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Weather: Mostly cloudy. Showers likely with a chance of thunderstorms in the morning, then showers with thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 80s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80 percent. Tuesday Night: A chance of thunderstorms. Showers likely, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 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:
In Court: A 9 a.m. hearing is scheduled before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins in the case of Tonda Royal, who was convicted of unlawful sexual activity with a minor, and is serving 12 years in state prison. Royal is contesting his sentence.
The Community Traffic Safety Team led by Flagler County Commissioner Andy Dance meets at 9 a.m. in the third-floor Commissioner Conference Room at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. You may also join virtually by computer, mobile app or room device. Click here to join the meeting. Meeting ID: 276 236 998 121 Passcode: CyEKoW [Download Teams | Join on the web]
The Palm Coast City Council meets in workshop at 9 a.m. at City Hall. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here.
The St. Johns River Water Management District Governing Board holds its regular monthly meeting at its Palatka headquarters, 10 a.m. The public is invited to attend and to offer in-person comment on Board agenda items. A livestream will also be available for members of the public to observe the meeting online. Governing Board Room, 4049 Reid St., Palatka. Click this link to access the streaming broadcast. The live video feed begins approximately five minutes before the scheduled meeting time. Meeting agendas are available online here.
The Flagler Beach Library Book Club meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
The Flagler County Planning Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. See board documents, including agendas and background materials, here. Watch the meeting or past meetings here.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
 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: Years ago, as you can see from the image above, the colossal Sunday New York Times (which could reach 1,000 pages) included in its real estate pages a Southern Real Estate section, focused on Florida. With map. Note this one from 1987: Palm Coast, even though it was well on its way to becoming the Nairobi of Northeast Florida, did not yet exist on the map. Not even Flagler Beach, which had been around about 50 years by then. Just Bunnell. I scanned the columns and columns of houses available for sale and rent, but none were offered from Palm Coast, even as ITT was selling them like croissants. The prices were relics: $700 a month for a townhouse in Destin? $265,000 for an oceanfront house in Jupiter?Â
—P.T.
Now this: A 1970 tourism reel on Florida, compliments of Florida Memory:
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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.
Flagler County Canvassing Board Meeting
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
Flagler Tiger Bay Club Guest Speaker: Carlos M. Cruz
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Blue 24 Forum
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Flagler County’s Cold-Weather Shelter Opens
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
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.
The finished product, Florida today, is dead flat in most places, as you would expect a shallow sea floor to be, and it still communicates with the sea along the one thousand one hundred and fifty miles of its shoreline. Everywhere there are reminders of the past. In the Kissimmee Valley, for example, fifty miles from either coast, you can stir the sand with your foot and kick up sea shells that are twenty million years old. A much more important reminder of the geological past is the Floridan Aquifer. Lying in a thick bed above the granite and sandstone basement of the Florida plateau thousands of feet down are layers of a highly porous “honeycomb” limestone, holding one of the most abundant reservoirs of fresh water in the world. The limestone is much like a sponge, soaking up more water than it allows to travel over its surface, and of the fifty-three inches of rain that Florida gets in a normal year, only fourteen, or about a quarter of the water, runs off in streams and rivers. The rest percolates down through fissures, crevices, and conduits into vast, water-worn underground chambers.
–From Alex Shoumatoff, Florida Ramble (1974).
Ray W. says
CNN reports on last week’s slightly positive jobs created report as one of several possible current possible reasons for the recent swings in the sometimes-volatile DOW as follows:
“The Fed has kept interest rates high to bring prices hikes under control. But there’s an (intended) consequence to rate hikes: They slow the economy down. Rate hikes increase the costs oof doing business and hurt profitability. That tends to slow down hiring, which means fewer jobs and less money for consumers to spend. Because consumer spending makes up the vast majority of America’s economy, the Fed almost always plunges the economy into a recession when it hikes rates — although that’s obviously not the goal.
