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Weather: Patchy fog in the morning. Sunny. Visibility one quarter mile or less at times in the morning. Highs in the upper 70s. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph.
Thursday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the lower 50s. South winds around 5 mph, becoming west after midnight.
- 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:
The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 South 2nd Street in Flagler Beach. Watch the meeting at the city’s YouTube channel here. Access meeting agenda and materials here. See a list of commission members and their email addresses here.
Reserve at Haw Creek Joint Workshop: The Bunnell City Commission and the Bunnell planning board hold a joint workshop at 6 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell, to discuss the Reserve at Haw Creek’s Planned Unit Development criteria and development agreement. The Reserve is a planned 8,000-home development to the west and south of the city. See the back-up documentation here. See: “Bunnell Board Tells City Commission: Shrink Haw Creek Reserve Mega Development By 2,500 Homes.”
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Central Park, from noon to 2 p.m. in Central Park in Town Center, 975 Central Ave. Join Bill Wells, Bob Rupp and other members of the Palm Coast Model Yacht Club, watch them race or join the races with your own model yacht. No dues to join the club, which meets at the pond in Central Park every Thursday.
Evenings at Whitney Lecture Series hosted by the University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience at 6 p.m. (Note the new time.) Tonight: Dr. Leonid Moroz: The emergence of animals, brains, and minds exemplifies the most transformative events, shaping our planet. These are also major transitions crucial not only for understanding fundamental biological processes but also for the search for complex extraterrestrial life. If Earth’s history were to repeat, would animals and minds evolve again? By integrating recent interdisciplinary advances in biology and earth sciences, Prof. Leonid Moroz will discuss and outline conditions that led to alternative ‘designs’ of animal complexities and ask why it took so long and what triggered such outcomes. This free lecture will be presented in person at the UF Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium, 9505 Ocean Shore Boulevard, in St. Augustine. Those interested also have the option of registering to watch via Zoom live the night of the lecture. Go here to register for this month’s lecture. See previous lectures here.
The Palm Coast Democratic Club holds its monthly meeting at noon at the Flagler Democratic Party Headquarters in City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214, Palm Coast. This gathering is open to the public at no charge. No advance arrangements are necessary. Call (386) 283-4883 for best directions or (561)-235-2065 for more information. The club holds a recap meeting at 6:15 p.m.
‘The Drowsy Chaperone,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, $35. When wealthy widow, Mrs. Tottenham, hosts the wedding of the year, she gets a lot more than a write-up in the society pages. This magical piece of meta-theatre and playful, heartfelt parody of the 1920s musical comedy features a chirpy jazz age score by Tony-winning collaborators. Book here.
Notably: From Statista: “Tariff actions currently in effect and announced by the Trump administration could lower U.S. GDP by up to 0.65 percent, a report by The Tax Foundation has found. This includes new tariffs on China, currently (partly) paused tariffs on Canada and Mexico and tariffs on global imports of steel and aluminium that went into effect today. Also part of the calculation are tariffs on EU goods of 25 percent, announced February 26, and those of the same percentage share on motor vehicles and their parts, scheduled for April 2. All these tariff actions combined could also lower U.S. full-time employment by almost 600,000. For comparison, The Tax Foundation estimates that 2018-2019 trade war tariffs, mostly with China, lowered U.S. GDP by just 0.25 percent and cost around 170,000 full-time jobs (including retaliatory action). The report estimates that tariffs would also lower U.S. after-tax incomes by 1.7-2.2 percent as well as increase costs for consumers. The Chinese trade war tariffs raised in 2018-2019 and those that stayed in place in the following years under the two countries’ agreement already equaled an additional tax on the average American household by $300-$600 in 2023 depending on the calculation, the report says. On the other side of the equation stands an increase of government income of between $229-263 billion from tariffs in 2025 (and slightly more each year after that if they stayed in place). However, compared to all of government revenue, this number would still be in the single digit percent share of the budget.
