We all know that Mitt Romney is very wealthy. We know he was a ‘businessman’ who worked at Bain Capital. The question remains is how did he accumulate this kind of wealth while working anywhere? How?

Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, hired Mitt in 1977 at the age of 30. After one year, Mitt was made a vice president. Vice president at 31, after 1 year. Then in 1984 Romney went to the spin off Bain Capital. Bain Capital was a venture capital firm. Venture Capital firms invest in new companies providing needed capital. Staples Inc was one of Bains first successes.

Bain Capital later morphed in to leverage buyouts. Leveraged buyout firms acquire controlling interests in a company’s equity where a significant percentage of the purchase price is financed through leverage borrowing. After buying these firms, Bain Capital would soon sell them.

Romney reaped so much money through this buying and selling of companies to make himself a multimillionaire.

Did Mitt (real first name Willard) earn his money? Yes, he did. De he take an inordinate amount of money for someone who just finagled with the bottom line of buying and selling a company? Yes.

My question is why did someone who really did not contribute anything to the bottom line of any of these companies make so much money? Why did someone who never spent one minute working on a real product get rich? Romney did not create any product. Mitt just worked for a company that figured out how to buy a company that needed money on the cheap. Then, not long after, sell the company for more than they paid for it.

Mitt Romney good businessman? Maybe. Good salesman. Definitely. Is that what the US needs? Another good salesman?

You would certainly think it is safe to going shopping at the Mall of America. That was not the case this past Monday. There were large crowds out shopping and very often when you have large crowds you can have trouble. After Christmas sales were the draw at the Mall of America.
Sometime shortly after 4 pm about 20 individuals started fighting in the food court area. Drinks and food as well as chairs were being thrown. People were actually running towards the fight instead of away from it. At the same time, in other areas of the mall more fights were breaking out, causing police to arrest nine individuals.
No one was seriously injured and it is not known what started the mayhem. Only minor injuries occurred.
It seems that just going shopping at the mall can be a danger these days. Families are no longer safe strolling in the Mall of America. You may want to find an alternative to be safe.

Here are some videos of the event:

Parents who choose to spank their children when they have disobeyed are among the 90% in the country who have used this form of discipline. However, spanking has been opposed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and has been banned in over 30 countries. Spanking is still legal in the United States, but there are laws forbidding the behavior in schools.
Arguments against spanking a child far outweigh the positive views of the discipline. Studies have shown that children who are spanked will grow up to hit their parents or siblings. They are also at risk for being depressed and committing crimes as a juvenile. Children follow the example their parents set forth, and when they are hit, they will likely hit in return at some point. Instead of hitting the child, parents are encouraged to communicate the behavior that occurred and find a peaceful resolution. Small incidents of spanking can be helpful if used in the correct way, but there is no way to know how the child will react. Therefore, it is best to not spank the child.
Groups who are in favor of spanking children would rather have parents talk to their child before any form of physical punishment is used. Parents should attempt the misbehavior with love and kindness at first. If this tactic does not work, two small spanks with an open hand to the rear of the child can be used. Spanking is most effective with children ages 2-6. After the child is spanked, the parent needs to talk to the child and help them to understand why they were disciplined the way they were. As children get older, parents should use timeouts and the removal of privileges as forms of punishment. There has been no definitive research done that would conclude spanking is useful or harmful to children.

The short answer is yes.  A study by The University System of Georgia concluded that kids who spent a year studying abroad experienced greater success. Here are some of the key findings of the study:

Graduation rates were higher for Georgia students who studied abroad than for those who stayed home. The six-year graduation rate averaged 89 percent for study-abroad students, as against 83 percent for the control group.

Grade-point averages ran a bit higher for students who had studied abroad, particularly among those with lower SAT scores. The mean GPA of study-abroad students with 1000 SAT scores (500 points each on the verbal and math section, close to the national average) was 3.22, a strong B, compared with 3.16 for those who had not studied abroad.

If you can afford to send your kids to a foreign country for a year you probably should. Not only will they learn about another culture but they will do better academically when they return.

Today I was driving through A1A in the Delray Beach area and was blocked by a group a cyclists completely hogging the roadways. These guys all dressed up like Lance Armstrong and think they are in the Tour De France.

They are supposed to be one abreast in their bike lane, but feel that they deserve to take over 1/2 of the driving lane from cars.

I visit the beach weekly and drive up A1A. It has come to the point where every time I travel up this road on a weekend I am in some scary situations. Old people driving cars almost striking bikers or cars in the oncoming lanes.

The police (Delray Beach Police, Boca Raton Police), do not seem to care about this issue as they just cross to the other lane, over the double yellow line, to pass these bikers. Then they move through.

I am so surprised that more people in these big SUV’s down here do not run them over.

