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Weather: Patchy fog in the morning. Sunny. Highs in the mid 80s. Northeast winds around 5 mph. Friday Night: Mostly clear in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. Patchy fog after midnight. Lows in the lower 60s. Northeast winds around 5 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable.
- 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:
General Election Early Voting is available today in Bunnell, Palm Coast and Flagler Beach from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at five locations. Any registered and qualified voter who is eligible to vote in a county-wide election may vote in person at any of the early voting site, regardless of assigned precinct. According to Florida law, every voter must present a Florida driver’s license, a Florida identification card or another form of acceptable picture and signature identification in order to vote. If you do not present the required identification or if your eligibility cannot be determined, you will only be permitted to vote a provisional ballot. Don’t forget your ID. A couple of secure drop boxes that Ron DeSantis and the GOP legislature haven’t yet banned (also known as Secure Ballot Intake Stations) are available at the entrance of the Elections Office and at any early voting site during voting hours. The locations are as follows:
- Flagler County Elections Supervisor’s Office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell.
- Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast.
- Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE.
- Palm Coast’s Southern Recreation Center, 1290 Belle Terre Parkway.
- Flagler Beach United Methodist Church, 1520 South Daytona Avenue, Flagler Beach.
See a sample ballot here. See the Live Interviews with all local candidates below.
Palm Coast Mayor Cornelia Manfre Mike Norris Palm Coast City Council Ty Miller, Dist. 1 Jeffrey Seib, Dist. 1 Ray Stevens, Dist. 3 Andrew Werner, Dist. 3 Backgrounders Manfre’s and Norris’s Final Clash Temper and Temperament at Tiger Bay Forum Stevens and Werner Sharpen Differences |
The Flagler County Canvassing Board meets today at the Flagler County Supervisor of Elections office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The meeting is open to the public. Check the time in the sidebar or in this chart, which includes the full year’s meeting schedule (the pdf schedule does not include the dates and times of required Canvassing Board meetings which may be necessary due to a recount called locally or statewide.) The board is chaired by County Judge Andrea Totten. This Election Year’s board members are Supervisor of Elections Kaiti Lenhart and County Commissioner Dave Sullivan. The alternates are County Judge Melissa Distler and County Commissioner Donald O’Brien. March-April meetings are for the presidential preference primary, such as it is. See all legal notices from the Supervisor of Elections, including updated lists of those ineligible to vote, here.
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. Today: Making sense of the amendments on the ballot. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM and 1550 AM.
Collective Bargaining session: Palm Coast government’s management team and the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 4807, the firefighters union, meet in a bargaining session at 10 a.m. in the Community Wing Council Chambers at City Hall, 160 Lake Avenue, Palm Coast. The meeting is open to the public.
Flagler Outreach Brings Social Service Providers to Cattleman’s Hall, 1 to 4 p.m. at Flagler County Fairgrounds, 150 Sawgrass Road, Bunnell. Flagler County Health and Human Services Department is hosting its annual “Flagler Fall Outreach,” which includes all manner of social services providers who will have free information, as well as immediate assistance with things like free food.
The Scenic A1A Pride Committee meets at 9 a.m. at the Hammock Community Center, 79 Mala Compra Road, Palm Coast. The meetings are open to the public.
Fall Horticultural Workshops at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE., 6:30 p.m on Tuesdays, 10 a.m. on Fridays. Join master gardeners from the UF/IFAS Agricultural Extension Office for these workshops that cover a variety of horticultural topics. $10 a workshop.
The Blue 24 Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock, 2 to 5 p.m., Picnic Shelter behind the Hammock Community Center at 79 Mala Compra Road, Palm Coast. It’s a free event. Bring your Acoustic stringed Instrument (no amplifiers), and a folding chair and join other local amateur musicians for a jam session. Audiences and singers are also welcome. A “Jam Circle” format is where musicians sit around the circle. Each musician in turn gets to call out a song and musical key, and then lead the rest in singing/playing. Then it’s on to the next person in the circle. Depending upon the song, the musicians may take turns playing/improvising a verse and a chorus. It’s lots of Fun! Folks who just want to watch or sing generally sit on the periphery or next to their musician partner. This is a monthly event on the 4th Friday of every month.
