Man Caught with 700 Xanax Pills

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TOLLESBORO, Ky (WSAZ) -- Sheriff's deputies in Lewis County have arrested a man they say was trying to sell prescription pills to a confidential informant.

On Friday Eddie Smith, of Tollesboro, was pulled over in his hometown and deputies discovered a pill bottle with more than 700 Xanax pills inside.

The pills had an estimated street value of $7,000.

Smith is charged with trafficking a controlled substance and second offense possession of a controlled substance. He is being held at the Lewis County Detention Center.

Smith is 35-years-old.

Fort Hood Reminds Us: Our Gun Laws Are a National Disgrace

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Our current lack of health insurance for all is a national disgrace. But so are our handgun laws -- or lack of them.

You'd think you might have heard a bit more about our heedless national pistolero mentality in the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the tragic shootings at Fort Hood this week. But no such luck. How many times have we seen this movie before? It's only the locations that change.

There was only scant mention in all the coverage that suspected mass murderer Nidal Hasan had bought his lethal cop-killer handgun at "Guns Galore" in nearby Killeen, Texas. How charming.

Why is it that comic Stephen Colbert seems to be the only one on national TV who regularly reminds us about this country's twisted love of handguns? (Colbert keeps his piece, "Sweetness," under his anchor desk, occasionally taking it out to smooch its barrel).

Something I've written in my newspaper columns about for years bears repeating here:

Any country with as many mentally ill people as the U.S. that allows virtually unlimited access to handguns is on a suicide mission.

Gun sickness is our most pressing national illness.

I live within sight of the Canadian border, and Americans who visit Canada are often surprised at how serious Canadian customs officials regard guns -- specifically, bringing them into relatively handgun-free Canada. Where are these people's priorities, they seem to be saying?

(Note: Canadian customs can -- and does -- turn people back at the border who have a DUI conviction. Again, different national priorities).

Canadians recognize handguns as a direct threat to civilized society, unlike here, where the NRA and the gun-toters evidently believe we're living in Tombstone, Ariz., circa 1885.

How many more mass shootings and troubled-loner gun sprees (what the New York Post calls "Slayfests") can we afford before we finally get serious about gun control? How much longer will network TV news continue to soft-peddle and play down this most basic issue?

I don't really care that much about what drove Hasan to apparently murder all those soldiers, which has been the prime focus of nonstop cable news. The fact is, he did. What I DO care about is how easy it was for him to get the means -- a lethal gun -- to do it.

Not to belabor the Canadian issue -- we Americans are, after all, the noisy, gun-toting downstairs neighbors -- but re-entering the U.S. after living in Canada for several years (which we did) was a maddening experience.

We lived a major metropolitan area, Montreal, for seven years. And even in the more disadvantaged parts of that city, you feel safe. You never feel you might get shot, either by a handgun-toting robber or a troubled loner.

Coming back into the United States you lose that peace of mind. It's like a slap in the face.

Don't believe me? Ask anyone else who's lived in a developed country in which handguns are restricted and can't be bought as easily as cigarettes.

We have millions of sick Americans who need health insurance. But there are even more of us who live in danger of being shot by an easy-to-obtain weapon. It's way past time for the media to pay attention to THIS life and death issue.

Cover for home-based SMEs sadly lacking - Direct Line

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Research from Direct Line for Business has revealed that many businesses based in the home would not be able to cover themselves in the event of a crisis.

The insurance provider surveyed nearly 900 home-based business owners and found that more than a quarter (28 per cent) had no commercial insurance cover. Only 12 per cent of those surveyed would be protected if their business were unable to trade temporarily and only 32 per cent have public liability insurance, the study found.

Kate Syred, head of Direct Line for Business, said: "With so few businesses being protected from a liability claim or an unexpected pause in trading, this research highlights the need for business owners to think about specific business insurance. Without it, dreams of being a business owner could quickly become a nightmare."

Direct Line also pointed out that many business owners based at home incorrectly think that their normal home insurance covers them in the event of a claim for their business. Research found that 82 per cent of home business owners have home contents insurance but only 34 per cent have office contents cover.

In addition, only 18 per cent are covered for the loss of their tools, mobiles and equipment.

Ms Syred added: "Many people set up a business from home because it is a cost-effective solution. However, you still need insurance for protection in the event of something going wrong. A standard home insurance policy may have limited, if any, cover and many businesses relying on this could find it difficult when it comes to making a claim."

