Category: Florida

A drag show in Ocala, Florida

by philg

The Righteous accuse Florida of being deficient in drag shows, especially drag story time for toddlers at the public libraries. Ocala, Florida, however, is home to a permanent drag show: the pet-friendly Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing.

Here’s Wile E. Coyote’s dragster, which used “a rocket system from the NASA lunar program” and accelerated from 0-140 mph in one second. Four seconds and 352 mph in the quarter mile.

It seems that Don Garlits got his start in the 1950s in Tampa, Florida and was successful in 1957 with Swamp Rat I (8.23 seconds in the quarter mile):

Nerds will appreciate the engine room, which includes some cutaways:

For aviation enthusiasts, one of the best engines in the museum is a 2000 hp Allison V-12 from a P-40 fighter plane, purchased after WWII for $50.

The turbine engine in this 1993 Pontiac might be from an aircraft, but unfortunately few details are provided:

An adjacent building houses antique cars. Here’s an interesting example of how durable automotive paint is: a 1936 Ford with 72,000 miles (driven only during summers on Cape Cod; maybe for 25-35 years?) that has never needed repainting.

Adolf Hitler’s legacy is honored with a 1950 VW bug and a 1974 Karman Ghia:

We’re informed that our economy is inflation-free, so take $375 down to the local car dealer and ask to drive away in a new car:

After the museum, take a walk or bike ride on the 110-mile Cross Florida Greenway, built on the corpse of a Spanish canal idea from 1567 that was finally killed by Richard Nixon in 1971 partly due to efforts by Marjorie Harris Carr. To traverse the entire 110-mile trail requires a mountain bike, I think, because only about 35 miles is paved. The Florida Coast-to-Coast Trail (250 miles and 88 percent complete) is better-suited to a hybrid or road bike. It is about 50 miles south of the Greenway.

Downtown Ocala is small, but fun, and was the home of an important 1890 political movement (Ocala Demands). Unfortunately, like in most of the U.S., suburban sprawl with strip malls is how the once-walkable city grew. On the other hand, one can’t beat this vape shop’s name: Smocala.

Of course, Ocala is better-known for horse power (below) than horsepower, but I think the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing is worth a visit if you’re checking out The Villages.

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Florida vs. DC area school observance of Valentine’s Day

by philg

Closing out February with a reminder that this month is host to Valentine’s Day….

From our local “5th Grade Gifted Science Teacher” (Florida state law requires that public school systems offer gifted education beginning in 2nd grade):

I am writing to all parents to remind you that our class is having a Valentine Exchange this Friday. I sent home a bright pink flyer 2 weeks ago with the information and class list needed if your child wanted to participate. It is optional. I am writing because I have seen many of my students who did not show you the flyer as it is still in their yellow folder. If your child chooses to participate, he/she is required to bring one for each child in the class. Your child can also bring Valentines for friends in other classes if they choose.

Additionally, our class is having a Valentine Box Design contest. The child with the most creative box will win prizes that I have purchased. There will be a first, second and third place winner. Again, it is optional, and those children who opt out will receive a bag to place their Valentine’s.
You can send in a class treat if you would like. After we pass out the Valentines, we will be watching a movie.

Please ask for the pink flyer if you have not seen it yet. Thank you.

From a high school administrator in the Washington, DC area:

Join us February 14th for a fun Valentines event, hosted by the LGBTQ+ Allies Club. We’ll play some mini games and introduce you to the mission of the club.

What “mini games” are part of the LGBTQ+ lifestyle? A video game from “The 13 Best Queer Games to Play During Pride Month (and Beyond)” (PC Magazine)? Croquet because it is #1 in “Lawn Games Every Gay Should Know”?