Maze Days at Cowart Ranch, Fridays from 5 to 10 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sundays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Cowart Ranch and Farms, 8185 West Highway 100, Bunnell. $15 per person, children 2 and under free. Get lost on a 5 acre walk through maze (approximately 30-60 minute adventure). Pick the perfect carver or edible pumpkin at our Pumpkin Patch with lots of sunflowers and of picture opportunities! Some pumpkins grown right here on the farm. Try to spot the cattle herd on the Tractor driven Hayrides (approximately 15 minutes). Get up close and friendly with farm animals. (Chickens, goats, calves, pigs and more!) Pony Rides! (Not included with entry- $8 or 2 for $15 & legal guardian must sign waiver). Challenge your friends and family at our hand pumped water driven Ducky Dash game. Roll and Race down our NEW Rat Race game that’s a Ratatoullie blast. And plenty more.
Monstrous Masterpieces Class at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum: This Halloween-themed cake decorating class, led by Sarah Began, promises chills, thrills, and delicious skills! Learn the basics of icing and cake decorating in a relaxed, social setting. Perfect for all skill levels; adults only. Leave with a Halloween masterpiece that is sure to delight and maybe even spook your friends and family!
 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. |
Diary: Since dawn and for the last few hours as I write this on Thursday it has been raining noise, shingles and hammer blows, a roiling thunder of deafening but heartwarming destruction: I look out any window to see precipitations in sheets of black, accumulating like snow—if snow were tar—on blue tarps meant to protect what passes for our lawn. I sit anywhere in the house, my desk on the second floor especially, only to hear what I can only compare to the continuous sound of not-so distant mortar and artillery and small-arms fire, a sound I last heard in 1978 when the sky was falling. It’s a happier occasion here. A half dozen men or more, migrants all of them, are demolishing our roof in order to rebuild it. It was 18 years old, the only kind of teen insurers want dead and gone. Hurricane Milton gave it the coup de grace, scalping it of enough shingles to coat a few segments of road and lawn around us. We’d held out long enough. A friend suggested Flagler County Roofing, whose service and delivery proved superb, not to mention their labor force. They started at 7. They were done by 2. It was as if not even Milton had happened (but for the tilting Nonna tree out back). True, by 9:30, when my ability to concentrate under the bombardment was beginning to wane, I had to run out to cover a groundbreaking, which was fortunate, then I was given a little office space at Cheryl’s firm for a couple of hours to rest my ears. By the time I returned after lunch, the crew was having its own break before a quick clean-up of the grounds, and they were gone. We don’t need proof that migrants are the backbone of this country. They prove it every day. But this was a Whitman poem to migrants in action. In the video below, change the skin tones a bit, change the language, change assumptions, look past the ever-wishful sexism, and enjoy.
—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.
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Flagler County Canvassing Board Meeting
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
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
For the full calendar, go here.
Still, there is something in us, somehow, that in the most degraded condition, we snatch at a chance to deceive ourselves into a fancied superiority to others, whom we suppose lower in the scale than ourselves.
–From Melville’s White-Jacket, (1850).
Pogo says
@P.T.
A toast, to Mr. Melville; and may you, and your roof, live long — and prosper.
Be well.
Ray W, says
Axios reports that Volkswagen intends to release two of its new South Carolina-built 2027 Scout-brand off-road models as extended range electric vehicles (EREVs) with a starting price of under $60k before applying federal and state tax incentives. Another choice will be a battery-only electric vehicle (BEV).
Like other manufacturers who plan to introduce EREVs into the American marketplace, Volkswagen will use a smaller battery and a “tiny” gasoline engine that will only generate electricity when needed to recharge the battery.
The option still means that most daily EREV trips will not deplete a fully charged battery enough to ever start the gasoline generator; it will only be when a long trip is contemplated that the gasoline engine might have to start up to recharge the partially depleted battery to sustain the longer journey.
According to Axios, the EREV 500-mile range version of the vehicles before having to gas up will cost $4,000 less than the 350-mile range BEV models with a much larger battery.
Axios summarizes the article: “With their tiny gas engines as a security blanket, extended range EVs could be a more affordable, less anxiety-provoking way to steer Americans toward electrification.”
The not-yet-complete South Carolina VW factory will eventually employ up to 4,000 people.
