Americans in the Northeast are making plans to come down to Florida this winter, either 183 days (the “skip on state taxes” plan) or just a shorter break from misery. They might want to consider this New York Times article from 31 years ago, “Scientists Say Earth’s Warming Could Set Off Wide Disruptions” (September 18, 1995):
A continuing rise in average global sea level, which is likely to amount to more than a foot and a half by the year 2100. This, say the scientists, would inundate parts of many heavily populated river deltas and the cities on them, making them uninhabitable, and would destroy many beaches around the world. At the most likely rate of rise, some experts say, most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States would be gone in 25 years. They are already disappearing at an average of 2 to 3 feet a year.
The NYT’s “experts” were sort of right. It did become impossible to go to a lot of East Coast beaches in 2020, but that was because Science made it illegal (#StayHomeSaveLives), not because the beach had physically disappeared.
Maskachusetts COVID-19 Order No. 22, issued 25 years after the NYT article predicted beach closure:
How has Florida’s shoreline changed over time? Here’s Catesby’s map from circa 1729:
Compare to today (Google Earth):
Loosely related, but I had to mention this in case it jinxes us with a repeat of Hurricane Andrew (1992; Category 5 landfall, 25-mile-wide swath of destruction south of Miami), “The Atlantic Just Broke a 60-Year Record” (ScienceAlert):
September 12th became the furthest into the year we have ever gone without a hurricane in the Atlantic basin since the advent of modern satellite tracking in 1966 – by a day.
“El Niño is being supersized before our eyes,” explains António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
“The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up.”
The Haitian hotel housekeepers, restaurant cooks and Uber drivers who quietly help power Key West’s tourism economy are disappearing.
Some have been detained by Border Patrol agents since late July, when the Trump administration ended a legal protection that had allowed 330,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States.
There is “violence and instability” in Haiti, but we can import 100% of Haitians and the same people won’t create any violence or instability here:
It’s a situation familiar to communities across Florida; the state has the nation’s largest Haitian population, including tens of thousands who have lost the legal safeguard known as Temporary Protected Status, which the United States had granted them because of the violence and instability in their home country.
(the violence and instability are features of the terrain, not something in any way related to the people who inhabit the terrain)
The New York Times constantly reminds us that workers should be paid more (they’re “underpaid”). But in the context of making sure that we max out on immigrants, it is also bad if workers in the U.S. get paid more:
When Mayor Sam Kaufman visited Hispanic-owned restaurants last month, owners shared stories of line cooks, busboys and delivery drivers, some with valid work permits, getting detained and deported. Those who remained were being crushed with extra work, with some owners delivering food themselves.
Mr. Kaufman noted that Key West was too far from the mainland to bus in workers.
“The price of labor is going to shoot up,” he said. “There is going to be real competition to retain the work force.”
Or will the supply of workers be reduced? Here’s the most interesting part of the article:
One such person, a 41-year-old father of two, said he had fled gang violence in Haiti for Brazil, before joining relatives in Key West in 2022. The man, who did not want his name used for fear of attracting immigration authorities, works at a supermarket deli, earning $19 an hour.
He lost T.P.S. in July. He is still able to work because of a pending asylum claim, but that offers little guarantee against immigration detention. Inside their tiny trailer home, he and his wife anxiously monitor WhatsApp for immigration enforcement updates last month as they care for their young children.
Asylum is a 10-year bureaucratic process, at least (see Will any Salvadorans in the U.S. go home to El Salvador today?). So by saying “I request asylum” this guy should be able to get W-2 work until his anchor babies (multiple “young children”) are old enough to sponsor him for a green card under family unification (a U.S. citizen adult has the automatic right to bring parents here).
At what rate are migrants being detained by ICE? The NYT article says that 5,000 Haitians live in Key West and that 30 were detained in August. (I don’t think this 5,000 number counts children since they’re “American”, not “Haitian”, via the magic of birthright citizenship.)
The Recognition of Art by Women: In Retrospect show at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach closes on September 27 so there is still time to plan a somewhat unfashionably-early-in-the-season trip to Palm Beach County (via DJT!).
Recognition of Art by Women series began at the Norton in 2011 in an effort to recognize and promote living women artists through solo exhibitions, addressing the persistent inequity in exhibiting and acquiring art by women.