Circling back to Florida, the Valentine Exchange is more 2SLGBTQQIA+-oriented than what we had growing up in Bethesda, Maryland. Kids here in Florida are required, if they want to participate at all, to bring a card for every other member of the class, regardless of gender ID, and are forbidden from writing anything personal in any card. A boy, therefore, must present other boys with cards if he is to present any girls with cards. In 1970s Bethesda, we chose which other members of the class to give cards to and wrote whatever we wanted. Each card always went to a member of the opposite sex, as far as I can remember (there were no “gender IDs” back then so “opposite sex” was a defined term).

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Which explorer called the Gulf of Mexico/America the Golfo de Florida?

by philg

Wokipedia says that the Gulf of Mexico/America was referred to at some point by at least some people as the Golfo de Florida. Here’s the cited source with, in turn, some of its citations:

Here’s the section that seems to be the basis for Wikipedia’s “other explorers”:

This seems like a good bachelor’s thesis topic a history major! Separately, if the Gulf of Mexico v. Gulf of America dispute can’t be settled amicably, my vote is for Golfo de Florida!

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Rudy Giuliani would still be rich if he’d moved to Florida, bought a house and universal life insurance, and created a Nevada trust

by philg

Happy National Florida Day, celebrated every year on January 25 to commemorate the founding of Florida becoming a state on… March 3, 1845. (CBS makes no attempt to explain the apparent discrepancy.) Let’s check in with someone who should have paid more attention to National Florida Day…

“Giuliani, Slow to Give Up His Belongings, Tests Patience of Court” (New York Times, January 3, 2025):

After several missed deadlines and extensions, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, could be found in contempt of court on Friday for failing to deliver assets worth $11 million to two poll workers he defamed after the 2020 presidential election.

If he is held in contempt, he could face steep penalties, including jail time.

Mr. Giuliani, 80, was set to appear in federal court in Lower Manhattan to justify the stalled handover of some of his most prized possessions, including a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, a collection of Yankees memorabilia, luxury watches and a vintage Mercedes-Benz convertible. (It is unclear whether Mr. Giuliani will appear in person; his lawyers have indicated that he might attend the hearing remotely, citing health problems.)

The transfer was originally scheduled to take place in October, as a down payment on a $148 million judgment that he was ordered to pay to two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. Mr. Giuliani had claimed, without evidence, that the women had helped steal the presidential election from Donald J. Trump more than four years ago.

After a lifetime of work, the guy was on track to be destitute, with all of the money that he earned going to a couple of election workers in Georgia whom nobody had ever heard of and who nobody today has apparently heard of (the NYT didn’t think it worth mentioning their names). His two children (Wikipedia) were on track to inherit nothing (though maybe indirectly they would because their mom was divorced from their father in 2001).

Giuliani tried to salvage about $3 million in home equity via a foxhole conversion to Floridianism on July 15, 2024 (a primary residence in Florida cannot be acquired by a creditor). Perhaps this was a factor in a settlement (NYT, Jan 16) where he managed to cling to at least some portion of his former wealth.

What could Giuliani have done as soon as he got sued? Or, indeed, at any time during the trial that wiped him out?

  • sold all real estate outside of Florida
  • consolidated all real estate equity into a single no-mortgage primary residence (“homestead”) in Florida (he likes Palm Beach and his maximum estimated net worth was $50 million so he could have easily found a single house to absorb all of his real estate wealth)
  • sold all financial assets and personal property and split the proceeds into a life insurance policy for himself and a Nevada trust for his heirs

(A universal life policy can be tapped into while the insured is still alive and it can function essentially like a high-fee mutual fund account that has the advantage of no taxation of dividends and no taxation of capital gains when it finally pays out (the capital gains exemption is of more value when the insurance policy is held by an irrevocable trust; any investment positions held personally and not sold during a person’s lifetime will “step up” in basis on death anyway).

