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Weather: Sunny. Highs in the lower 80s. East winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph. Wednesday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the upper 60s. East winds 10 to 15 mph.
- 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.
Future of Flagler Forum 2024, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Atlantic Ballroom of Hammock Beach Resort, 200 Ocean Crest Dr, Palm Coast. Flagler County Administrator Heidi Petito, Flagler Schools Superintendent LaShakia Moore, Palm Coast Interim City Manager Lauren Johnston, Bunnell City Manager Alvin Jackson, and Flagler Beach City Manager Dale Martin present insights on Flagler County’s municipality’s future economic growth plans. The Future of Flagler Forum is hosted by the Palm Coast Flagler Chamber of Commerce. It serves as a platform for dialogue among community leaders, business professionals, and residents. Presentations will focus on emerging trends, innovative ideas, and strategic initiatives driving the region’s growth and progress.
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]
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.
The Halloween Hall of Terror is back at Palm Coast Fire Station 21, 9 Corporate Drive in Palm Coast. Monday, Oct. 30 and Tuesday, Oct.31 from 7 to 10 p.m. This year’s event promises to be better than ever with a ‘Greatest Slashers’ theme, incorporating some of the horror genres biggest icons of the past 50 years. And new for 2024, visitors can indulge in a variety of delicious offerings from food trucks as they await their turn to tour the spine-chilling haunted house. Parking is available in the lot adjacent to the firehouse on corporate drive, with overflow parking available in the Kohl’s parking lot. This year, the City of Palm Coast is offering a limited number of ‘RIP’ fast pass tickets again, giving winners front-of-the-line access. To enter, follow the City of Palm Coast’s Facebook page during the week of October 21-25 and answer daily horror film trivia questions. Winners will be announced each day, so don’t miss your chance to skip the line and dive straight into the horror. Last year’s Hall of Terror set a new attendance record with nearly 5,000 visitors over the two-day span, and this year is expected to draw an even larger crowd. As always, the event is free and open to all ages, though adult supervision is recommended for attendees under 13. Please note that the event features strobe lights, fog, and other special effects. Those with epilepsy or sensory sensitivities are invited to join us for a special sensory-friendly walkthrough of the Hall of Terror from 6-7pm on both nights of the event.
Notably: The anti-DEI shock-troopers like the Ruffos and Vances of magaworld don’t generally pronounce about the Paralympics, or about sports like blind soccer, that mind-bending wonder now played in half the world that started in 1920s Spain, long before the era of inclusion, grew in Brazil, where the first national championship was held in 1974 (the year West Germany won the regular World Cup in Munich), and the first international championship was held in Barcelona in 1997. Spain won. Blind soccer made its Paralympic debut in 2004 in Athens. Brazil won. On penalties. Five players to a side. A ball that rattles, so the players can hear it. A field of play like hockey’s, with walls all around: no outs except at the back line, or if the ball is lofted above the walls. The crowds–a sold-out crowd at the early September match in Paris, above–are usually absorbed in plan, and entirely silent, so the players can hear the ball, each other, and assistance from sidelines, which is allowed. You’d never know they are blind. It’s a tribute to the senses, to ingenuity, to that willful humanity, to that line from Bryson: “we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. As far as we can tell, we are the best there is. We may be all there is. It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.” In blind soccer of course, is all about supreme achievement. It is a lift, a hope, an incalculable goal before the rattling goal is ever touched.
—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.
Nar-Anon Family Group
Flagler County Beekeepers Association Meeting
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
NAACP Flagler Branch General Membership Meeting
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
“… the divine and felonious nature of the human being—a species of organism that is capable of unpicking the deepest secrets of the heavens while at the same time pounding into extinction, for no purpose at all, a creature that never did us any harm and wasn’t even remotely capable of understanding what we were doing to it as we did it.”
—From Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003).
Ray W, says
CNN reports on today’s quarterly GDP Commerce Department report which unveiled 2.8 percent growth. This is the second of four major economic releases scheduled for the week.
“The US economy seems to have pulled off a remarkable and historic achievement.
“Gross domestic product, which measures all the goods and services produced in the economy, expanded at an annualized rate of 2.8% in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That’s a slightly weaker pace than the second quarter’s 3% rate and above the 2.6% rate economists projected in a FactSet poll. GDP is adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation.
“As the US economy continued to expand from July through September, inflation drifted lower toward the Federal Reserve’s 2% target during that same period, the report showed. Several economists tell CNN that the economy has finally pulled off an exceptionally rare achievement known as a soft landing, a scenario in which inflation is tamed without a recession.
“‘I think we should declare a soft landing now,’ said James Bullard, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, in an interview with CNN earlier this month.”
Make of this what you will. Me? Some FlaglerLive commenters have been claiming for the more than three years that I have been more diligently reading Mr. Tristam’s work that the American economy has been destroyed. Some still make that claim. I have been commenting over the same time frame that something unusual has been happening to our national economy.
My argument eventually coalesced into the idea that the $5.9 trillion in unfunded stimulus money that had been approved by both presidents was an unprecedented level of emergency spending; it was so much more than had ever before injected into a recessionary economy that no validated model existed from which economists could predict the outcome of all the spending.
