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Weather: Mostly sunny. Highs around 80. South winds 5 to 10 mph. Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows in the mid 50s. Southwest 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:
The Flagler County Tourist Development Council meets at 9 a.m. in board chambers at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. See details and agendas here.
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting at 9 a.m., first floor Conference Room, at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The Technical Review Committee (TRC) is a quality control committee that provides technical review of project plans. Staff Liaison is Simone Kenny, 386-313-4067.
The Flagler County Contractor Review Board meets at 5 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Staff liaison is Bo Snowden, Chief Building Official, who may be reached at (386) 313-4027. For agendas and details go here.
The Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.
The Flagler County Industrial Development Authority meets at 2 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell.
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.
Bingo Night at Palm Coast Elks Lodge 2709, 53 Old Kings Road North, Palm Coast. Doors open at 4:30 p.m., first draw at 6 p.m.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County: The AARP Foundation’s Tax Aide provides free tax preparation services at six locations in Palm Coast, Flagler Beach and Flagler County through April 15, but you must make an appointment first and fill out paperwork. To do both, go here.
Notably: How could we not? It was one of the most memorable speeches of any political convention in memory. I keep thinking it was in 1984, but of course it was in 1988 (1984 was Mario Cuomo’s speech), the year Gary Hart’s monkey business blew it for a blow of Rice, the year we were stuck with Mike Dukakis so we could be stuck with the first Bush for four years, and to think that Dukakis is still around: 93 years old. For those 50 minutes from Atlanta as Jackson spoke, it felt as if he would still win, though by then Dukakis had wrapped it up. It was Jackson’s valentine. Twelve years later I got a chance to see him in person at Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Coalition headquarters on Chicago’s South Side, an almost-all-black crowd filling the thousand-seat hall to see Jackson, his congressman-son Jesse Jackson Jr., Hilary Rodham Clinton and Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, soon to be then-Senator Braun, share the stage where Martin Luther King Jr. once stood, but it wasn’t the Jackson of Atlanta. As I recall he was tired that day, going through he motions, it was October 1998, he was stumping for others. Not his limelight. In Atlanta the Times had described his speech as “by turns angry, gentle and deeply personal.” The headline had him rousing Democrats with “a plea for hope,” a call a different Black hopeful president would ride to Grant park in Chicago 20 years later. Not bad. I haven’t checked what the current president has vomited in response to Jackson’s death. Still cleaning up after the Reiner smear and the Obamas tweet.Oh wait: there’s a new one: Jackson, Trump wrote, “had much to do with the Election, without acknowledgment or credit, of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who Jesse could not stand.” There’s really nothing else, nothing better to do, than just play it again, Sam.
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.
April 2026
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
“My Fair Lady,” at Daytona Playhouse
Al-Anon Family Groups
“Godspell,” at the Limelight Theatre
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County
Flagler County Commission Morning Meeting
Beverly Beach Town Commission meeting
Nar-Anon Family Group
For the full calendar, go here.
Mrs. Biggs lived in terror that Jesse Jackson might be elected president.
–From Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country (1985).
Pogo says
@That’s the ticket
…name-dropping about a saintly warrior whose fire was banked, and light died.
And so it goes.
Brynn Newton says
The two most poignant scenes in Grant Park that November night were the sight, when Michelle and the girls had walked away from the adulation, of Barack Obama left all alone on the actual and national stage with the mess he’d been dealt and the tears on the face in the crowd, of Jesse Jackson.
Johnny Tsunami says
*Science* – using 500 years of tracking weather throughout the 4.5-billion-year history of the planet and making strict policy decisions based on that data.
I remember from Al Gore’s 2006 movie “An Inconvenient Truth” that sea levels would rise 20 feet in the “near future.”
The point being this particular science is hard to justify as hard fact when our sample size is incredibly small.
I think they don’t want suffocating and expensive policies to be in place based on the possibility the *science* is accurate.
Pogo says
Laurel says
The maga masters do not want an honest, sincere, smart Christian man to speak truth to power. They need to own the religion, and therefore promote their hate, by using Jesus to rid us of brown people who speak Spanish.
Jesus, I believe, was a brown man who spoke Hebrew.
The blatant lie of wearing a Christian cross, while throwing people in consentration camps (and that’s what they are) is incredibly foul. Kristi Noemi had photo sessions with her holding a rifle, to hunt down immigrants, and other photos with a cross around her neck.
So, Trump will do what he can to stop Talarico.