Florida State Constitution (which also prevents a state personal income tax from being dreamed up by a righteous legislature), Article X, Section 4:

(a) There shall be exempt from forced sale under process of any court, and no judgment, decree or execution shall be a lien thereon, except for the payment of taxes and assessments thereon, obligations contracted for the purchase, improvement or repair thereof, or obligations contracted for house, field or other labor performed on the realty, the following property owned by a natural person:

A relevant statute:

222.14 Exemption of cash surrender value of life insurance policies and annuity contracts from legal process.—The cash surrender values of life insurance policies issued upon the lives of citizens or residents of the state and the proceeds of annuity contracts issued to citizens or residents of the state, upon whatever form, shall not in any case be liable to attachment, garnishment or legal process in favor of any creditor of the person whose life is so insured or of any creditor of the person who is the beneficiary of such annuity contract, unless the insurance policy or annuity contract was effected for the benefit of such creditor.

(222.21, “Exemption of pension money and certain tax-exempt funds or accounts from legal processes”, may also be relevant)

Why a Nevada trust? Steve Oshins explains it better than I can in a lot of scenarios. Florida appears to offer many of the advantages of Nevada for a conventional trust (not a “domestic asset protection trust” that is “self-settled” (the grantor is also the beneficiary)), but it favors beneficiaries to the point that litigation becomes much more likely than with a Nevada, New Hampshire, or South Dakota trust. A beneficiary can sue because he/she/ze/they is unhappy about a trustee’s decision, e.g., to pay some other more virtuous beneficiary more, and not run afoul of a “no contest” clause. Nevada, as well as some other states, are more likely to consider the grantor’s intent as primary. All of that said, a Florida trust for his kids should have been protected from his plaintiffs.

It is kind of surprising to see such poor planning from a person who is a lawyer and who has been surrounded by lawyers. If the jury verdict had gone the other way, Giuliani wouldn’t have given up anything other than some commissions and the right to continue paying New York State and New York City income taxes. The cobbler’s children have no shoes?

So… let’s remember on National Florida Day that Florida is a place where a person can keep much or most of what he/she/ze/they has earned even if positioned for insolvency in the typical state. (One type of predator against whom Florida law is useless: a divorce, alimony, or child support plaintiff! In those situations, having a Nevada DAPT and actually living in Nevada is the solution.)

Background, from state-sponsored NPR:

From state-sponsored PBS, Giuliani can’t use the bankruptcy process to retain enough for a meager personal lifestyle:

When Giuliani filed for bankruptcy, he listed nearly $153 million in existing or potential debts. That included nearly $1 million in state and federal tax liabilities, money he owes lawyers and millions more in potential judgements in lawsuits against him. He estimated at the time he had assets worth $1 million to $10 million.

In his most recent financial filing in the bankruptcy case, he said he had about $94,000 in cash at the end of May and his company, Guiliani Communications, had about $237,000 in the bank. He has been drawing down on a retirement account, worth nearly $2.5 million in 2022. It had just over $1 million in May.

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My love that dare not speak its name for the Chevrolet Tahoe’s isolation from Florida highway texture noise

by philg

Loyal readers know me as someone who rejected the SUV religion almost as early and often as I rejected Faucism (saliva-soaked cloth face rags, lockdowns except for liquor and marijuana stores, and school closure as a way of slowing down SARS-CoV-2). Today I have a shameful admission to make… I’m almost in love with the Chevrolet Tahoe.

Our affair began at the Kissimmee, Florida airport. I dropped off the 20-year-old Cirrus SR20 so that it could get a new parachute and rocket at the factory-owned service center there (see Parachute and rocket replacement option for Cirrus owners who love Disney and Harry Potter). I reserved a “car” from Enterprise for the trip back to Stuart, Florida and was dismayed when they gave me what looked like two huge bricks:

By the time I was done with the two-hour trip, though, I marveled at the isolation from road noise. It seemed even quieter than our beloved 2021 Honda Odyssey (not to be confused with the 2025 Honda Odyssey that, thanks to continuous reinvestment and diligent engineering work, is exactly the same as our car). On smooth pavement, the noise level might be similar, but Florida highways have a tremendous amount of texture in the concrete. This is presumably to prevent hydroplaning during the Biblical rains that are common here. The interior noise level of almost every car that I’ve been in goes up dramatically when entering an interstate highway or turnpike from an untextured ramp. Not the Tahoe’s.