Nissan has plans to produce EREVs for domestic sale in Japan, but not here. Dodge recently announced plans to sell a Ramcharger-badged truck here with 630 HP via dual electric motors and a 690-mile range. Chevrolet has also announced plans for an EREV.
Make of this what you will. Me? I have already commented on the fact that Chinese automakers have more fully embraced the EREV concept than American automakers.
Axios also reports that Ford’s CEO, Jim Farley, “was floored” during a recent trip to China when he drove a Chinese EREV. “In August [he] canceled plans for a three-row electric SUV in favor of an ‘advanced hybrid’ SUV that is widely expected to be an EREV.”
I recently read of a statement Farley made on a podcast about how he had a Chinese electric car flown to America. At the time of the podcast, he had been driving it for six months; he reportedly said he doesn’t want to give it up. He reportedly told the podcaster that China is far ahead of the American auto industry in this area.
There can be a significant difference between political reality and economic reality.
We surrendered this facet of automotive technology some 15 to 20 years ago to the Chinese because one political party made it toxic to produce domestic electric vehicles here. Elon Musk bucked the opposition and jumped way ahead of other domestic automakers. Now, we are paying the cost of catching up.
Trump has promised tariffs on Chinese BEVs and EREVs and Biden recently imposed a 100% tariff on such vehicles. We are playing catch-up in an area we could have dominated, but for a lack of the political willpower to do so.
Ray W, says
InsideEVsGlobal has its own take on yesterday’s unveiling of the VW Scout-brand electric off-road vehicles.
The Scout Terra and Scout Traveler models will be all-electric. The “Harvester” versions will be extended range electric vehicles.
In order to save money, according to a spokesman, VW will likely source the gasoline engine from VW’s stock of already developed engines; it might not design a new version of gasoline engine to generate electricity.
Scout Motors CEO Scott Keogh and a company spokesperson “confirmed that the decision to add a range extender was made fairly recently, in the last few months.”
Keogh added: “It’s pretty straightforward. Projected range over 500 miles, make the battery a little bit smaller, fill that space with the gas tank, and get the range that you see here.”
According to the reporter, “Keough added that this makes the Scout platform and factory ‘future proof’ as the company should be able to adjust demand to the partially gas or all-electric cars as needed.”
Ray W, says
Today, Fox News posted an article titled: “Economist, mother of eight has a countercultural message amid declining American birth rates.”
Here are some bullet points from the article:
– Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, an economist at the Catholic University of America, looked at why 5% of American mothers have five or more children, “amid a historic ‘birth dearth’ …”
– “… Pakaluk believes women ultimately won’t be swayed to have children because of financial incentives and argues that the decision by Americans not to have kids has more to do with American culture rather than the economy.”
– According to the reporter, “[t]he replacement level is accepted as 2.1 children per woman, where if it is any higher, the population grows and if it is any lower, the population shrinks. Currently, the United States’ total fertility rate is at about 1.6. But, Pakaluk said there is no part of the world or the globe that isn’t touched by the phenomenon of countries beginning to have too few children to replace their own populations.”
– “Pakaluk remains firm in her belief that the ‘Birth Dearth’ has occurred for economic reasons, but isn’t fixed with economic solutions. Instead, she believes the solution is cultural.”
– “If people have family goals for themselves and they also have career goals, it’s going to work out best if they can pursue careers in avenues, industries, professions where there’s a lot of flexibility.”
– “Pakaluk considered countries like South Korea and Australia, which have used subsidies to encourage people to have children, but didn’t work. She hypothesizes that people are afraid that having kids will affect their lives in ways that are just too big to be offset by a bonus.”
– “Additionally, programs like Social Security operate under the assumption that people will have kids, but face insolvency if they don’t, she said. Pakaluk points to industrialization as a major reason behind the decline in the necessity of children.”
– “These are social programs that rely on, essentially, transfers from today’s workers to retired workers. … They built into the assumption that people would keep having kids and there would be a moderate level of population growth and what we’ve seen is that’s not true.”
– “If being politically conservative today means that you are behind big state programs to incentivize childbearing, then I’m kind of not a good conservative. … I’m conservative in the sense that I definitely believe in traditional values, and I believe that family matters a lot to society, believe that marriage matters a lot to society and I think that we have to examine whether our retreat from marriage and children has made us better or worse, because I think it is a choice we made.”