I can’t figure out how this is legal under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which purportedly guarantees “equal protection” to women vs. artists of other gender IDs. The Norton Museum is heavily funded by taxpayers, sometimes directly from local, state, and federal government and sometimes indirectly via tax deductions taken by donors (such as Ken Griffin, a refugee from the collapse of public order in Chicago/Illinois). Given that about half of the money is coming from taxpayers, could they host an art show limited to white male cisgender heterosexual artists, for example? If not, how are they allowed to host a show in which art can be selected only from artists identifying as “women”?
How bad has the historical discrimination been against women that the museum needs to redress the imbalance with this limited-to-one-gender-ID program? “Of the Norton’s 10 directors, nearly half have been women.” The first director was named “Mary”. The “women-only” series was initiated, 15 years ago, by a director named “Hope”.
The most recently featured artist, Danielle McKinney, paints pictures of Black women not working, which the curators say is “radical”.
(There is some support for this in BLS data; Black women are more likely to work than white women, while the reverse is true for Black men. Non-Black men are more likely to work than any of the foregoing.)
One of the radical acts:
A previously featured artist, María Berrío, does some interesting work:
The sculpture garden features a work by Louise Nevelson, who objected to being pigeonholed (“I’m not a feminist. I’m an artist who happens to be a woman”).
Also an interior Nevelson (I love her work so much! Maybe this one would be easier to steal):
How about some kid art? Here’s a painting by a local public school kid:
And one from the private school for nerds started by Jeff Greene, a billionaire refugee from NYC:
Here are some folks who probably should have used Kodachrome. Check out the color fading on these Polaroids:
(Imagine a camera technology so that even Walker Evans seems incompetent.)
Exit through the gift shop… (these photos were taken in June, admittedly)
Stop at Costco on the way home for some low-priced steak:
Vindman, a retired lieutenant colonel and Iraq War veteran who rose to prominence as a witness during President Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment hearings, was viewed as a heavy favorite against Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, heading into Tuesday’s contest.
Vindman raised $16 million for his campaign, a significant number for a Democrat in red-leaning Florida, while Nixon brought in just over $900,000.
Unlike Marco Rubio and his successor, Ashley Moody, the “socialist” wants to help the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinian” achieve their military goals:
Nixon is an advocate for cutting U.S. aid to Israel, a controversial position in a state with the country’s third-largest Jewish population. Her stance put her at odds with members of her own party at times and was in contrast to Vindman, a Jewish immigrant born in Soviet Ukraine.
Nixon introduced a resolution in the state House calling for a “de-escalation and ceasefire in the state of Israel and occupied Palestine.” She also said she would have supported a congressional resolution in July that would have stripped $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel.
“I would have voted in support of that, because we cannot continue to send money to countries that are violating international law, that are violating human rights, that are actively destroying,” she said Friday on WMNF radio of Tampa. “Throughout my adult career, I have fought for the safety and the well-being and the humanity of all people. And me stating this does not make me antisemitic at all.”
(I had no idea that Vindman was Jewish, incidentally, until tonight!)
What does Angie Nixon promise? Everything will be “free” rather than “taxpayer-funded”:
I suppose that for the 50 percent of America’s eligible voters who don’t pay federal income tax, almost everything that the government does is “free”.
Here’s something that I can agree with Angie Nixon on: “Expanding Section 8 vouchers so every eligible family can access one without languishing on a waitlist.” If housing is a human right then everyone who refrains from work should get a “free” house. If housing is not a human right then why does anyone in the U.S. get a free house? It makes no sense to say that Person A should get a free house worth $6000/month on the market while Person B, identically situated, gets nothing (either a place on a waiting list or a rejection note that the waiting list is full).
Angie Nixon doesn’t agree that “No data center is illegal on stolen land”:
No new construction of data centers before there are real federal guardrails put in place, including environmental review and community input requirements.
No human will be illegal and nearly all will be able to vote soon (“swift path to citizenship”):
Where California has a one-time 5% tax on noxious billionaires, Angie Nixon will hit them every year for 5%:
(As previously noted, I disagree that Angie Nixon and similar can be called “socialists” because under Soviet socialism every able-bodied adult was required to work.)