The car also drove well and the software design seems slightly better overall than for the typical Japanese car and dramatically better than for the typical European car.

Readers: Who else loves this absurdly oversized/overweight GM vehicle?

(One answer: a neighbor here in Abacoa! Below is a photo of the monster Tahoe in front of an efficiently sized minivan (visitor to the neighborhood? We’re one of the few families that has resisted the SUV craze).)

In other news, “Tested: 2025 Honda Odyssey Still Carries the VTEC Torch” (Car and Driver, December 18, 2024):

The Odyssey is also extraordinarily quiet at speed, which is especially impressive with this much frontal area. We measured 66 decibels at a steady 70-mph cruise, which not only bests all the other minivans—including the ID. Buzz by a wide, four-decibel margin—but also beats some luxury juggernauts, such as the Mercedes-Benz E-class. While the Odyssey is the quietest minivan, put your foot down and it becomes the loudest, with 80 decibels of VTEC fury at wide-open throttle.

The Car and Driver numbers are consistent with what I was able to measure in Maskachusetts, but I’m pretty sure that they’re a lot lower than what we experience when we take the Odyssey out on the textured Florida highways. The Tahoe tested at the same 66 dBA back in 2021, but I think it does a better job of keeping that 66 dBA when the road surface isn’t smooth.

Maybe we could find the perfect tire for the Odyssey and that would help? Car and Driver tested purported noise-killing tires back in 2016 and the results were weak:

If the effect appears small by our sound-meter measurements, it seemed even smaller when measured with our eardrums. We struggled to discern any significant improvement, although it probably didn’t help that our back-to-back drives were sepa­rated by a half-hour tire swap.

Continental confusingly claims a 9 dBA reduction in noise, but only at certain frequencies. I thought that the whole point of A weighting was to give a summary that matches human perception. Their ContiSilent tires aren’t available in sizes to fit the Odyssey, unfortunately.

Is it time to get a new vehicle? Our Odyssey is getting a little shabby after 4 years, but it is tough to summon the energy to push through all of the dealer paperwork in order to trade it for a minivan that is identical in all significant respects. It probably wouldn’t be a huge financial hit to buy the new minivan because our existing minivan will start depreciating like a rock soon enough. I don’t feel sufficiently high and mighty to switch allegiance to the Tahoe. Readers: Have you noticed any other car that is especially quiet over textured concrete?

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Merry Christmas from Abacoa

by philg

Merry Christmas from Abacoa, our MacArthur Foundation-developed corner of Jupiter, Florida.

My soulmate:

What if HOA rules won’t let you fly an Israeli flag (American flags only, though an exception was granted for a sacred Rainbow Flag during Pride prior to the Prideful homeowner who ultimately chose to move to the San Francisco Bay Area)? Use Christmas lights to turn the house into an Israeli flag:

At the Dakota rental complex:

Abacoa is adjacent to Jupiter Heights, which lacks an HOA. Thus, there is no limit to Deplorability:

What the yard looks like this time of year without decoration:

But everything is better with lights!

So… I hope that everyone has a great Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I plan to cook GE Monogram range convection oven turkey since the LG steam oven bit the dust after one use.

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Ron DeSantis can secure his legacy with a new University of Florida campus in Orlando

by philg

Ron DeSantis has set up all of the core functions of government so well here in Florida that it is unclear what he would need to do for the next two years (the hated Yale/Harvard graduate will be forced by term limits to leave office in January 2027). Here’s an idea for a Big Project worthy of a politician with Big Skills: develop a new campus for University of Florida that will enable the school to break out of its #30-ish rut among national universities (tied with University of Texas-Austin; #7 among state-run universities).