James Talarico is the real deal.
BillC says
There exists a consensus among scholars that Jesus spoke Aramaic. (Why didn’t Jesus write anything himself?) It wasn’t until 70 CE, after the 2nd destruction of the temple, that the first gospel was written in Greek.
Laurel says
Noem
Ed P says
Rolling back regulations : Pros Cons
Saves taxpayers Possible long term costs
Estimated trillions. Estimated Trillions
Might save $2,400 Probable pollution increases
Per vehicle
Unleashes American Missed economic opportunities
Energy independence/ Clean energy initiatives
Security
Regulatory relief Potential climate damage.
Stimulus for economy
Today, China’s total energy-related emissions are twice that of US. We account for about 14% of the world’s emission. In fact China emits more CO2 than the entire Western Hemisphere.
Other key polluters are Chad, Bangladesh,Pakistan, DR Congo, and India.
To temporarily suspend our draconian regulations for a presidential cycle or two, accelerating our economic growth and solidifying the U.S. position in the world order for future generations, while the world offenders address their emissions, might prove worth the “scientific risk”?
Like it or not. Deny it or not. The reality of all decisions in life have monetary costs and consequences. America first is not evil. Individually, don’t we all endorse family first?
Ray W. says
Hello Ed P.
20 years ago, a storm that almost met the criteria for a hurricane hit the area of the Ft. Lauderdale airport. Lesser-speed winds hit Dade County.
Nearly 100% of FP&L’s customers in South Florida lost power, even though not one power plant went off-line. A post-storm study revealed that the state agency regulating the power company had deregulated the checking and replacement of power poles. FP&L had reduced its efforts to replace aging power poles. Over a hundred thousand rotting poles fell over in the tropical storm force winds. The grid collapsed. Another deregulation had lessened the number of new power poles that had to be held in reserve. Lacking power pole reserves, it took a month to bring in enough power poles for power to be restored.
Just how much lost economic activity was forced onto the more than a million people and businesses who went without power because of deregulation? Just how many families living paycheck to paycheck went without?
I agree with you that much regulation is wasteful and some of it might be draconian in effect. But there exists in this country’s a political lie that all deregulation is wasteful. Please don’t poison your valid argument with exaggeration.
As an aside, there is a nearly 75-year-old Daytona Beach subdivision on the beachside just north of Our Lady of Lourdes that is still an outstanding community of comparatively high value.
The developer wanted to put in homes like those built nearby, homes that flooded then and still flood on occasion to this day. The city commission voted to require better drainage and concrete curbing and sidewalks throughout the subdivision before approving the project. My father led the effort, forever angering the developer, who had to build bigger and better homes to pay for the costs of the regulation. The developer’s son, a child at the time and a lawyer now, carried the hate for years. Then, he got to know my father. They became good friends. I last spoke with him at a recent party for my stepmother.
The subdivision seldom floods to this day. Many of the professional community who want to live beachside stay for decades in the homes.
Pogo says
Ortona Elementary (N Grandview & Flagstone) alum recalls
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sun+Acres+Daytona+Beach+1960s
Ray W. says
I looked up President Reagan’s July 3, 1986 speech given at the reopening after restoration of the Statue of Liberty.
Here is an excerpt:
“The ironworkers of New York and New Jersey who came here to begin restoration work were at first puzzled and a bit put off to see foreign workers, craftsmen from France, arrive. Jean Wiart, the leader of the French workers, said his countrymen understood. After all, he asked, how would Frenchmen feel if Americans showed up to help restore the Eiffel Tower? But as they came to know each other – – these Frenchmen and Americans – – affections grew; and so, too, did perspectives.
“The Americans were reminded that Miss Liberty, like the many millions she’s welcomed to these shores, is of foreign birth, the gifts of workers, farmers, shopkeepers and children who donated hundreds of thousands of francs to send her here. They were the ordinary people of France. This statue came from their pockets and their hearts. The French workers, too, made discoveries. Monsieur Wiart, for example, normally lives in a 150-year-old cottage in a small French town, but for the last year has been riding the subway through Brooklyn. ‘A study in contrasts’, he said – – contrasts indeed. But he has also told the newspapers that he and his countrymen learned something else at Liberty Island. For the first time, they worked in proximity with Americans of Jewish, black, Italian, Irish, Russian, Polish and Indian backgrounds. ‘Fascinating’, he said, ‘to see different ethnic and national types work and live so well together.’ Well, it’s how we like to think of America. And it’s good to know that Miss Liberty is still giving life to the dream of a new world where old antagonisms could be cast aside and people of every nation could live together as one. …”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I wonder whether, in today’s Republican Party, Ronald Reagan could ever have been nominated even once, much less thrice, to the presidential ticket. Today’s republican voter, it seems, long ago left the conservative movement. Then again, the Reagan Republican of the day was no longer an Eisenhower conservative, either.