According to a report by the New York Times, women pay more than men for health insurance. The troubling part is that even policies that do not include maternity care are more expensive for women than they are for men. Some of the companies that were investigated are Humana and Anthem Blue Cross.

There has been a clear migration away from company sponsored insurance coverage as companies have struggled to make ends meet. The discrepancy in prices and coverage between men and women becomes even more evident in these cases.  The variance was also found when insurance coverage and prices were compared state to state.

A study by a national organization for health care consumers, shows Idaho health insurance, for example, experienced an increase of 121.6 percent in health care premiums over the past eight years and was second only to Wyoming’s in the nation.

Individuals and families that scrutinize insurance offers before signing up have a better chance of avoiding unfair price disparities based on gender. There are several websites that assist users in finding medical insurance policies at lower and more competitive pricing. Insurance companies usually will not refer prospects to any of these websites as there are considerable discounts and savings to be found. One such website offering a discount in medical insurance quotes delivered savings between $100 and $200 monthly.

Religious devotion sets the United States apart from some of its closest allies. An AP-Ipsos polling found that Americans acknowledge unquestioning faith in God and are far more willing to mix religion and politics than people in other countries.
In Western Europe, where Pope Benedict XVI complained that growing secularism has left churches empty on Sundays, people are the least religious among the 10 countries surveyed for The Associated Press by Ipsos.

Only Mexicans come close to Americans in accepting faith. But unlike Americans, Mexicans strongly oppose the clergy lobbying lawmakers, in line with the nation’s historical conflict with church influence.

“In the United States, you have an abundance of religions trying to motivate Americans to greater involvement,” said Roger Finke, a sociologist at Penn State University. “It’s one thing that makes a tremendous difference here.”

The polling was carried out in May in the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea and Spain.

Almost all U.S. respondents said faith is vital to them and only 2 percent said they do not believe in God at all. Almost 40 percent said religious leaders should try to influence policymakers, markedly higher than in other countries.

“Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian policies and religious leaders have an obligation to speak out on public policy, otherwise they’re wimps,” said David Black, a retiree from Osborne, Pa., who agreed to be interviewed after he was polled.

In contrast, 85 percent of French protest clergy activism — the strongest opposition of any nation surveyed. France has strict control on public religious expression and, according to the poll, 19 percent are atheists. South Korea is the only other nation with that high a percentage of nonbelievers.

Australians are generally divided over the importance of faith, while two-thirds of South Koreans and Canadians said religion is central to their lives. People in all three countries strongly oppose mixing religion and politics.

Researchers disagree over why people in the United States have such a different religious outlook, said Brent Nelsen, an expert in politics and religion at Furman University in South Carolina.

Some say rejecting religion is a natural response to modernization and consider the United States a strange exception to the trend. Others say Europe is the anomaly; people in modernized countries inevitably return to religion because they yearn for tradition, according to the theory.

Some analysts, like Finke, use a business model. According to his theory, a long history of religious freedom in the United States created a greater supply of worship options than in other countries, and that proliferation inspired wider observance. Some European countries still subsidize churches, in effect regulating or limiting religious options, Finke said.

History also could be a factor.

Many countries other than the United States have been through bloody religious conflict that contributes to their suspicion of giving clergy any say in policy.

A variety of factors contribute to the sentiment about separating religion and politics.

“In Germany, they have a Christian Democratic Party, and they talk about Christian values, but they don’t talk about them in quite the same way that we do,” Nelsen said. “For them, the Christian part of the Christian values are held privately and it’s not that acceptable to bring those out into the open.”

In Spain, where the government subsidizes the Catholic Church, and in Germany, which is split between Catholics and Protestants, people are about evenly divided over whether they consider faith important. The results are almost identical in Britain, whose state church, the Church of England, is struggling to fill pews.

Italians are the only European exception in the poll. Eighty percent said religion is significant to them and just over half said they unquestioningly believe in God.

But even in Italy, home to the Catholic Church, resistance to religious engagement in politics is evident. Only three in 10 think the clergy should try to influence government decisions; a lower percentage in Spain, Germany and England said the same.

Within the United States, some of the most pressing policy issues involve complex moral questions — such as gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research — that understandably draw religious leaders into public debate, said John Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron.

The poll found Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to think clergy should try to influence government decisions — a sign of the challenges ahead for Democrats as they attempt to reach out to more religious voters.

“Rightly or wrongly, Republicans tend to perceive religion as, quote-unquote, `on their side,’” Green said.

The survey did find trends in belief that transcend national boundaries. Women tend to be more devout than men, and older people have stronger faith than younger people.

The Associated Press-Ipsos polls of about 1,000 adults in each of the 10 countries were taken May 12-26. Each has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.