Why would this make sense? Florida’s population is growing and younger people have been moving into Florida, partially due to the state’s #1 ranking for education in U.S. News but mostly due to the efforts of lockdown governors in the Northeast, Illinois, and California. Florida has about half as many children as California, but only two world-class universities. The first is University of Florida in Gainesville. The second is Florida State University in Tallahassee (FSU is ranked #54 among national universities by U.S. News). California, on the other hand, has Stanford, CalTech, UC-Berkeley, UC-LA, UC-San Diego, UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, and UC-Santa Barbara (8 total ranked #54 and above). There would definitely be demand for another excellent school and Florida has the tax base to make it happen.

Why not expand and improve the schools in Gainesville and Tallahassee? They’re already huge, for one thing (60,000 and 45,000 students). More importantly, if the goal is to build a university that can rank within the top 10, they’re not in the right places. The typical elite academic doesn’t want to live in a small Southern city. Gainesville is unsuccessful at getting UF graduates to stick around and start companies (see Relocation to Florida for a family with school-age children); how is Gainesville going to woo a top researcher away from a school in New York City, Boston, or Chicago?

What are some criteria for where to locate a new university?

  • Politics. Academics can’t tolerate anyone questioning their beliefs, so they need to live in a city that is dominated by Democrats and where they’re unlikely to ever have a conversation with a Republican. This rules out Miami now that the Latinx have defected to Trump.
  • Hurricane Risk. Being an elite academic goes hand-in-hand with being a Climate Doomer. This rules out Tampa, whose luck eventually must run out (the city hasn’t been hit by a hurricane since 1926)
  • Airline Connections. Although elite academics are Climate Doomers, each one has the carbon footprint of a 4 million ton/year cement plant. They need to be able to jump on a flight every few weeks to a conference on the other side of the country or the ocean. You might think that this would bring Miami back into the ring, but nonstops from MIA mostly go to Latin America. Following the lead of Barbra Streisand, the escape route for an American who claims to love Brown people is always to Canada and never Mexico or, God forbid, farther south. Orlando, on the other hand, enjoys nonstop connections to cities around North America and Europe. Everyone eventually needs to come to Walt Disney World and Universal.
  • High-speed Rail. Intercity rail is catnip for elite progressives. This favors cities spread out along Brightline, which means Orlando, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami.

Reviewing the above criteria, Orlando is the obvious choice. It’s one of the few parts of Florida that voted correctly during the Election Nakba of 2024. It’s far enough inland that hurricanes generally lose their strength by the time they arrive over Space Mountain. Orlando is 100′ above sea level, which will reassure even the most ardent Climate Doomer that a vengeful Mother Earth won’t soon reclaim the city as part of the ocean floor. Orlando has great airline connections that will only get better as the theme parks expand. Orlando is going to be ever more connected via high-speed rail as Brightline expands (Tampa is the next big goal).

For recruiting faculty, the state could do a bulk purchase of annual passes (weekday only should be fine since academics don’t need to work M-F 9-5) to Disney, Universal, and Sea World. Everyone who works at UF-Orlando gets passes to all three major parks.

Is this doable? In 2016, the USTA announced the near-completion of a campus with 100 tennis courts on 63 acres next to the big Orlando airport (the plan was conceived in 2014). Celebration, built in the 1990s, is about 5,000 acres and cost about $2.5 billion in pre-Biden dollars to create (home to about 11,000 people, which means enough square footage for a sizable university). The Harvard main campus, which includes a lot of athletic fields, is only about 200 acres. Current Florida state budget surpluses are about $2 billion/year (Ron DeSantis has been using these to pay off debt, but nobody remembers a politician for fiscal prudence; it is acts of fiscal extravagance for which politicians are remembered and celebrated).

One knock against Orlando is that the summer weather is pretty miserable, with an average high of 91-92 in June, July, and August (not hot enough to keep the crowds away from the theme parks!). But that’s actually cooler than Tallahassee and no different than Gainesville and, of course, the academic elite doesn’t have to be on campus during the summer.