– “If we grant that the government has the right to target higher birth rates, I don’t see how we don’t also then admit that government has the right to target lower birth rates if it sees fit.”
Make of this what you will. Me? I agree with Mrs. Pakaluk that the American economy is built on a model of growth, as is our retirement model of Social Security.
The American-born worker total in the prime 25-54 age group dropped by 770,000 workers last year. Baby Boomers are retiring out of the work force. We need a fertility rate per woman of 2.1 babies, but we now average 1.6 babies per woman. Jobs added figures remain high, yet the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1%, which is slightly above the economic definition of full employment of 4.0%.
The best way it seems that we can add the workers we need to keep funding Social Security and to keep growing our economy is to admit newly arriving immigrants into the work force because the ones who came into the country over the last few years are already working. I already posted unemployment data for Springfield, Ohio. Some 10-12 thousand Haitian workers who are legally in the country are said to have moved there over the past three years, yet the unemployment rate and the total number of unemployed has remained largely the same. They came to work. They accepted work. They spend what they earn, and new jobs are created.
We needed all of the millions of immigrants who entered the country since 2021 to keep us from the “hard landing” (recession) that so many economists were predicting when the Fed began raising lending rates. We will continue to need more immigrants if we want to keep growing the economy. Changing the laws to permit 14-year-olds to work longer hours just won’t cut it.
Political expediency can often conflict with economic truth. Studies show that many immigrants from Cuba, Mexico, Central America and South America and other parts of the developing world have strong religious, marriage and family values and often a higher birth rate, and many vote Republican, yet our former president calls America a trash can for admitting these immigrants.
Pogo says
@A “voice” from, from, from…
Hello, Ray W.; what happened to Dave?
External robotic factor detected: please try again later.
As stated
https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/2024/10/26/how-much-did-amazon-pay-for-daytona-property-its-a-record/75850301007/
Your call is important, and may be monitored for any reason, reason, reason…
Amen.
Ray W, says
Hello Pogo.
The Washington Posts reports on a 2013 interview of Elon and Kimbal Musk.
“Kimbal Musk has repeatedly acknowledged working in the United States without legal status — describing his experience as evidence of a dysfunctional U.S. system that blocks talented foreigners. In a 2013 onstage interview alongside his brother, he said they were sleeping in the office and showering at the YMCA when they joined the dot-com gold rush.
“Then investors began offering them huge sums of money and buying them cars, he said, only to find out that the brothers had no legal permission to work in the United States.
“‘In fact, when they did fund us, they realized that we were illegal immigrants,’ Kimbal said in the 2013 interview.
“‘Well,’ Elon said.
“‘Yes, we were,’ Kimbal said.
“‘I’d say it was a gray area,’ Elon said, to audience laughter.
“We were illegal immigrants,’ Kimbal said flatly.”
In a 2021 interview, Kimbal said, “I tried to get a visa, but there’s just no visa you can get to do a start-up. I was definitely illegal.”
On February 26, 1996, according to documents filed with California’s Secretary of State, Global Link Information Network, the predecessor company to Zip2, listed Kimbal as president and CEO and Elon as secretary.
“A person who joined Zip2’s human resources department in 1997 remembers processing work visas for the Musks and other family members under a category available to Canadians under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).”
The Post article opens on the subject of Elon Musk entering the United States to enroll in a Stanford University graduate degree program. He never enrolled.
In a May 2009 deposition, Musk explained that two days after the semester started, he called to tell the department chair he wasn’t going to attend courses.
The Post wrote:
“Upon not enrolling, Musk would have had to leave the country, according to legal experts and immigration laws at the time. He would not have been allowed to work.
“While overstaying a student visa is somewhat common and officials have at times turned a blind eye to it, it remains illegal.”
The Post comments that “[o]n X, Musk has become an avid booster of anti-immigrant rhetoric, falsely accusing Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats of ‘importing voters.’ In February, he wrote that ‘illegals in America can get … insurance, driver’s licenses.
“Musk would have been required to have both to drive a vehicle, which associates attested he frequently did during the time he lacked a legal work permit.”
Make of this what you will.