I did not know at the time that the Fed was also in the process of injecting another $3 trillion in the credit marketplace. I knew that the Fed had begun lowering the lending rate, eventually to as low as 0%. Banks could borrow money from the Fed for free and lend it out to consumers at low interest rates.
I had read about but did not fully understand that making that much additional credit available to lenders at zero percent would allow banks to profit from 30-year fixed mortgage rates as low as 2.7%. I did not expect in the beginning that large quantities of cheap money would create such a frenzy in the homeowner’s marketplace that all over the country, including in Flagler County, average home prices would significantly rise. So many people wanted homes with low fixed mortgage payments that they began competing with other homebuyers in bidding up sales prices, often far above initial asking prices.
Millions of homeowners sold their homes at unexpected profits and bought newer and/or bigger homes with lower monthly fixed payments, and they then used both the sale profits and the additional discretionary spending funds to remodel their new homes into dream homes.
I acknowledged early in my comments that many economists were predicting recession if that much money ($5.9 trillion) was thrown at the problem. Injecting that much money would overheat the economy, the theory went. The Fed, in order to control the overheating economy, would then have to raise lending rates in an effort to cool the labor market side of the equation. Hiring would then fall. Unemployment rates would then skyrocket. The economy would then ricochet into recession. This was often called a “hard landing.” That was the standard model for economists, culled from studying prior recessions.
As time went by, the economy kept rebounding from the 2020 pandemic-caused recession. Positive report followed positive report. Economist after economist shifted from predicting a hard landing to hoping for a soft landing. More and more positive economic news then began piling on more and more positive economic news.
Today, a former president of a regional Fed bank says it is time to declare a “soft landing.” To him, there is no sign of recession in the near term. To him, the economic miracle has occurred. We haven’t been destroyed. The American economy is the envy of the world. We are better off economically than we were four years ago.
Former President Trump deserves plaudits for his role in the crisis. President Biden deserves plaudits for his role in the crisis. Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Powell deserves plaudits for his role in the crisis. The American people deserve plaudits for their role in the crisis.
Consumer spending accounts for 70% of total economic output. This is why immigrants are so important to us all. They work. They earn money. They spend what they earn. The famed “economic multiplier” means that every dollar an immigrant spends in his or her local economy turns into an economically expected three to seven dollars more dollars, depending on whether the money stays in the community or is sent out of the community.
When a tourist comes to Flagler County for a weekend, that $200 or so each visitor spends per day on average turns into between $600 and $1400 more dollars in the local community, depending on what the money is spent on. If they buy gas, only a small part of the money stays here; most leaves the community and goes to the oil industry. If they play golf, more of that money stays here to churn and churn in the local economy. The local economy grows. The national economy grows. The local economy creates more jobs. The national economy creates more jobs.
Immigrants are not trash. They are economic gold.
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” Nietzsche.
Ray W, says
Here’s the Washington Post’s take on the Commerce Department’s news:
“The U.S. economy continued its expansion in the third quarter, growing at a slightly slower annualized rate of 2.8 percent and reinforcing a rosy lens of the economy days before the election. …
“‘The U.S. economy is now in a very good spot and is characterized by full employment, price stability and strong productivity gains,’ said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. Even with the gradual slowdown, the U.S. economy is still ‘firing on all cylinders.’ …
“‘We did not expect growth to be this strong this year,’ said Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust. ‘It really is a testament to consumer spending and to the fact that U.S. firms have been incredibly and innovative in dealing with the challenges of higher interest rates and labor costs.’ …
“By many accounts, the economy is bustling: Companies are hiring, wages are rising, and Americans are spending heartily. Quarterly GDP growth during Joe Biden’s presidency have averaged 3.2 percent. That’s compared with 2.5 percent annualized growth in the first three years of Trump’s presidency, before pandemic-related disruptions.
“However, there are still pockets of softness. A dip in housing investments, a slowdown in inventory purchases and a rise in imports all dragged down the latest reading. Many economists expect growth to decelerate later this year and into 2025, as state and local governments dial back their spending.”
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
I have commented on two articles about the burgeoning Florida homeowner’s insurance crisis. Both articles used $300,000 homes as the framework for the costs of insurance today in Florida.
Newsweek published the overall average cost of homeowner’s insurance in Florida: According to Insurify, a virtual insurance company, the average 2023 annual premium in Florida was $10,996. No other state has such a high average premium. I checked on the average homeowner’s insurance premium in Georgia. According to moneygeek.com, the average is $2,004.
The reporter wrote:
“The exorbitant costs are forcing Florida homeowners to either self-insure or under-insure because ‘insurance costs are so high and insurance companies have been pulling out of the state.”
Make of this what you will.
Me? More and more, people are going to rethink living in Florida. Some may be deferring their dream of owning a Florida home. Others may be forced out of their long-time homes.
Who knows if today’s insurance rates reflect the true cost of insuring homes in Florida? If Milton had directly hit Madeira Beach and swirled through St. Pete, Tampa, and Orlando, as originally projected, instead of 30 miles south in Sarasota and directly across a relatively sparsely populated region south of Orlando, the costs from storm damage would have been much higher. The 14% rate increase in Citizens’ average premiums that was unanimously approved last June by the Board of Governers may not be the last of such large increases.