Elizabeth Foran, managing director of home-based Five Star Financial Consultants in Reading, said: "That is probably a pretty true survey. A lot of people who work from home do not cover themselves. I have a certain amount of that sort of cover, but probably not as much as I should have.

"It is perhaps something they [home-based business owners] do not even think about. It is probably at the bottom of their lists and it is something they should give more thought to, especially as more IFAs start to work from home as the cost of office space becomes more expensive."

But Derek Bradley, chief executive of Panacea, the community for small directly-regulated IFA firms, said he would be surprised if the findings were true of home-based IFA businesses. He said: "There are just so many insurances that small IFAs have to have - let's just say in the event of a disaster an IFA has to have a disaster recovery plan if they are working from home.

"I would find it inconceivable that someone whose business is in financial services did not have the cover. From an IFA perspective I would be staggered because there are so many contingencies they have to have in place."

Small Business Goes to Washington

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Small business took its star turn Tuesday on Capitol Hill. Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who heads the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, held a hearing on rising health insurance costs for small companies. And separately, the Main Street Alliance, a group of small business owners who support Democratic reform proposals, flew 134 constituents to Washington from 26 states to lobby their legislators and stand before the media microphones.

We’ll follow up on their day in a separate post. For now, we’ll focus on Mr. Harkin’s hearing, titled “Increasing Health Costs Facing Small Businesses.” If that sounds as if it was ripped from the headlines of your local paper, it was — Mr. Harkin announced at the outset that he was prompted by Reed Abelson’s front-page article on the subject in The Times two Sundays ago, courtesy of a wake-up call from his colleague from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter. One of the two small-business owners who testified, Walt Rowen, owner of Susquehanna Glass in central Pennsylvania, figured prominently in the article. In his opening statement, Mr. Harkin promised an investigation into pricing practices in the small group market.

Congressional hearings reflect the biases of the people who hold them. Two weeks ago, when the Senate Small Business Committee held a similar hearing, the notion of a public option was barely mentioned, because its chair, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, opposes it. (Ms. Landrieu titled her hearing “Reform Done Right: Sensible Health Care Solutions for America’s Small Businesses.”) Mr. Harkin, by contrast, supports a strong public option, and brought it up repeatedly over the course of two-and-half hours.

The hearing, then, served not just to lay a Democratic defense against Republicans who oppose reform altogether, but also to shore up the liberal position against more moderate Democrats, particularly those on the Finance Committee, who produced a less aggressive reform proposal. “To America’s small businesses, I have a simple message,” he said. “We are fighting for you, and help is on the way.” He might well have meant his own committee — “H.E.L.P.”

The entrepreneurs didn’t always keep to the script that the Democrats had written for the day. Art Cullen, editor of The Storm Lake Times in Iowa, was there to root for the public option, but he wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about it as Mr. Harkin probably hoped. What he really wanted was to be rid of the obligation to provide coverage altogether.

“Get it off our backs,” he told the senators. “If that means a public option, fine. If that means an insurance exchange of some sort, fine. But give us a way to get out from underneath this albatross. It’s become expected that small businesses will provide insurance, even if they can’t afford it. And we cannot afford it.”

And when Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, talking up the insurance exchange, asked Mr. Rowen if health costs had “direct impacts on your ability to hire additional employees, or to pay your employees more,” Mr. Rowen demurred. While higher expenses reduce employee raises, he said, “I think most small businesses hire employees because their business is doing well, and they lay off people or cut back because their business is not doing well. I’ve never been a believer that we hire because there’s a better tax situation, or that there are better government benefits that come to us. When the economy does well, we do well. And when we do well, we hire more people.”

In addition to the two entrepreneurs, four expert witnesses — two chosen by the Democrats and two by the Republicans — testified, and the senators devoted most of their questions to shoring up and tearing down these experts. (Although the most refreshing interlude came when Senator John McCain let the Democratic-backed economist Jonathan Gruber battle it out with the conservative Douglas Holtz-Eakin for five minutes without senatorial interruption. Mr. Holtz-Eakin, it should be noted, was Mr. McCain’s chief economic adviser in the 2008 campaign. “In my experience, he likes fights,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin said wryly.)

But it was the small-business owners who had the last word, and it was unexpectedly powerful. “Everybody here’s talking about being fair to the insurance companies — when have they been fair to us?” Mr. Cullen said. He sounded as if he was at the point of exasperation. “Why do we have to be fair to them? It just incenses me when people talk that way. These people are legal thieves with antitrust protection, and we want to treat them with kid gloves. It drives me nuts!

“And that’s all I’ve got to say.”