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Weather: Partly cloudy. Highs in the lower 80s. Tonight: Partly cloudy. Lows in the mid 60s.
- 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 |
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students: 9:30 to 10:25 a.m. at Grace Presbyterian Church, 1225 Royal Palms Parkway, Palm Coast. Improve your English skills while studying the Bible. This study is geared toward intermediate and advanced level English Language Learners.
The St. Augustine Orchestra is in Concert at Flagler Auditorium, 5500 State Road 100, Palm Coast. The orchestra will perform DeFallas’s “Ritual Fire Dance’ From El Amor Brujo, a dance Marquez, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, op.34, and the great Reformation Symphony–No. 5–by Felix Mendelssohn. $25. Students under 18 may attend with a parent for free by calling the box office. Reserved seating.
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.
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email [email protected]
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from noon to 3 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Al-Anon Family Groups: Help and hope for families and friends of alcoholics. Meetings are every Sunday at Silver Dollar II Club, Suite 707, 2729 E Moody Blvd., Bunnell, and on zoom. More local meetings available and online too. Call 904-315-0233 or see the list of Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County meetings here.
 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: The Majority of Americans Can No Longer Afford an Average House. From Statista: According to data compiled by the National Association of Realtors, buying an average home is now out of reach for the majority of Americans, as the annual household income needed to afford a median-priced home without too much financial strain has shot up 60 percent since January 2022. Back then, the minimum income to buy a mid-range house – around $380,000 at the time – was $74,000, roughly in line with the national median income. Since then a massive affordability gap has opened up, as a required income of $120,000 stands opposite a median income of around $84,000 – more than 40 percent shy of what would be needed.
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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.
William Buckley, Yale ’50 and as a senior the able editor of The Yale Daily News, has written a book that challenges political, religious and educational liberalism. Nominally his book is about education at Yale. Actually, it is about American politics. How right he is (and likewise John Chamberlain in his well-written preface) to insist that man has a moral nature, that statism threatens it, that freedom depends on the traditional value-code of the West and that unmoral materialism results in a suicidal tolerance debunking all values as equally “relative.” Specifically, Buckley attacks “statism and atheism” on the Yale campus. Yet what is his alternative? Nothing more inspiring than the most sterile Old Guard brand of Republicanism, far to the right of Taft. […] Great conservatives — immortals like Burke, Alexander Hamilton, Disraeli, Churchill, Pope and Swift — earned the right to be sunnily conservative by their long dark nights. You can earn it by being a tortured romantic Irishman like Burke. You can earn it by Churchill’s bitter decade before his great hour in 1940. You do not earn a heart-felt and conviction carrying conservatism by the shortcut of a popular campus clubman without the inspiring agony of lonely, unrespectable soul-searching. […] As gadfly against the smug Comrade Blimps of the left, this important, symptomatic and widely hailed book is a necessary counterbalance. However, its outworn Old Guard antithesis to the outworn Marxist thesis is not the liberty security synthesis the future cries for. Some day, being intelligent and earnest, Buckley may give us the hard-won wisdom of synthesis. For that, he will first need to add, to his existing virtues, three new ones: sensitivity, compassion, and an inkling of the tragic paradoxes of la condition humaine.
–From Peter Viereck’s review of William Buckley’s God and Man at Yale, The New York Times, Nov. 4, 1951.
Ray W, says
Russia’s Central Bank raised lending rates to 21%, a rate not seen in Russia since 2003.
In September, Russia’s inflation rate hit 9.8%. Limited supply coupled with unprecedented domestic demand is said to explain the reason for rising inflation. Factories are at full capacity to supply the military and domestic sectors.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
In last week’s state-by-state roundup, the News-Journal reports this for Louisiana:
“Baton Rouge: Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s proposal for a dramatic transformation of the state’s tax code includes significant income tax reductions for all earners, but revenue that would be replaced primarily by adding sales taxes to services that aren’t taxed now and making a temporary .45-cent sales tax permanent.”
As an aside, North Dakota has a referendum on the November ballot that would abolish property taxes if adopted. The measure failed in 2012.
Make of this what you will. Me? It seems there are a number of political wanderers out there. Just tear it all down and we can make easily make whatever new structure we dream up work.
Increasing sales taxes are generally considered as a regressive tax, meaning the poor pay a higher percentage of their income on sales taxes than do the rich.
Florida tried in the late 70s or early 80s to impose a tax on services. That didn’t work; it was quickly repealed. Seems that doctors and lawyers and accountants did not like having to pay a tax on their services; it smelled too much like a state income tax.
Ray W, says
In another state-by-state summary, the News-Journal reports this for Maryland:
“Lusby: Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s Cove Point LNG export plant in Lusby returned to production, three weeks after it shut down for annual maintenance, according to data from financial firm LSEG.”
Make of this what you will. Me? I comment on this for two different reasons.
First, scheduled maintenance is often scheduled months in advance.