Happy “we’re still right our 2 percent annual inflation target” day to everyone from the BLS. Let’s look at part of the CPI that used to be deflationary and that is now inflationary: personal computers. June 25, 2026 invoice for 1.5 TB of RAM that my friend bought for his home PC:
The IBM PC was born with 16 KB (base) of RAM in Boca Raton 45 years ago (announced August 12, 1981). From the Boca Raton Historical Society:
In 1967 Thomas John Watson Jr., then Chairman of the Board, announced that IBM would open a large-scale manufacturing plant at Boca Raton to produce its System/360 Model 20 midsized computer. In December 1966, IBM announced its purchase of 550 acres west of what is now I95, south of Yamato Road and east of Military Trail. IBM was the first company to build an industrial site in the scrubland of the west. The original site eventually grew from 620,000 square feet to 3.6 million square feet in more than 40 buildings. The main complex was modeled after IBM’s research center located in LaGaude, France on a rugged slope just ten miles from Cote D’Azur. Marcel Breuer and Robert Gatje, the famed architects who created the LaGaude building adapted the design for Florida’s flat terrain and hot sun.
In August 1981, IBM launched a new product that put the city of Boca Raton on the map. A small engineering team led first by William Lowe and then by Philip “Don” Estridge, secretly developed a personal computer (code name “Acorn”) that was to be ready for market within one year. Under pressure to meet an incredibly tight deadline and with autonomy from management unprecedented in IBM history, a small team created a personal computer that became the standard for the PC industry. Rather than develop all the parts internally, the team, incorporating an “open architecture,” quickly pulled together existing resources from outside companies. Microsoft provided the operating system (DOS) and BASIC programming language; Intel the 8088 microprocessor chips; Tandon the disk drive; Zenith the power strips; SCI Systems the circuit board; and Epson the printer. The open architecture allowed for add-on components to the internal system. Also for the first time, IBM sold this product through outside sources; Sears, Roebuck, and Company and Computerland, were the official retailers for the PC.
The success of the IBM PC resulted in the rapid growth of IBM Boca Raton. Staff size grew to over 10,000 to keep pace with the demand for the PC. IBMers eagerly accepted positions at Boca Raton for, within IBM ranks, it had gained a reputation for being a place of exciting and revolutionary work.
IBM shrunk and the buildings are now the Boca Raton Innovation Campus (BRIC). I visited with a neighbor who is a car expert (senior engineer for a Big Three manufacturer) back in March for Cars and Coffee Palm Beach. What do the buildings look like today?
Practical advice: use the bathroom before you arrive because the BRIC landlords don’t open up the buildings and let people use the real restrooms, ask for donations, present the history of the PC, or show off what is being done today in their 1.7 million square feet of space. There is a McDonald’s within walking distance and, for the ladies, a Starbucks in a mall across the street. Also, bring your own coffee because the food and drink vendors usually had lines. Budget about 1.5 hours to see the 500+ cars and chat with some of the owners. Perhaps 2,000 people show up (it was free for spectators and $15 for those showing off their cars).
Northerners will appreciate this Kei car, which sported “Floridiots” bumper sticker and flag plus a Confederate flag on the front bumper:
The 1,064 hp Corvette ZR1 was almost impossible to get in March 2026, but there were two at the event.
If a real Chevrolet is too pedestrian, maybe you’d like to see this $1 million fake Ford (a GT that, instead of being made in the Islamic Republic of Michigan by Ford is made in the Islamic Republic of Canada by Multimatic, which also makes the fake Ford Mustang GT3 and GT4).
My favorite part of this 12 mpg machine is the “EcoBoost” logo on the engine (660 hp out of 3.5 liters of V6):
Maybe Chevrolet should slap an “Eco” label on the 12 mpg 670-hp Corvette Z06?
McLaren and Lamborghinis were everywhere, but we saw only a handful of Ferraris.
At the other end of the performance spectrum, a Volkswagen Rabbit GTI:
A replica (I think) Mercedes 300 SLR, complete with removable steering wheel (impossible to get in/out without removing it):
A Mercedes sedan converted to Tesla power:
(Maybe this will become much more common as old Teslas become more numerous and less valuable.)
Here’s a 1976 Pontiac that cost $6,746, which the BLS says is roughly $40,000 in today’s mini-dollars:
Maybe the closest modern equivalent is a Toyota Camry, which starts at about $32,000 including (an outrageous) destination charge?