Is it fair to argue that venom and dishonesty drives today’s Republican Party?
I marvel at the incongruity of an administration hiring many of the worst among us, the most cruel among us, in an effort to deport many of the best among us.
Ray W. says
Recently a commenter of poor credibility opined that a stock index crossing a numerical threshold magically portended a great spurt of growth, as if the index had never before crossed a numerical threshold. The index was on “fire”, he claimed.
A few days later, two Bloomberg reporters delivered an article headlined “Unprecedented “jobless boom” tests limits of economic expansion”. In other words, per the reporters, something is happening today that, economically, has never happened before.
They reported that 2025 GDP annual growth is expected to be 2.7%, yet job growth has plummeted at the same time.
The premise of the story? Only once in modern economic history has a wave of economic prosperity been accompanied by a period of low jobs creation, and that period took place during the years following the 2001 dot.com recession.
To that premise, Oxford Economics chief U.S. economist, Michael Pearce, told the reporters:
“Conditions that led to the jobless recovery in the early 2000s are aligning, such as over hiring, robust productivity growth, technological advancements, and policy uncertainty. … This leaves the economy vulnerable to shocks, because the labor market is the main firewall against a recession.”
Today’s 2025 wave of prosperity accompanied by a period of low jobs creation did not follow a recession. The economy coming into 2025 was comparatively strong. That means that the prosperity of the 2025 economic convergence has never happened before in modern economic experience.
So why could this be happening in this manner?
Productivity gains from increasing use of AI software-driven tools may be driving investor benefits, some say. But Fed Chair Powell recently described a five-year rise in productivity, a gain that started years before the advent of AI technology. Others suggest that the pandemic so disrupted business practices that leaders took the occasion to rewrite and implement new practices.
If the gain in productivity comes from implementation of AI-enabled tools, then the question follows whether productivity growth is centered in too narrow a sector to last. I infer from an analogy raised by an economist to the reporters: Is our economy sitting on a one-legged stool? Is another leg of the stool, the leg of productivity coming from a steadily growing workforce, missing?
Said Dianne Swonk, KPMG chief economist:
“We have never seen anything later in an expansion like we are seeing today, and that’s what makes it so unusual and hard to judge where we are going.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
For five years now, I have argued to FlaglerLive readers that the sheer size of the combined stimulus responses to the pandemic was so big that no economic model in existence could predict how it would all turn out. Nearly every economist argued that a rapid overheating of the economy due to all the spending would be followed by sudden inflation and then a hard crash into recession. Recession never happened. The economy never landed; it glided back to near-normality.
Trump inherited a strong economy and he immediately threatened high tariffs. I commented to the FlaglerLive community that no one had proposed such high tariff rates since the Great Depression. No economic model existed that could guide the economists. We simply could not know what was coming.
Here we are. A prosperous 2025, with a large share of that prosperity benefitting a small share of the populace paired with 181,000 jobs created, down from the 2.2 million jobs created in 2024. I argue that we still don’t know what is happening. Economists struggle to define it.
Here is my question to you all:
Can economic prosperity coming from technological innovation designed to more efficiently produce goods in a narrow sector of the economy lead to sustainable long-term growth?
I do not claim to know the answer, but the description of a one-legged stool unsettles me.
Skibum says
The words “democrat hoax” is really something that the convicted felon con man should ONLY say in front of a mirror. Those words perfectly illustrate the documented instances when the things he has a history of spouting out of his pie hole are more reflective of HIS childishness, HIS immaturity, HIS pettiness, HIS emotional instability, HIS vengefulness.
Despite his very fragile psyche and grandiose personality, his penchant for lying about anything and everything, no matter how insignificant is unmatched. And for important issues, it is head-scratching how his maga mush brains continue to overlook his continuous, epic lies, not calling him out on ANY of them, but supporting him anyway. So I have a few questions for his maga faithful.
Don the Con promised you a DOGE refund check, remember that? Where, oh where is YOUR refund check?
Don the Con promised you a maximum credit card APR rate of 10%, remember that? What are you paying for interest rates on YOUR credit cards?