“The fact that America is not in a recession after years of high rates is nothing short of extraordinary. Until recently, hiring kept on booming and consumers kept on spending — largely because pandemic-era stimulus hadn’t quite worn off yet and because many homeowners locked in ultra-low interest rates that freed up cash.
“That may be part of what investors are reacting to Monday: Yes, the job market is showing signs of stress, but the recent selloff could be overdone.
“The fact that the economy is still gaining jobs at a healthy clip is exactly the ‘soft landing’ scenario many were hoping for (and doubting could be achieved) when the Fed started jacking up rates a couple years ago.
“It’s too early to declare victory, but it sure looks like this is a best-case scenario, considering where we were a couple of years ago.”
Make of this what you will. Me? There is little question that we are better off today than we were four years ago.
One party consistently overhypes the slightest negative economic news. The over claims full responsibility for the slightest positive economic news.
The evidence supports the argument that both Trump and Biden are directly responsible for spending trillions of unfunded stimulus dollars. Thus, each also is directly responsible for what I call Trudenflation.
It follows that it can be argued that both Trump and Biden are directly responsible for today’s possible economic miracle, the proverbial soft-landing of our near future, what I call Trudenomics.
The recession so many economists predicted years ago has yet to materialize, yet it might still occur.
As an aside, had the recent and enduring wave of immigration never happened, can it be argued that the productivity gains we have enjoyed over the past few years would have been significantly less.
We needed more workers to fill the jobs added from the jobs created by the spending of so much stimulus money. Millions of them. We were never going to get enough workers by relying on American women’s birthrate, because we have been below replacement rate since 2007. The much-needed immigrants filled open jobs, they earned money, and they injected almost all of their earnings into our spending-centric economic model that we installed many decades ago, i.e., consumerism. After more than four years of record high openings, the never-before experienced unfilled posted jobs openings rate finally fell below eight million; more positive job news for the Fed to consider when it decides whether and, and if yes, how much to cut lending rates this month.
As another aside, the “pestilential” partisan members of faction among us have pounced upon a “fake news” story that Haitian illegal immigrants are stealing cats for food. The gullible among us are the target. Please take every possible step to reduce your gullibility.
According to Cincinnati.com, a 27-year-old Canton resident (“Ohio woman”) was arrested after it was reported to police that she had killed a cat and began eating it in front of several people. The article does not mention nationality. For all anyone knows, she was wearing a MAGA hat and a Trump shirt and shouting about a stolen election before she stole the cat (snark intended). Somehow, this story morphed into multiple Haitian illegals stealing cats and eating them. Who knew that junior high school-style gossip could so quickly infect the leaders of the party of deception and lies?
Pogo says
@FL
Ray W. says
The Cool Down reports that coal-fired electrical generating plants in the U.S. generated 12% of the nation’s electricity needs. I know from other readings over the decades that 20 years ago, coal-fired plants generated 50% of the nation’s electricity.
For the first time in history, wind power outpaced coal power two months in a row, March and April.
Granted, the energy marketplace has changed dramatically. Now, coal is one of the most expensive options available to electricity generating companies. During high demand months, like July and January, coal use rises. In those months, coal use is last on and first off, in order to cut costs, but coal provides more electricity to the grid than does wind.
Make of this what you will. Me? As I have repeatedly stated, Secretary Clinton was right when she said that coal was declining in America. The gullible among us, unable to understand reality due to intentional uneducability, allowed the untrustworthy to create a political fantasy that coal would make a comeback starting in 2017. Hillary was right to describe them as deplorable. Another promise unkept.
According to the EIA, the average share held by coal in the electricity marketplace for the 2023 year was 16.2%, down by roughly two-thirds from 20 years ago. As I repeatedly point out, the EIA published a cost comparison to build and operate new plants of different types over a 30-year span. If FP&L decided today to start building a new coal plant using the latest technology, the total cost over 30 years would be nearly five times the total cost of building a new solar farm using the latest technology. There is no economic reality in which coal is competitive with solar right now, and solar costs are dropping as panels become cheaper and more efficient. Solar will get cheaper and cheaper. Coal will become more and more expensive.