With the median price of a home at $400,000 and fewer than six weeks’ inventory, Palm Coast is in an affordable housing crisis. Existing residents are exacerbating the crisis by opposing developments, opposing smaller-lot homes and opposing apartment complexes. It’s hypocritical and untenable.
Pierre Tristam
In the Shadow of Tom Joad: Pride in Flagler’s Food-A-Thon, Wrath That It Is Still Needed
One naturally feels proud about a community capable of generosity on the scale of Flagler Radio’s Friday Food-A-Thon. But there’s no pride in the persistent poverty it speaks of: There’s something pathologically wrong about any community in what is supposedly the wealthiest country on earth still having to do this to ensure something as basic as putting food on the table for 3,500 families every week.
You Cannot Be Serious: Brian McMillan Leaves The Observer
Palm Coast Observer Brian McMillan announced today in a column that he was leaving the paper after 12 years. Though he leaves the paper in the equally qualified hands of Jonathan Simmons, it is no less of a gut punch and a loss to the community. McMillan had kept the Observer centered.
The Christian Arrogance Behind Praying Coach’s Supreme Court Case
Christian coach Joseph Kennedy’s prayer at a public school football field’s 50-yard line is not about religious freedom. It is not about God. It is not even about praying. It’s about imposing one version of Christianity in an increasingly pluralist society in one of the last places where that kind of favoritism has no place. It is intolerance by exclusivity.
An American Tragedy: The Roe Regression
In right-to-life theology, the woman’s right is non-existent. She’s a vessel. Pro-life? It might help us to look beneath our legal and social burquas once in a while. It’s not pretty, and it sure as hell isn’t nearly as moral or pro-life as you think.
Flagler’s All-White Juries Aren’t What They Used To Be. Thank Wokism.
It wasn’t that long ago when an all-white jury deciding the fate of a Black man accused of raping a white woman, let alone a white underage girl, would have taken no more than the few minutes necessary to sign the verdict form declaring the man guilty. That’s assuming the man made it to the courthouse in the first place. Those days are over.
Say It Ain’t So, Jacob: Why Is Flagler’s Former Star Superintendent Drinking the Reactionary Kool-Aid?
Jacob Oliva went from being one of the most progressive, innovative and inclusive superintendents in the history of Flagler County to a shill, as one of two Florida senior chancellors of education, for the single most regressive, reactionary and just plain mean state departments of education in the nation. Something isn’t adding up.
Not One Reason for Palm Coast Council’s 365% Raise for Itself Passes Smell Test
The quadrupling of Palm Coast City Council members’ salaries was shoveled through hurriedly and sloppily on baseless assumptions posing as evidence. Every single one of Mayor David Alfin’s or supporting councilmen’s rationales collapses with a little scrutiny, leaving a proposal contemptuous of the public and insulting to city staff.
Yes, Current Rules Give Transgender Women Athletes an Unfair Advantage. But Bans Aren’t the Answer.
There is something unfair about Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania star swimmer and transgender woman, winning races and breaking records, and there is something rational in calls by some of her competitors–and by some transgender athletes themselves–for a rule change that addresses both fairness and inclusion.
Ukraine and the Fallacy of ‘All Lives Matter’
Every war brings out the best and the worst in human beings. Ukrainian resistance has been heroic and inspiring as Russia carries out its war crimes. But there’s also a strong element of bias at work in the public reaction. You know, the way a blue-eyed blond child gone missing will get page one sympathy while a missing Black child will be ignored.