Don the Con promised you that he would lower prescription medicines “by 1,500 %” he said, which is mathematically impossible because the drug manufacturers would be paying you to take their meds! But remember that? How much money are drug companies paying YOU for the privilege of taking their prescription meds?
Don the Con promised he would be sending you a “tariff check”, remember that? Where is YOUR tariff check?
Don the Con promised that Americans would be paying under $2 a gallon for gas, remember that? How much are YOU paying per gallon for gas?
Don the Con promised that he would lower the costs of groceries, you know that “old fashioned” word he has no concept about, but remember that? When you go to the store, can you name even one category of groceries that is less expensive now compared to a year ago when he made that promise?
Everything Don the Con promised to the maga faithful were lies, part of his historic CON JOB on the American public, all while gifting his billionaire friends humongous tax breaks which are paid for by relieving average Americans of money in our pockets! And behind closed doors Don the Con laughs at how gullible, how stupid, how ignorant his supporters are… because he loves the uneducated, the easily deluded, the ones just like yourselves who sit there with baited breath, waiting and waiting and waiting for the rewards and benefits a con man promised you… that will never come. But one thing he promised has already come for the American public… his retribution.
There’s a sucker born every minute. So sad, but true.
Ray W. says
According to a Bloomberg article, apparently international stocks are up on average about 8% since January 1, 2026, while the S&P 500 is down 1%, the widest gap between the two measuring tools since 1995, and the dollar has lost a significant chunk of its value compared to a basket of foreign currencies.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
News reports have it that much of the value of the S&P 500 is propped up by a few companies. The rest are languishing.
Are we seeing a wider impact of an economy wobbling like a one-legged stool?
Can a U.S. economy prosper in tandem with the a greater prospering of an international economy?
Laurel says
The rest of the world, like Canada, are making new connections and moving on without us.
Ray W. says
Reuters published a story about energy representatives from 38 nations attending a Paris-hosted conference.
A reporter interviewed Austria’s State Secretary for Energy, Elisabeth Zahetner.
She talked about Austria’s commitment to add domestic renewable sources of energy. To her, domestically installed renewables offer two advantages. They provide power at lower costs and each addition of domestic renewable energy capacity offers a new measure of energy independence from foreign governments.
Regarding Austria’s former energy reliance on Russian natural gas, she said:
“… [W]e have learned our lesson, so we don’t want to be dependent on anyone.”
As for Austria’s position on natural gas imports, she said that her country seeks to diversify imports to include more natural gas from African producers and from Romanian sources in an effort to wean away from American producers, stating:
“Since the beginning of last year, we do not import any Russian natural gas, but we now face the same topic with LNG. And if more than 40% of Europe’s LNG imports are coming only from the US, we have to ask ourselves if we have not exchanged one dependency for another.”
She also asserted:
“The U.S. is not predictable in these times, so for Austria we are looking closely to ensure we have LNG from different sources.”
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
A few weeks after each FOMC meeting, minutes of the discussion are released, sans names.
NBC NEWS reports that the meeting minutes reveal that “several” of the attendees expressed a belief that it “could be appropriate” to raise lending rates, due to persistent inflation reports significantly above the target rate of 2%.
Others believed the appropriate position was to hold rates steady.
Others favored a reduction of lending rates, should inflation data continue to decline.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Between the FOMC board and the 12 regional Fed presidents, 19 economists and policymakers attend each FOMC meeting. 12 attendees hold voting powers. Without knowing from the meeting minutes who said what, no one outside the room knows whatever trends may be emerging. Seven votes carries the day.
Ray W. says
Interesting Engineering reports that seven EV carmakers are nearing introduction of sodium-ion batteries. CATL, the world’s biggest EV battery maker, as I previously noted, says its sodium-ion battery is expected to scale costs down to $10 per kilowatt-hour of energy storage capacity.
According to a recent U.S. Department of Energy study, in 2008, international manufacturing cost for EV batteries was on average $1,400 per kilowatt-hour of energy storage capacity. By 2023, that average production cost had dropped to $139 per kilowatt-hour of energy storage capacity.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Since I am poor at snark, but persistent, I could say that if I were our president, I would be claiming that average battery prices were down 600%, or 800%, or even more. But I am not our president.
Who knows how rapidly sodium-ion batteries will gain market share, but there is every rational reason to believe that average EV battery manufacturing costs will continue to rapidly drop.