Do you really need to drop a modern muscle car drivetrain into a motorcycle? Yes:
It’s a great event, but I think something more needs to be done to commemorate our best desktop friend!
(I like to do everything in the dumbest way imaginable so I held off on buying more SSD back in October 2025 when building my new desktop PC. I figured that I would be able to get 16 TB on an M.2 stick, rather than merely 8, and that the price would keep falling. Instead, the 8 TB Samsung 9100 that I did purchase has more than doubled in price and 16 TB limped into the market in March with a price of $16,000 (below).)
The Florida Democratic primary for Senate is on August 18. One baffling aspect: Alex Vindman not only moved to Florida during the tyranny of Ron DeSantis (in 2023), but now the foreign-born carpetbagger is trying to take away a Black woman’s job in the Senate primary. Vindman says that he has a 15-year-old daughter:
I'm running for Senate to lower your costs.
So that young people like my 15-year-old daughter can afford to build a life in Florida. So that people on fixed incomes like my 94-year-old dad can afford to stay here. pic.twitter.com/HaQqU95FRG
Why would a noble liberal migrant move to Florida? He talks, above, about a 15-year-old daughter. The goal is for this girl to stay in tax-free Florida for the rest of her life, thus denying the virtuous Democratic-ruled states of much-needed tax revenue. Said daughter can’t be safe in Florida because life-saving abortion care isn’t available after 6 weeks of a pregnant person’s pregnancy (Vindman is on record as a passionate supporter of abortion care). Because she’s under 18, life-saving gender-affirming care isn’t available. Vindman is literally killing his/her/zir/their daughter. State law won’t change to became safe even if the carpetbagger wins the Senate seat.
Most confusing, for a member of a party that champions the advancement of Americans identifying as “women” and the advancement of Americans identifying as “Black”, the apparently white male carpetbagger is trying to take away the important Senate job from a Black woman:
The number of leadership jobs in the U.S. is more or less constant (absolutely constant with respect to the number of senators). The only way for members of victimhood groups to advance is for white heterosexual males to retreat into subordinate roles. How can there reasonably be even a single white heterosexual cisgender male running for any office as a Democrat? And how could a virtuous Democrat reasonably make the decision, in 2023, to move to any Red State? (Vindman even moved an elderly parent to Florida, thus avoiding paying state estate tax and preserving the “generational wealth” that Democrats oppose.)
Early voting has begun for the Florida primary election. I’m registered as a Republican (can’t go back to the Party of Fauci!) and the choices are a little unsettling.
Choosing a governor would be easy if Ron DeSantis had endorsed someone, but the GOAT has kept quiet.
Let’s start with Paul Renner. He attended a liberal arts college, served in the Navy, and then went to University of Florida law school. He was Speaker of the House during part of the DeSantis administration. His campaign web site frankly is either the work of an insane person or, perhaps, a smart person who believes that everyone who reads it is stupid.
“Shift the tax burden to international real estate speculators”? How can that work in most of Florida’s 67 counties? International buyers are supposedly roughly 5% of the total dollar volume in Florida, but they’re heavily concentrated in a handful of counties.
Jay Collins is the current Lieutenant Governor, appointed about a year ago by Ron DeSantis when Jeanette Nuñez left to become head of Florida International University. He has a distinguished military career, including serving as a Green Beret. His campaign site is a little less insane. He wants to exempt a larger amount of homestead residents’ home value from property tax, which I think is a terrible idea (there is already a huge discrepancy between what long-term residents pay and what new arrivals or second-home owners pay because homesteads are taxed at their purchase price plus a maximum of 3% per year appreciation or CPI, whichever is less; DeSantis is at risk of losing his GOAT title, in my view, for trying to further derange Florida’s property tax system via a ballot question in November.).
This seems like a terrible idea for anyone who hates traffic jams:
Collins promises to lower insurance costs, but not by a specific percentage and mostly via the “tort reforms” (making it tougher to sue insurers and get all legal fees paid) that were enacted in 2022 and actually did bring down premiums:
Next we turn to Byron Donalds, currently in Congress representing some of the world’s richest people (Naples, Sanibel), which is ironic because Wikipedia says that he grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn under the care of “his single mother.” His issues page:
“Enact the Trump Agenda”? How is the governor of Florida going to surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran?
