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Weather: Sunny in the morning, then partly sunny with a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 90s. West winds around 5 mph, becoming northeast in the afternoon. Chance of rain 50 percent. Heat index values up to 107. Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Flagler County enters its new FireFlight helicopter into service at the county airport at 8 a.m.
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting at 9 a.m., first floor Conference Room, at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The Technical Review Committee (TRC) is a quality control committee that provides technical review of project plans. Staff Liaison is Gina Lemon, 386-313-4067.
The Flagler County Contractor Review Board meets at 5 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Staff liaison is Bo Snowden, Chief Building Official, who may be reached at (386) 313-4027. For agendas and details go here.
Cancelled. The Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library: Do you enjoy Chess, trying out new moves, or even like some friendly competition? Come visit the Flagler County Public Library at the Teen Spot every Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m. for Chess Club. Everyone is welcome, for beginners who want to learn how to play all the way to advanced players. For more information contact the Youth Service department 386-446-6763 ext. 3714 or email us at [email protected]
 Keep Their Lights On Over the Holidays: Flagler Cares, the social service non-profit celebrating its 10th anniversary, is marking the occasion with a fund-raiser to "Keep the Holiday Lights On" by encouraging people to sponsor one or more struggling household's electric bill for a month over the Christmas season. Each sponsorship amounts to $100 donation, with every cent going toward payment of a local power bill. See the donation page here. Every time another household is sponsored, a light goes on on top of a house at Flagler Cares' fundraising page. The goal of the fun-raiser, which Flagler Cares would happily exceed, is to support at least 100 families (10 households for each of the 10 years that Flagler Cares has been in existence). Flagler Cares will start taking applications for the utility fund later this month. Because of its existing programs, the organization already has procedures in place to vet people for this type of assistance, ensuring that only the needy qualify. |
Notably: Bribing the electorate at election time is as American as arrogance. Trump bought Nevada by promising to make tipping tax free, which will have a more negative effect than not: most people who get tips don;t declare them anyway, but removing the tax will give employers yet another incentive to lower low-wage workers’ wages or find new ways to screw them on the false assumptions that they’re making more money, and the no-tax gift does nothing to lift the wages of these low-wage workers. It’s a false promise. Too bad Kamala Harris embraced it. Trump next is proposing to eliminate the tax on Social Security benefits. That’s a more colossal bribe to 70 million voters at the expense of the very program he claims to be benefiting: a $2 trillion hole would open over 10 years, accelerating the demise of Social Security. I’m with the New Republic on this. Harris should counter this way: “Raise Social Security benefits, a lot. Stop talking about “saving” the program and start talking about increasing it. In a post-union world, where the defined benefit plans of yore have vanished from the private sector, most people have no other serious retirement plan. Even the middle earners with some 401(k) money may get by, but it’s not a nice retirement. We should not high-five ourselves just because there is enough in Social Security to keep the middle class out of abject poverty. So, yes, Harris should make a big fat promise that if she wins in November, and Democrats control Congress, the first order of business will be to raise the payout to everyone’s retirement, now and in the future. Over the years, Social Security has dropped down to paying just 36 percent of the working income for a medium earner (this is based on a medium earner born in or after 1960 who retires at 65, though the normal retirement age for the program has risen to 67). In the early 1980s, that percent for such a retiree was 50. Why not do 50 again, especially now that the defined benefit plans of that era are no longer around? That’s a nice round number—and make it a statutory right. How to fund it? Let the high earners who back Trump pay. First, take back the 2017 Trump tax cuts and use every penny to fix the future deficit in the system. Extending the tax cuts would increase the deficit by about 1.2 percent of gross domestic product, which coincidentally is the size of Social Security’s long-term shortfall. So that alone would shore up the program.”
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Blue 24 Forum
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Flagler County’s Cold-Weather Shelter Opens
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
It’s Back! Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
For the full calendar, go here.
[James Madison’s] opinion of the ability of people to choose wisely at election time may have been clouded by his firsthand experience with voters, who sometimes behaved more like drunken partygoers than citizens performing a solemn duty. Back in 1777, when Madison ran for election to the new Virginia House of Delegates, the lower house of the legislature, he refused to go along with the usual practice of providing alcohol to voters at the polling place and around the county to win their support. He thought that the corrupting influence of liquor and other treats was «in-consistent with the purity of moral and republican principles.” He was determined to introduce a “more chaste mode of conducting elections in Virginia? His opponent did not have similar scruples and provided the usual beverages to prospective voters. It was the only election Madison lost by a vote of the people during his long career.