My elder daughter and her husband work for Mitsubishi’s Heavy Power division. A number of engineering teams travel to locations from Argentina to Canada to repair and maintain combined cycle gas turbine electricity plants. Since demand for electricity is lowest in the spring and fall, most scheduled maintenance occurs during those seasons. No one is allowed to schedule vacations during peak maintenance seasons. Every time an efficient natural gas-fired powerplant shuts down for maintenance, one of the least expensive available sources of power goes offline. In an emergency, such as an explosion at a second powerplant, more costly sources of electricity have to be used, such as coal-fired powerplants. Many of today’s few remaining operable coal-fired plants are used only in peak season, such as summer and winter, not spring and fall, except in emergency situations.
On the theme of efficiency, many FlaglerLive readers might recall 2023’s August heat dome from Texas to Florida that lasted about two weeks. Readers saw as high as 120-degree heat indexes in Flagler County during those days. Since refineries lose efficiency in heat above 100 degrees, many of the Texas refineries lost normal peak output during the dome days. With less output than anticipated, supplies of gasoline coming out of Texas dropped and prices at the pump rose. The gullible among us immediately blamed the Biden administration for the heat-related higher prices.
Earlier this year, a major Indiana regional refinery experienced a power outage that forced an extended shutdown for repairs after cracking towers had to be opened and partially refined oil had to be flared off. During the time of the shutdown, regional gasoline prices rose 21 cents per gallon, according to an Indianapolis newspaper. I suppose there were a number of gullible Indiana consumers who also too quickly blamed the Biden administration for the rise in prices, too.
Here’s the second reason for this comment. As a foundation for the comment, I ask FlaglerLive readers to recall the many comments that are triggered each time a local government approves 243 new townhomes or 87 new apartments, or 2422 new freestanding homes. Some commenters angrily claim the county lacks the roads, the water, land that is above flood zone, and the list goes on. And they might be right. Just how many hundreds of millions will it cost to bring the water department into regulation? But the same infrastructure issues exist on an international scale in the energy sector.
On January 26th, the Biden administration announced a pause in permitting on any new LNG export plants not yet under construction. A Philadelphia project that had not yet achieved financing, much less started construction, was affected. The pause will be withdrawn once additional studies are completed.
I knew of the pause months ago and commented once on the paused project.
Some 50 Republican congressman waited until this week, about two weeks before the election, to raise a partisan alarm by signing onto a letter. After all, a permitting delay of a carbon energy projects fits the rich fantasy life of the most pestilential partisan members of faction among us. Pennsylvania, a swing state, sees an LNG liquefaction for export plan delayed by the obstructing Democrats. Who wouldn’t wait 9 months to reveal the duplicity of the Democrats?
In the letter, the Republicans demanded information about the energy department allegedly “burying” a previously prepared report that no one has ever seen. Of course, they don’t have a leaked copy of the report. But they do have a loud voice claiming that there must be such a report. If they are right, who knows the political frenzy that might arise.
Of course, the Republican legislators do not mention the conclusion contained in the EIA’s 2024 World Energy Outlook:
“There has been a major reorientation in natural gas trade routes since the cut in Russian pipeline exports to Europe. A large new wave of LNG export capacity is also set to come on line: if all projects that are under construction are completed on time, available liquefaction capacity is expected to rise globally from 580 bcm (billion cubic meters) per year today to 850 bcm per year in 2030. … This increase in export capacity is larger than projected LNG demand growth in all three scenarios; the result is an overhang of capacity which is set to depress international gas prices and set the stage for fierce competition between suppliers.”
Make of this what you will. Me? If there is going to be a “significant overhang” of LNG export capacity by 2030 that is far higher than expected demand, any project not yet under construction has a significant likelihood of economic failure.
LNG export plants are expensive projects. Cheniere Energy is said to have borrowed $30 billion to build its two LNG export plants, one in Louisiana and the other in Texas. Cheniere sought permitting in 2010 and its first Louisiana liquefaction train began operations in 2016. Now, the two facilities can handle three supertankers at a time and a couple of smaller LNG tankers, too.
It may very well happen that renewable energy sources will accelerate. If so, a transition from natural gas electricity plants will take place and demand for LNG may plummet, simply because solar and wind projects produce electricity at less cost than does natural gas.
Opening a new LNG export plant in 2030 may put the Philadelphia project behind the curve, not ahead of the curve. Cheniere was ahead of the curve in 2016 and its value has skyrocketed. That might not be so for the not yet started Philadelphia LNG project. What happens if the LNG company borrows billions to build the plant and when opened the price paid for LNG on the international marketplace is too low to allow the company to ever turn a profit?
But the political narrative does not always follow the economic narrative. What is true for the gullible among us might not be true in the real world. Build too many homes before the infrastructure is updated to handle them all and you get flooding during storms, potable water shortages during holidays, traffic jams during daily drives and frustration in the populace.
Ray W, says
Thank you, Mr. Tristam, for Mr. Viereck’s Hegelian take on Buckley’s political philosophy, a la 1951. Half of the world’s Hegelian community applauds you.