Hey Aren't You????

It still happens to me every now and then. I'll be talking with someone and they will remember me from my radio days. "Hey aren't you Powerball?"

The other day I met a gentleman who out of the blue just stuck up a conversation. He told me about how he was raised Catholic but in his teenage years became involved with a Neo Nazi group.

He used to pray the rosary under a poster of Hitler in his room. A bit of a conflict of ideas if you ask me.

You may wonder how he didn't see the conflict himself. If one only goes through the motions of religion and doesn't truly understand the foundation and teaching, then they are vulnerable to any and all ideas, both good and evil.

That is just what happened to this man. He ran from idea to idea thinking each one was right at the time. It wasn't until the responsibilities of a wife and children did he begin to really seek.

I'm happy to tell you he was given a Bible as a gift and began to read and understand. That brought him back to the truth. He shared with me that even though he rebelled against God, it was his early days in the church that showed him the way back home when he was ready to follow.

He talked about this radio show he used to listen to. It was the radio program I produced for years. When I told him I produced that program he smiled and asked, "Hey aren't you Powerball"? That whole time each topic, each guest, each caller was pulling on his heart.

I don't take credit for any of it. I was just blessed to be a part of it and was sorry to see it end when a new path was laid before me.

It funny how life changes so many things, yet was is good and true always remain, even if we spend years trying to bury it.

Assessing the Reassessment

In mid-2011-when all indications were that the County was on pace to complete the court-ordered reassessment and taxpayers would be getting notice of their new values as early as July-the Institute obtained two months of sales data on single family homes in order to compare the existing assessments on the homes with the new assessment as soon as it became available. Similar analysis was carried out in 2005 when the County was scheduled to unveil new assessment values for 2006. Unfortunately, the County chose to scrap the 2005 assessments leading to prolonged court cases ending in a Supreme Court order to reassess.


A week ago the County mailed the last of the 2013 reassessment notices out to residents in the north and west parts of the County. For the County as a whole, the new assessments put the total value of properties 35 percent above the assessed value currently in place. Changes in assessments vary widely across municipalities and school districts.

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Vatican says number of Catholics, priests, bishops worldwide increased

The number of Catholics in the world and the number of deacons, priests and bishops all increased in 2010, while the number of women in religious orders continued to decline, according to Vatican statistics.

At the end of 2010, the worldwide Catholic population reached 1.196 billion, an increase of 15 million or 1.3 percent, slightly outpacing the global population growth rate, which was estimated at 1.1 percent, said a statement published March 10 by the Vatican press office.

Catholics as a percentage of the global population "remained stable at around 17.5 percent," it said.

The statement reported a handful of the statistics contained in the 2012 "Annuario Pontificio," a yearbook containing information about every Vatican office, as well as every diocese and religious order in the world.

Officials of the Vatican Secretariat of State and its Central Office of Church Statistics presented the first copy of the 2012 yearbook to Pope Benedict XVI during an audience March 10.

Detailed statistics in the yearbook are based on reports from dioceses and religious orders as of Dec. 31, 2010.

The percentage of Catholics declined slightly in South America from 28.54 percent to 28.34 percent of the regional population, and dropped considerably in Europe from 24.05 percent to 23.83 percent. The percentage of Catholics increased in 2010 by just under half a percentage point in Southeast Asia and Africa.

The Vatican said the number of bishops in the world increased from 5,065 to 5,104; the number of priests went from 410,593 to 412,236, increasing everywhere except Europe.

The number of permanent deacons reported -- 39,564 -- was an increase of more than 1,400 over the previous year. 97.5 percent of the world's permanent deacons live in the Americas or in Europe.

The number of men joining a religious order showed "a setback," the Vatican said, with an increase of only 436 male religious worldwide in 2010.

The number of women in religious orders fell by more than 7,000 in 2010, despite showing a 2 percent increase in both Asia and Africa. At the end of the year, Catholic women's orders had 721,935 members.

The number of seminarians around the world showed continued growth, from 117,978 at the end of 2009 to 118,990 at the end of 2010.

In the last five years, it said, the number of seminarians rose more than 14 percent in Africa, 13 percent in Asia and 12.3 percent in Oceania. Numbers decreased in other regions of the world, particularly Europe, which saw a 10.4 percent drop in the number of seminarians between 2005 and 2010.

TSA Now Departing

One of America’s busiest airports, Orlando Sanford International, has announced it will opt out of using TSA workers to screen passengers, a move which threatens the highly unpopular federal agency’s role in other airports across the nation.

With Sanford International having originally been prevented by the TSA from opting out back in November 2010 when the federal agency froze the ability for airports to use their own private screeners, a law passed by the Senate last month forces the TSA to reconsider applications.

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