Here’s a map showing the new USTA campus in relation to MCO, Walt Disney World (lower left), and Celebration (lower left):

(It looks like there is a lot of undeveloped land, but most is probably swamp that the Federales will no longer allow to be drained; see More about The Swamp (book) and Florida: Hydrology is Destiny (book review))

Related:

  • “Palm Beach unanimously approves land deal for Vanderbilt’s new business and tech campus” (vanderbilt.edu, October 28, 2024): In a unanimous vote on Oct. 22, the Palm Beach County Commission approved a deal to provide five acres of county-owned land to Vanderbilt for the development of a new campus in West Palm Beach. For several months, Vanderbilt has been in discussions with city and county officials and community and business leaders about establishing a presence in West Palm Beach to complement the region’s booming financial and tech sectors. The affirmative vote by the county, along with two acres already pledged by the City of West Palm Beach, paves the way for the university to establish a new campus in South Florida focused on graduate programs in business, computing and engineering, bringing high-impact graduate education to what has become known as “Wall Street South.” … Once operational, the West Palm Beach campus will welcome nearly 1,000 students in various business programs … Since 2020, more than $1 trillion in assets under management has relocated to Florida
  • University of Central Florida, a stepsister to FSU, has 70,000 students in and around Orlando and a dismal #121 ranking from U.S. News
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Florida hurricane relief idea: buy a reciprocal membership to the Ringling Museum

by philg

Happy GivingTuesday!

When practical, I think it is better to buy stuff from people who’ve suffered a natural disaster rather than donate money (see Japan Relief Idea: Buy a folding saw and Japan Relief: Idea #1 (buy a knife)). Sarasota was hit at full Category 3 strength by Hurricane Milton (albeit apparently not as badly damaged as whatever apparatus was supposed to count votes in California!). The Ringling Museum there is a great cultural institution and a $200/year membership there (mostly tax-deductible?) gives a family access, via a digital card downloadable to a DouchePhone Wallet, to about 1,000 museums nationwide via the following networks:

  • MARP (Museum Alliance Reciprocal Program)
  • NARM (North American Reciprocal Museum Association)
  • ROAM (Reciprocal Organization of Associated Museums)
  • SERM (Southeastern Reciprocal Membership Program- Also SEMC)

If you’re going to hit just two or three museums in a year and weren’t smart enough to get a SNAP/EBT card (see How to get free museum admissions for life: sign up for food stamps (SNAP/EBT)) you’ll recover the $200.

Ahead of their time?

Anyone else want to offer an idea for GivingTuesday?

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Trump tortures our local billionaire Democrats

by philg

In case you missed this story of semi-local interest to us (we’re a 25-minute drive from Donald Trump’s house without traffic)… “Palm Beach, a Democratic Pocket in Florida, Becomes MAGA Central” (WSJ):

This discreet enclave of about 10,000 full-time residents is part of an area that has long tilted blue. While Florida went heavily for Trump on Election Day, voters in Palm Beach County slightly backed the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris. But with Trump spending so much time in the area, the town of Palm Beach is emerging as the biggest playground for the incoming administration and luminaries of the MAGA movement.

A popular hotel now houses foreign dignitaries, federal officials and various others vying for government jobs, all meeting with Trump during the frenetic transition period. Traffic is so bad on the island of Palm Beach that longtime residents said they have to drive off on one of three bridges and then drive back on another to avoid bumper-to-bumper tie-ups. And Secret Service agents at the area’s chicest restaurants can outnumber the waitstaff.

Trump spent much of his first term as president at Mar-a-Lago, his 17-acre oceanfront compound and private club that he referred to as his winter White House. He entertained heads of state and based much of his campaign and fundraising efforts there. He stayed nearly 150 days at the compound during his first term.

