, tax breaks for oil companies — though critics say it’s relatively small potatoes, $40 billion over 10 years, MacGuineas said.

“That is nothing to sneeze at, but it is not going to balance the budget,” she said, “and it’s only going to be a drop in the bucket of what we actually need.”

The biggest deductions are far more popular and used by tens of millions of regular taxpayers.

The largest is making employer-provided health insurance tax free. If taxed, that alone would bring in $282 billion a year from workers and their employers.

The home mortgage interest deduction is the second largest at $89 billion a year, followed by tax-free 401(k) savings at $63 billion. That’s followed closely by deductions for charitable contributions at $40 billion and deductions for state and local taxes at $38 billion a year.

“The benefits, the value of these subsidies as a share of income increases with income up to the very, very top,” said Berman, who called tax incentives “middle-class or upper-class entitlement programs.”

Others offer businesses tax breaks for accelerated depreciation and capital gains or profits.

But a lot of programs for the poor are also handled through the tax code.

“We chosen to run a significant portion of the safety net through the tax code,” said Marron, who points to the earned income tax credit, child credit and deductions for some child care expenses.

Though both liberals and conservatives have their favorites, both parties have a stake in the search.

“That’s a tremendous sum of money that can be used to both lower marginal tax rates … and raise revenue to help close the deficit,” MacGuineas said.

But there will be a battle over how much of any savings should be dedicated to lowering tax rates and how much should go to reducing the deficit.

Some analysts suggest using one third to reduce the deficit and two thirds to reduce tax rates, in hopes of boosting economic growth and generating jobs.

Whatever the answer to that question, Burman has a broader one.

“The point is that we should figure out what government is doing — what we can afford to pay for, and how it can be done in the best way?” he said.