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American progressivism, which has successfully countered agrarian radicalism, the labor movement, and the feminist movement by enacting selective parts of their program, has now lost almost all trace of its origin in nineteenth-century liberalism. It has rejected the liberal conception of man, which assumed the primacy of rational self-interest, and has installed in its place a therapeutic conception which acknowledges irrational drives and seeks to divert them into socially constructive channels. It has rejected the stereotype of economic man and has attempted to bring the “whole man” under social control. Instead of regulating the conditions of work alone, it now regulates private life as well, organizing leisure time on scientific principles of social and personal hygiene. It has exposed the innermost secrets of the psyche to medical scrutiny and has thus encouraged habits of anxious self-scrutiny, superficially reminiscent of religious introspection but rooted in anxiety rather than a guilty conscience— a narcissistic rather than a compulsive or hysterical type of personality.
–From Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (1979).
Pogo says
@More is more
https://www.google.com/search?q=Christopher+Lasch+The+Culture+of+Narcissism
Also
https://www.google.com/search?q=Christopher+Lasch
Do something that matters
https://joshweil.us/
Jim says
Well, less than two months into the Trump fiasco and the economy has gone from exiting inflation, interest rates dropping and the stock market climbing into “the dumbest trade war in history” according to many financial experts. The stock market is down 7% as I write this and I have no doubt it’s going to drop a lot farther. But, hey, Trump says we may “feel a little pain” as he makes America great again so let’s all buckle up for the ride and follow the dear leader over the cliff (right?)!
I see now the administration is saying all this is Biden’s fault (JimboXYZ will be ecstatic to hear that!). Why it’s Biden’s fault is hard to discern but we all know factual information just gets in the way of how we feel (right?).
This may lead to some manufacturing jobs coming back to the USA but anyone who thinks that’s going to happen anytime soon doesn’t know a thing about manufacturing. You have to acquire a location, buildings, equipment, office and work staff (might need to train them), establish vendors, find buyers and get contracts and, at some point, put out a product that’s at least as good as what is currently available at a reasonable price. And there is the negotiating with local governments for favorable tax treatment and other subsidies that won’t happen quickly. For many products, we’re talking years. I have personal experience with restarting facilities that have been dormant and it takes just as long to do that as install and prove out existing equipment. Our current path is downward and I will not be surprised if we end up in a full blown recession.
So for all you Trumpers out there, FAFO! It usually takes longer for the government to wreck things but give Trump credit – we’re on an Elon rocket ride to the bottom. I hope each and every one of you enjoy the trip.
Oh, last note: Be sure to vote for Randy Fine on April Fool’s Day. Such an appropriate time for an election! Let Trump know you support him all the way to the bottom. And give Randy the platform he deserves – after all he lives in this district (???) and he’s just wearing all of us out with his efforts to meet with us voters (???) and let us know he understands this district’s needs (???). What a great representative he’ll make.
Ray W, says
Thank you, Mr. Tristam, for Christopher Lasch’s description of “anxious” man.
Being anxious, per Merriam-Webster is “characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some contingency: worried”
In response to an EU tariff placed on U.S. alcohol products, Trump just posted on Truth Social:
“The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky. … If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES. This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Trump presents as an increasingly anxious person.
I have been holding off on commenting about Trump’s economic policies because I have long professed a belief that short-term economic reports are too volatile in nature to offer much insight. Year-over-year economic reports are among the several relied on by the Fed in its decision-making. We just don’t have those yet.
But Trump’s raising of the question of the reason for the formation of the E.U. remains.
I have read a significant number of Churchill biographies. All devoted some typeface to Churchill’s desire to form some sort of European economic group, dating from prior to WWII.
So, I typed “history of the European Union” into my search engine.
It seems that as early as 1948, the expressed reason for a European economic bloc was to make a European war “unthinkable and materially impossible.” Quite the lofty goal.
A number of early efforts to unify economic sectors took place as early as 1950. A union of the European steel and coal community was formed in 1951. A six-member European Union formed in 1993.
Does preventing a future European war just after the disaster of WWII give motive to forming intra-European economic bonds? What does that do to Trump’s reasoning, if it can be called reasoning? Is hysterical a better description of his thinking?
I have asserted this many times and will likely to continue to assert this:
If one has to lie, or even exaggerate, or even bluster, or even threaten, to support a point, can it be argued that the point never was valid? A truthful point should be able to stand on its own merits.
I am not an economist. I am only a curious student.
