Idaho News (Bonners Ferry, Paul, Clark Fork: shoppers, foods, pool)

[LowKey1969]

Originally Posted by Sage of Sagle

See, I don't have a big issue with higher health insurance premiums for smokers...but this makes no sense to me. Next they can refuse to hire overweight people, or those with high blood pressure or high cholesterol, or family history of heart disease or stroke...it is a very slippery slope. Most smokers I know work and lead productive lives into their 50's and 60's and then die "young" with a lot of complications...but no worse than someone who gorges themselves on McD's daily...

A few decades back I worked in the health insurance industry, and a dirty little secret is that on average smokers don't cost any more than non-smokers over the course of their lives. The reason is, as you pointed out, smokers die younger. A smoker dieing in their early 60's may run up a hell of a medical bill in the last few years of their life but that's far less than the cost of a "healthy" senior who dies in their late 80's or early 90's from degenerative diseases linked to the aging process. Those 20-ish years of regular doctors visits, meds, ect really add up.

[mistyriver]

Too much poop can be hazardous to your health — High Country News

[elkotronics]

A few decades back I worked in the health insurance industry, and a dirty little secret is that on average smokers don't cost any more than non-smokers over the course of their lives. The reason is, as you pointed out, smokers die younger. A smoker dieing in their early 60's may run up a hell of a medical bill in the last few years of their life but that's far less than the cost of a "healthy" senior who dies in their late 80's or early 90's from degenerative diseases linked to the aging process. Those 20-ish years of regular doctors visits, meds, ect really add up.

At times smokers do live on longer than you would think, I have one pt. who has since graduated from my Cardio-Rehabilitation program that is in her mid-70's. She does exercise hard and was a very hard and ambitious worker during her working years.

[MountainBiking]

Originally Posted by mistyriverranch

Too much poop can be hazardous to your health — High Country News

This totally stinks.

-Cheers.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

Did you guys hear about this? I saw it on a blog in the Spokesman Review (Spokane), and followed the link to the Clearwater Tribune. A woman archer out hunting a few weeks ago was (apparently) charged by a wolf, and shot it at 10 feet. It took four rounds to kill it:

http://www.clearwatertribune.com/Wee...e%20-%2001.pdf

One thing about the report is weird: She went elk hunting without her glasses...

Uh-oh, are we going to have another wolf/hunting discussion now? Better keep it Idaho specific!

[elousv]

It is here also: //www.city-data.com/forum/monta...onday-9-a.html

[mistyriver]

This one is just plain weird.
Key tea partyer on public payroll - Spokesman.com - Oct. 15, 2011

Losing the fairgrounds, county extension and historical society would really be too bad. Good thing we can afford to pay her salary though.
I would really pay some money though to see Bonner County "intervene" with the EPA. They are so efficient with everything they do...look out EPA! Mike, Cornel, and Lewis are coming to get you!


BOISE – In the conservative crucible of Idaho’s far north, a tea party leader aiming to slim down government has a new title: government employee.
Pam Stout, a tea party activist interviewed by late-night TV’s David Letterman last year, landed a $25,000-a-year, 19-hour-a-week post heading the Bonner County Property Rights Council.
Stout is recruiting volunteers to this new arm of local government to advise county commissioners about slashing spending, free-market alternatives to regulations, and intervening in disputes with Washington, D.C., bureaucrats. Not everybody need apply, she said.
“If you don’t have a free-market perspective, you’d be uncomfortable,” said Stout, whose title is paralegal assistant, though she’s not a trained paralegal.
Some people are responding warily to what they see as an ideologically motivated panel installed inside the courthouse, funded with taxpayer dollars and blessed by elected leaders.
They fear its work could have a chilling effect on county employees trying to uphold local, state and federal laws, particularly those protecting the environment.
“Government should be inclusionary,” said Terry Harris, director of the Kootenai Environmental Alliance. “This is a layer of bureaucracy by ideologues who you would think would be opposed to bureaucracy. It’s spending where you’d think they’d be opposed to spending money.”
This new council is the first of its kind in Idaho, said county Commissioner Cornel Rasor, who rejected Harris’ suggestion that it’s a right-wing shock troop aiming to gut government from the inside while on the public’s dime.
Too often, he said, government has only this message: “Shut down, regulate, close and control.”
“We’re not taking anything away from people who believe property should be regulated,” Rasor said. “We’re simply providing an alternative perspective that was never there before.”
Clare Marley, the county planning director, was out of the office and couldn’t be reached for comment.
Rasor, the council’s founder, and the two other county commissioners are due to vote Tuesday on formalizing how the council is run.
Its seven charter members – including a former Republican commission candidate, GOP officials, tea party activist and Planning Commission member – are already getting started.
Their first tasks include figuring out how to jettison the historical society, extension agency and county fairgrounds from taxpayer support, Stout said.
On Oct. 6, they initiated an investigation of how the county might intervene in a dispute between a couple and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after the agency declared their property near Priest Lake a wetland.
Council members will also vet proposed county watershed rules that could limit junkyards, landfills, feedlots and hazardous materials near Lake Pend Oreille and Priest Lake, to make sure the regulations don’t meddle too much in individual freedoms.
The council is being advised by the State Policy Network, a free-market California think tank that aims “to push back against an oppressive federal government,” according to its website. The Idaho Freedom Foundation, the network’s Idaho branch, will teach classes on free-market theories to council volunteers, Stout said, including using a text called “Government Failure” supplied by the libertarian Cato Institute.
Pushing back against the federal government is hardly a novel concept in Bonner County, where many people have moved to live out their own fiercely held beliefs of independence.
Ruby Ridge, the remote mountain sanctuary where Randy Weaver’s deadly 1992 standoff with federal agents helped inspire the militia movement, is just to the north.
And love for Washington, D.C., wasn’t exactly inspired earlier this year when federal prosecutors alleged violations of the federal Endangered Species Act against a North Idaho man who shot a grizzly bear just south of the Canadian border. The man said he was acting in defense of his children. He eventually paid a $1,000 fine.
“This kind of attitude at the federal government level has created that kind of a backlash, particularly here in northern Idaho where we’re more conservative,” said county Commissioner Mike Nielsen, a former law enforcement officer from Alaska who lives in a home at the end of a mile-long driveway and has three propane tanks to keep it heated.
It’s not just the feds, Nielsen said. During his 2010 campaign, voters told him again and again they were under siege from county land use regulators.
“What I was told was, ‘Mike, we need somebody to protect our property rights,’ ” Nielsen said. “It’s like we own the land, but the government or someone else is telling us how to use it.”

[Clark Fork Fantast]

Cool little piece about the Cataldo Mission in the Spokesman-Review today:
Cataldo Mission - A Then & Now gallery at Spokesman.com

[Clark Fork Fantast]

A little promo for the North Idaho rail trails:

North Idaho rail trails continue to garner headlines - Outdoors blog - Spokesman.com - Nov. 16, 2011

[mistyriver]

A great place to get different perspectives on local news.
The River Journal