In some ways, residents said, it now feels like a replay of Season One of the Trump presidency. But this time around, he is likely to spend more time at Mar-a-Lago, said a number of his close associates. Some of the wealthiest members of his circle are thinking about buying homes there.

His transition operation now resides within the gilded walls of his estate, where he interviews candidates for cabinet and staff roles. Mar-a-Lago and nearby communities are poised to become the country’s new center of political gravity.

Many of Palm Beach’s old guard aren’t pleased. Because the road in front of Mar-a-Lago is now closed, traffic has never been worse on the island. What would usually take a couple of minutes to drive can now delay residents by half an hour.

Is it time to revive my idea for a rule that whoever is president has to stay in the White House for four years because the modern security state means that the president’s presence anywhere else is too disruptive for peasants?

Should we check back in a year to see what happens to house prices near Mar-a-Lago? Right now the median (or average?) price of a single-family house in Palm Beach is about $11.3 million (Zillow), a considerable bump compared to pre-coronapanic thanks to Florida Realtor of the Year 2020 and 2021 Andrew Cuomo.

The 17-acre National Historic Landmark Mar-a-Lago itself, of course, was valued at $18 million by the entirely apolitical New York justice system.

Back in 2017, the Boston Globe said that a rising sea would soon take back Mar-a-Lago and the rest of Palm Beach (a barrier island about 7′ above sea level, not to be confused with the city of West Palm Beach, which is protected by this barrier). Given a rational market, therefore, property values should be on a downward trend!

Circling back to Donald Trump… the guy is old and he is comfortable at Mar-a-Lago. Federal employees with desk jobs don’t need to show up to work. Why does Trump need to work from the White House at all? Why not let J.D. Vance handle any demanding in-person tasks in D.C. and around the world? If someone wants something from the U.S. president in 2025-2028, he/she/ze/they can Gulfstream it to PBI, pay whatever ramp fee is demanded, and hop an Uber Black to Mar-a-Lago. What about the summer when, you might argue, Palm Beach isn’t at its best. Neither is D.C.! I’m not aware of Trump owning anything north of metropolitan New York City, but maybe he could, jointly with Bernie Sanders, set up a Peace and Reconciliation summer estate in Burlington, Vermont. Or be boring and use his Bedford, NY mansion (Wikipedia).

Circling back to our MacArthur Foundation New Urbanism development here in Jupiter, Florida… I wonder whether the presence of the U.S. president nearby will be a positive or a negative. I’m guessing that it will be a short-term negative due to security-related disruptions on those rare occasions when we do want to go to West Palm Beach and rarer occasions when we interact with the elites on Palm Beach itself. But perhaps the long-term consequences will be positive. Every rich person who moves to Palm Beach is a potential donor to a local or county-wide cultural institution. Trump doesn’t seem like a pork barrel politician so I’m not expecting a major direct federal investment.

Speaking of Jupiter, here’s a place on the good side of the railroad tracks, recently sold for $34 million:

The house was built in 2007, which means the new owner will get to do a lot of work on various systems, e.g., the roof, over the next 10-15 years!

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California vote counting vs. Florida post-hurricane power restoration

by philg

It’s five full days (about 120 hours) after the Election 2024 Nakba. The folks in California who say that they know how governments should operate have counted 72 percent of their presidential ballots (New York Times):

Let’s compare this to the numbers in Power restoration after Hurricane Milton. Recall that Milton was a Category 3 storm that hit Sarasota, St. Pete, and Tampa, knocking out power to 4 million “customers” (a household of 3 people would be just one customer). I didn’t stay organized to capture a number for how many were still out exactly five days after the hurricane made landfall, but four days afterward roughly 500,000 customers were still out, which means that more than 87 percent had been restored. Six days following landfall, roughly 190,000 customers were out from the original 4 million affected.

So.. Ron DeSantis-led Florida restored power after a Category 3 hurricane at a much faster pace than California has been able to count votes. (Florida also did count votes, but there aren’t any interesting statistics from that process because it took just a few hours.)

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