“Make America Great Again”? That actually works against Florida’s interests. What helps Florida is when New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles fall apart and/or go into a Fauci-suggested lockdown. If the foregoing centers of American wealth were as nice as West Palm Beach and Sarasota, there would be no reason for rich people to move to Florida.
“taxpayer handouts to illegals”? Florida doesn’t do a lot in this area, I don’t think, other than pay for health care when the undocumented show up at emergency rooms (and how would we cut that off?). The real solution, though, would be to help the undocumented migrate onward to New York and Maskachusetts where they’re guaranteed a taxpayer-funded lifestyle. Donalds doesn’t seem to propose that.
“property insurance crisis”? Maybe we could lose another 10% on premiums if all disputes between homeowners and insurers were moved into a specialized and streamlined resolution system staffed by arbitrators who actually knew something about home construction and repair. Beyond that, though, how is it a “crisis” if rates are higher than in some other states because of hurricane risk? ChatGPT’s estimates of available juice to squeeze from the insurance lemon:
(Look how expensive agents are! Maybe this is an argument for socialism. If there were just one insurance company, run by the state, rates could come down by about 20% because there would be no agents and no underwriting profit! What could go wrong?)
I hate to say that the candidate endorsed by Donald Trump is the least insane of the above, but perhaps he is! Mostly, I’m saddened that the only way to win an election in the U.S. seems to be promising people free stuff, absurd stuff, and impossible stuff. Average IQ in the U.S. is falling, but maybe this isn’t a new phenomenon. After all, when Lyndon Johnson and Congress in the 1960s decided to simultaneously expand the welfare state (Medicaid, Medicare, public housing, food stamps) open the borders (Hart-Celler), that was implicitly a promise that the U.S. would be infinitely rich forever. When FDR and Congress set up Social Security in the 1930s and paid the first beneficiary 1000X what she’d contributed via taxes that was tantamount to a “free lunch” promise.
The choice for Senate is much simpler. DeSantis-appointed fifth-generation Floridian Ashley Moody is the incumbent and everyone seems to like her. (Well, maybe the undocumented don’t like her because she’s in favor of border security and, when that fails, ICE. If she were in the Islamic Republic of Michigan running against Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed she’d probably try to deport him to Egypt.)
Wilton Simpson is running to retain his job as Agriculture Commissioner. I won’t be voting for his opponent, Matt Taylor, because he styles himself “Matt the Welder” and that reminds me of “Graham Platner the Oyster Farmer.” Also, Matt the Welder is opposed to “government aerial mosquito spraying”, according to ChatGPT. One of the great things about our life in Florida has been that we’ve cut our DEET use by 90% compared to when we lived in the Boston suburbs (tick-infested 7 months per year and horrific mosquitos for 3-4 months per year). If Palm Beach County wants to use an Airbus A380 filled with whatever kills mosquitos I am all for it! (see Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the Mosquito for a recommendation of a great book on how horrible this insect is; see also Kill them all (mosquitoes) with genetic engineering and let God sort out the mutant survivors) Note that ChatGPT might be hallucinating/lying. Taylor seems to be hostile to herbicides and perhaps some of his supporters assume that he will also be hostile to insecticides. Regardless, “welder” is too close to “oyster farmer” for comfort, unless of course one is a progressive female looking for some action…
There’s also a race for a judge. Schnelle Tonge v. Jacob Noble. Ms. Tonge is endorsed by a lot of Palm Beach County officials while Mr. Noble is endorsed by the police. Noble seems to have a lot more litigation experience, e.g., he’s admitted to practice at the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal appeals court, and three federal district courts.
Update: I biked over to Florida Atlantic University’s Jupiter (Abacoa) campus and voted early. There was a substantial staff and nobody in line. I was offered the opportunity to use the voting machine, which ultimately prints a paper ballot, in English, Spanish, or Haitian Creole. It seems that, in our infinite political wisdom, we’ve created a huge class of eligible voters (U.S. citizens) who can’t understand the most basic English. ChatGPT explains that someone might be a birthright citizen and never learn English due to being taken back to Haiti or wherever as a baby. The anchor baby returns at age 18, let’s suppose, and decides to vote. We also hand out citizenship to people who are over 50 without requiring them to pass the English test that is normally required for naturalization. Finally, unlike Australia, which bars the entry of the disabled as likely to become a burden on their overstressed health care system, “a qualifying physical or developmental disability or mental impairment can exempt a naturalization applicant from the English requirement.”
