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Weather: Showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 80s. Lows in the lower 70s. Chance of rain near 100 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: Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris’s lawsuit against Palm Coast and Council member Charles Gambaro is scheduled for a hearing before Circuit Judge Chris France at 1:30 p.m. in Courtroom 403 at the Flagler County courthouse. 60 minutes have been reserved for the two sides’ arguments. See:
- Palm Coast Mayor Norris Sues Palm Coast, Seeking Councilman Gambaro Booted and Special Election Held
- Answering Lawsuit, Palm Coast Accuses Mayor Norris of Frivolously Weaponizing Court Against Gambaro’s Legitimacy
- Palm Coast Council’s Charles Gambaro Calls Norris Lawsuit Against Him ‘Frivolous’ and Mayor’s Conduct an ‘Abdication’
- Mayor Mike Norris’s Lawsuit Against Palm Coast Has Merit. And Limits.
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.
Notably: While staying at a guest house at the edge of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in the summer of 2019, Theodore Ell and his wife Caitlin Bell, then Australia’s deputy ambassador to Lebanon, stole–kidnapped–a kitten that belonged to the guest house. They guessed, on zero evidence, that in Ell’s words, “this dust-covered, malnourished and terribly thirsty creature belonged to no one here and must have lost her mother,” that she “posed some irritation” to the owners since the owner’s daughter had once “cringed and sidestepped her” (as I do about a dozen times a day when any of my four cats insist on wrong-footing me on the stairs) and that, obviously, left there, the cat “must soon die.” So they “successfully smuggled her away.” If she belonged to no one, why that elaborate scheme to steal her? Why not ask the owners if they wished to be rid of the cat? Because grave-robbers and art thieves from the crusades to Napoleon to the French and British mandates over these lands shrugged and trampled likewise when they raided local property, veiling larceny in virtue while splurging on societies like Lebanon that special gift of Anglo-European societies: supreme condescension. It would have been beneath Ell and Bell to ask the owners what they thought. They didn’t want to risk their loot. And off they took the cat back to Beirut, where they called her “Jazzy,” never once thinking who might be missing her. The scene is described in Ell’s Lebanon Days (Atlantic Books), a book published in Australia last year. Ell, a researcher, teacher and poet, lived in Lebanon from the end of 2018 to the beginning of 2021. His wife Caitlin Bell was posted to Beirut as Australian Ambassador Rebekah Grindlay’s deputy five months before Ell’s arrival. We can do without cat kidnappers.
—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.
July 2025
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Peps Art Walk Near Beachfront Grille
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
“Save Lebanon! It’s the only country with real hummus!”
–A slogan during the revolution of 2019, cited in Theodore Ell, Lebanon Days (2024).
Dennis C Rathsam says
FUNNY WE DIDNT HERE A PEEP OUT OF PIERRE WHEN BIDEN RAISED THE DEBT!!!!!
Pogo says
@…every day boss
https://theanimalrescuesite.com/
…all over the world.
— John Coffey, The Green Mile
laurel says
How does anyone defend this?
Ray W, says
Thank you, Dennis C. Rathsam, for commenting on the issue of the federal debt.
I went to a Treasury department site that lists historical federal debt levels, by fiscal year, which ends on September 30th each year.
On September 30, 2016, more than three months before President Trump took office for the first time, the total federal debt was $19,573,444,713,936.79.
On September 30, 2017, the total federal debt was $20,244,916,053.79, a rise of just over $671 billion.
Four years later, the total federal debt was $28,428,918,570,048.51.
In those four years, including the first three-and-a-half years of the first Trump administration, saw a more than $8 trillion rise in the level of the federal debt.
As the 2024-2025 fiscal year has not yet ended, the most recent complete debt data on the historical data site is through September 30, 2024. In the 36 months of data from the latter part of the first Trump administration to the end of fiscal year 2024, the federal debt rose another roughly $7 trillion to $35,464,673,929,171.69.
A number of publications reported recently that the federal debt just crossed the $37 trillion mark; it is continuing to rise.
FlaglerLive readers, make of this what you will.
Me?
I take the same position that I always take on this issue.
When Congress passes spending legislation, the executive branch must spend the money, as Congress controls the federal purse. How the executive spends the money is subject to discretion, but it must be spent. If the executive doesn’t want to spend some or all the money, it must ask Congress for permission to not spend the money.
How the Fed reacts to the state of the economy also has an impact of the debt.
But no one should make the mistake of claiming that presidents are the only persons who have any say over the debt. Congress, too, has a say. The Fed, too, has a say.
For example, the original spending legislation passed by Congress that was signed into law by President Trump in March 2020 did not mandate issuance of all of the $2 trillion all at once. Some of the money was to be disbursed over a period of years. My understanding of this first bill is that it spread out the spending of some of the funds over a six-year period. One of the bills passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden spread out the spending of some of the funds over a 10-year period.
If this is true, then some of the money approved by Congress in 2020 will still be spent during this fiscal year.
No matter what, though, the federal debt has been rising each and every year for the past 45 years or so, excepting two years during the second Clinton administration, when the economy was balanced enough to produce a surplus.
Ray W, says
For the tenth week in a row, Baker-Hughes, an energy services firm, reports a drop in the total number of oil and gas drilling rigs in operation across the U.S. Eight fewer rigs are in operation today when compared to last week’s number. The 539 rigs in operation reflect a drop of 46 operating rigs for the calendar year.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
American energy extractors have been cutting back on their energy exploration efforts for some time now, i.e., they are not drilling, baby, drilling. The all-time record for the weekly average amount of oil extracted by American energy companies was set in December 2024. Output hasn’t dropped by much since then, but it has dropped.