If over decades, the entire alcohol-based retail industry of the U.S., driven by capitalist self-interest, has settled into a competitive pricing equilibrium between American and international alcohol products, will a 200% tariff drive European products out of American shopping carts, not by ideology but by simple individual or family economic choice?
Do American producers, plus non-EU producers, have the current reserve capacity to instantly increase production sufficient to replace these most common of EU-nation products? Will supply and demand concepts drive up prices if they can’t?
How long does it take to ramp up production of American wines? American liquors? American champagne?
I don’t know these things. But I suspect that aging of whiskeys in barrels takes years. Tripling the pricing Scottish liquor overnight, a product that takes years to age in barrels, may make American liquor more expensive, corporate greed being what it is. Remember, corporate filings by America’s largest egg producer and distributor show that after the outbreak of the avian flu, the company’s profits rose by 750% over its profits from the year before the outbreak.
Finally, does any FlaglerLive reader believe that the more than 500 million EU citizens are as gullibly stupid as are Trump devotees? Does anyone think that American tariffs of such enormity will drive Europeans to buy more American products? Or will European consumers vote with their own individual and family pocketbooks and choose to buy from other markets? Will American producers lose market share in Europe?
What is happening, at least in part, to Tesla products in Europe after Musk met with leaders of Germany’s AfP?
Global embarrassment says
Haha domestic terror strikes again transitioning to a depression. People have to go out and earn their right to survive? Looking forward to the total collapse .
Endless dark money says
How much is it gonna cost to turn the government agencies back on? Haha way more than the moron saved…..look out for new scams as consumer protection agency has been eliminated.
Sherry says
POLITICO- By Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney
03/13/2025 12:35 PM EDT
Updated: 03/13/2025 12:49 PM EDT
A federal judge on Thursday ordered federal agencies to rehire tens of thousands of probationary employees who were fired amid President Donald Trump’s turbulent effort to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup described the mass firings as a “sham” strategy by the government’s central human resources office to sidestep legal requirements for reducing the federal workforce.
Alsup, a San Francisco-based appointee of President Bill Clinton, ordered the Defense, Treasury, Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs departments to “immediately” offer all fired probationary employees their jobs back. The Office of Personnel Management, the judge said, had made an “unlawful” decision to terminate them.
The order is one of the most far-reaching rejections of the Trump administration’s effort to slash the bureaucracy and is almost certain to be appealed.
Alsup also lashed out at the Justice Department over its handling of the case, saying he believes that Trump administration lawyers were hiding the facts about who directed the mass firings.
“You will not bring the people in here to be cross-examined. You’re afraid to do so because you know cross examination would reveal the truth,” the judge said to a DOJ attorney during a hearing Thursday. “I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth. … I’m tired of seeing you stonewall on trying to get at the truth.”
Alsup also said the administration attempted to circumvent federal laws on reducing the workforce by attributing the firings to “performance” when that was not in fact the case. The judge called the move “a gimmick.”
“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said.
Endless dark money says
That’s right people will die but that’s a sacrifice they are willing to make. They want to obsess over people genitals why they steal your money and eliminate programs that help people. Anything for a buck including watching children starve, it’s very “Christian”of them. Forced collapse should be entertaining at least!
Sherry says
OK. . . a quick calculation of our stock market indicators show:
The DOW closed at 43,487 on Jan. 20th. . . Today it is currently at 40,864 = Over a 6% LOSS
The Nasdaq closed at 19, 630 on Jan. 20th. . . Today it is currently at 17,349 = Over n 11% LOSS
How are your retirement plans doing?
Prices going up and nest eggs shrinking. . . How’s that working for ya?
Ed P says
A couple concepts to remember.
The stock market is not main st, it is wall st.
The market responds to fear and greed.
When the market dips, buying opportunities appear.
If you don’t panic and sell, you probably will make money-remember 2008?
The only sure thing is the market will go up or go down.
And to everyone bemoaning tariffs, remember every country wants and needs access to the US economy. Choppy waters favor strong swimmers, and Trump is a shark.
I trust common sense will prevail and the temperature will bring the boiling pot to a simmer. These are truly uncharted waters. No one can possibly know the outcome.
Batman says
Yes, Ed P. Trump is a shark.
Trust your common sense… get out of the water… stop swimming.