Madison was embarrassed by his election defeat, although
–From Richard Labunski’s James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights (2006).
Bob says
I have something to ask her. Why did 90% of you staff,as Vice President , leave? It doesn’t sound like there was a lot of joy there
Ray W. says
An Atlantic reporter wrote of his assessment of the assorted protesters who gathered in their thousands (two to five thousand, total, by his visual guess) to show their opposition to the Democratic Party during the Convention. He described the many groups:
“There were the National Students for Justice in Palestine, whose website refers to living in ‘occupied Turtle Island,’ an obscure reference to the cosmology of several Native American tribes. There were varieties of socialists, Trotskyites, the Revolutionary Communists of America (‘We are the Communist generation,’ its website proclaims), and the Denver Communists, which — who knew? — comprise their own ideological grouping. Two groups sided with the government of North Korea. Two bands of anarchists, swathed head to toe in stylish black, with masks and helmets and the occasional shield, marched through. Two young men carried a yellow People’s Defense Units flag, the standard of Kurdish anarchists.”
Given the angry denunciations and predictions by assorted FlaglerLive readers about the socialist or communist regime to be inevitably implemented should the Harris/Walz ticket win in November (were those naysayers ever to come to be believable), who knew that today’s American socialists and communists oppose the Democratic Party enough to travel to Chicago to voice their opposition?
Make of it what you will. Me? I accept that there are many different ways to hold communist or socialist ideas, just as there are many different types of authoritarianism.
Ray W. says
Forbes interprets today’s annual revision to the previous year’s monthly jobs report as giving “little reason to fret at the headline revision number, according to some economists.”
The annual revision has the Labor Department reports as optimistic by showing a downward revision 818k jobs over the past 12 months, or 68k fewer jobs created per month.
A critic of the report wrote that the annualized assessment uses different methodology than does the monthly report, citing with particularity that the annualized report errs by “mostly excluding unauthorized immigrants, a group which strongly contributes to overall job growth.” A Goldman Sachs economist estimated the forecast “overstated the error by 400,000 to 600,000. …” That means that the 818k figure is more likely half that number, if not a higher percentage, if one uses more inclusive statistical data.
Make of this what you will. Me? If the monthly BLS jobs added reports includes data on undocumented workers in its assessment of jobs created and if the annualized report excludes that data, then any comparison is mixing apples and oranges. In the end, one data set has job growth at 2.9 million over the past 12 months. The other pegs it at 2.1 million. That means that the economy is adding more jobs than the nation is adding native-born people. Our native-born population is flat lining as native-born women birth fewer and fewer babies on average. The prime native-born 25-54 working population has been dropping in number for years. Is it reasonable to argue that we need immigrants and plenty of them to maintain a thriving economy?
Ray W. says
The Post reports that the August 2019 annualized jobs reports reflected a downward adjustment of 500k jobs from the month over month data, just in case Trump tries to sensationalize this report; it happened under his watch, too.
Land of no turn signals says says
Albert Einstein in 1949 Quoted “There will come a time when the rich own all the media,and it will be impossible for the public to make an informed opinion.” We know how she feels about the border(she doesn’t care) high prices what high prices.
Ray W. says
Why worry about the media when you so crassly distort the truth about inflation. Both administrations responded to the staggering effects of a worldwide pandemic by spending trillions of dollars in unfunded stimulus money. It is impossible to separate the overall effect of this collaborative effort.
Laurel says
Trump handed out blinders after staring at the sun.
Sarcasm for those who don’t know.
Ed P says
And yet, the Democrats controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years and it’s still Trumps fault even though Biden/Harris are currently in charge.
To those who say the President nor the Vice President can control many factors, then how is everyone able to blame Trump?
Policy discussion is conveniently missing from the conversation. Let’s expand.
Only about 40% of social security recipients pay federal income tax making the 71 million bribes overstated by 40 million. Also missing was discussion of student loan forgiveness and the new convoluted idea of giving first time home buyers $25,000.