President Trump can sign all the executive orders he wants, and it won’t prompt exploration for oil and gas in the U.S. unless the energy companies think it is in their financial best interest to drill. Right now, it seems it isn’t in the energy companies’ financial best interest to drill.
Ray W, says
A FlaglerLive commenter recently expressed his opinion that the Fed reducing the lending rate to 1% would result in immense savings on our federal debt over the long term. I argued that the bond market sets the lending rate for Treasuries, based on perception of risk, so the Fed reducing its lending rate to 1% might actually add money to the debt over the long-term.
USA TODAY just published an interesting article about both sides of that premise.
Here are some bullet points from the article:
– Citing to two economists, the reporter wrote:
“The Fed is an independent agency and its job is not to reduce interest rates to make borrowing cheaper for the federal government. … Under its two congressional mandates, the central bank reduces rates to lower borrowing costs for Americans and bolster a sluggish economy. It hikes rates or keeps them higher to head off inflation.”
– “In testimony before Congress in late June, Powell agreed the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, now at 2.3%, has dropped closer to its 2% goal. But he said Trump’s tariffs are expected to spark a ‘meaningful increase in inflation’ in coming months and officials want to wait and see how that plays out before reducing rates again.”
– President Trump recently told a television audience that $9 trillion of the Federal debt must be refinanced by the end of this year.
– According to the reporter, “[t]he Fed’s benchmark interest rate is a short-term rate and so it directly affects short-term assets such as Treasury bills with terms up to a year.
– “… [O]nly 20% of the Treasury’s outstanding debt is in short-term securities, though almost all new debt is short-term because long-term rates are high.”
– “More than half the debt is in 2- to 10-year Treasury bonds, … and the rest is in longer term securities of up to 30 years, floating rate bonds and other assets.”
– “‘If the market decides the Fed is cutting too much’ to satisfy Trump or lower borrowing costs for the U.S. Treasury, investors likely would worry about a future inflation spike, causing them to demand higher rates to lend the government money. … Otherwise, … inflation could erode the value of their bonds. … In that case, (an economist told the reporter), ‘you may see long term rates rise’ even though the Fed is reducing its short-term rate.”
– Another economist told the reporter that in the near term the U.S. Treasury might benefit from a reduction in the Fed’s lending rate, but in the long-term it “would probably cost money.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
With a 45-year of steadily rising federal debt due to both parties kicking the debt can down the road, I submit to FlaglerLive readers that there is no short-term answer to the $37 trillion debt; it is all a long-term issue. If that is so, then the better argument among the two arguments is to refrain from engaging in short-term remedies that sound good to the ear but will likely cost more money in the long run.
Ray W, says
I accept that the below-described story reflects a short-term and likely volatile report, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its monthly U.S. job openings report, this time for the month of May.
First, some background.
Numerous economists argue that the ideal ratio between unfilled posted job openings and the number of unemployed is a range of 1.0 to 1.2 jobs per unemployed laborer.
In 2022, the ratio of unfilled posted job openings to unemployed laborer reached a record high of 2.0 to 1, which is considered a very unhealthy ratio. It slowly trended down over the past three years into an economically healthier ratio.
According to the BLS report, wrote a Bloomberg reporter, the number of unfilled posted job openings “unexpectedly” rose by 374,000 jobs to a total of 7.77 million, with the rise in job openings concentrated in the leisure and hospitality sector. The ration of unfilled posted job opening per unemployed laborer rose to 1.1 to 1.
Two Wells Fargo & Co. economists issued an investor note, in which they wrote:
“Despite the headline beat, we suspect underlying demand for new workers continues to recede amid growing signs of consumer spending fatigue, which should help to offset the upward pressure on inflation stemming from tariffs in the coming months.”
Layoffs for the month fell and new hires declined for the month. The number of quits rose slightly.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Again, a one-month report is too volatile a report on which to base an opinion. But the number has been slowly trending down for about three years, which might explain why the reporter described the rise as “unexpected.” If next month also sees a significant rise in unfilled posted job openings, a discernable trend might come to light.
Ray W, says
A publication called Seeking Alpha reports that initial registration figures for new Tesla vehicles in various European nations for the month of June are being reported.
In Denmark, June Tesla registrations totaled 1,282 units, down 61.75% year-over-year.
In Sweden, June Tesla registrations fell 64.4% from last year’s June registrations.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
Barron’s released an article devoted to June EV sales by Chinese manufacturers.
BYD delivered 377,628 units, with 206,884 being BEVs. The rest were various forms of hybrid EVs. Last June, BYD delivered 340,211 EVs of all types, with 145,179 being BEVs.
NIO delivered 24,295 units in June, up from 21,209 in June 2024.
XPeng delivered 34,611 units in June, up from 10,668 in June 2024.
Li Auto delivered 36,279 units in June, down from 47,774 in June 2024.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
China is locked in a brutal price war among carmakers as each manufacturer attempts to take market share from the others.
I repeatedly comment on the similarity of the Chinese car marketplace of today and the American car marketplace of 100 years ago when the Model T entirely remade the industry.
I have read recent stories listing how many carmakers currently sell cars in China. One of the more recent stores tells of 129 different Chines carmakers, not counting American, European, Japanese and Korean legacy automakers, still operational in an industry that is projected to build 31 million passenger vehicles and light trucks this year. Many observers say that within five years the number of companies still making cars may be as few as seven, though others reason on 10 or so still being in existence by 2030.