Once we’ve filled the United States with citizens who don’t speak English, a federal law requires that we facilitate votes from those completely-disconnected-from-legacy-Americans-by-language citizens. The Voting Rights Act, Section 203:
… citizens of language minorities have been effectively excluded from participation in the electoral process. Among other factors, the denial of the right to vote of such minority group citizens is ordinarily directly related to the unequal educational opportunities afforded them resulting in high illiteracy and low voting participation.
The language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act require that when a covered state or political subdivision provides registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to the electoral process, including ballots, it shall provide them in the language of the applicable minority group as well as in the English language.
The requirements of the law are straightforward: all election information that is available in English must also be available in the minority language so that all citizens will have an effective opportunity to register, learn the details of the elections, and cast a free and effective ballot.
There is some discrimination, according to the Justice Department!
Covered language minorities are limited to American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Spanish-heritage citizens – the groups that Congress found to have faced barriers in the political process.
Why not Arabic for the noble enrichers of Dearborn, Michigan who’ve brought their parents over? “Chinese” is the second-largest non-English language spoken at home after Spanish (Census), but no provisions are made to facilitate voting by immigrants from China or Chinese anchor babies who’ve recently shown up as adults.
It surprises me that the U.S. hasn’t completely melted down. The lowest-earning 50 percent of eligible voters pay 3 percent of federal income tax (i.e., they receive a 97 percent discount on the federal government services that they can vote to receive; it would make sense for them to vote for a daily federal government delivery of popcorn even if they think they’ll eat it just once per month). We make huge efforts to gather votes from people who aren’t able to speak English, who have a “mental impairment” (I guess that’s consistent with the 100% disabled Graham Platner almost being elected Senator), and who may have lived in the U.S. for only a few months (the anchor-baby-returns-to-birthplace scenario)), and who aren’t interested enough in or informed enough about voting to zip over to the polls (sending out vote-by-mail packages to everyone).
The Florida primary election is in a couple of weeks so right around now is when most Floridians will start thinking about their choices. Here’s a proposal by the leading Democrat, David Jolly (until yesterday, a Republican!), to set up, without legislative approval, a massive state-run insurance company for hurricane and wind damage:
Florida’s homeowners insurance market has collapsed, and families are paying the price. On day one, I’ll introduce a state catastrophic fund to remove hurricane and wind coverage from the private market, protect homeowners, and cut insurance costs by 60 to 70%. Florida can lead… pic.twitter.com/I2s8q0Tgq3
Unless insurance companies are making 60-70% profits right now, the only way that the state-run enterprise that Mx. Jolly proposes to start can cut costs by 60-70% is by transferring those costs from Florida homeowners to Florida renters (i.e., it will lose money over the years, but get topped up periodically by infusions of tax dollars that are collected from a combination of homeowners (who get them back via this subsidized insurance) and renters (who don’t get any money back)).
This makes Jolly the inverse of Ayatollah Mamdani, whose rent freeze steals from property owners (landlords) and gives it to renters in the form of rent that gets lower every year relative to the market and lower also in real dollars because “frozen” means not adjusted even for CPI inflation. I suppose that there are also some similarities with the Mamdani Caliphate, e.g., (1) voters will easily accept the idea that a state-run enterprise, e.g., Mamdani’s city grocery stores, can have lower costs than a private enterprise, and (2) voters are eager to vote for a politician who promises to transfer wealth from some other group into their own pockets.
Maybe insurance companies actually do make 60-70% profits in Florida? Here’s our Florida-centric homeowner’s insurance company’s KBRA risk rating report. It looks like they broke even in 2022 (Hurricane Ian) and made a 10% profit in 2025 (no hurricanes made landfall anywhere in the U.S.).
(The state-run enterprise, especially if private insurance is outlawed as the tweet seems to suggest, could perhaps also steal from homeowners in low-risk areas, e.g., central Florida, and give to homeowners in high-risk coastal areas. That could be accomplished by smoothing out what should be massive rate differences between these types of neighborhoods. One more possibility is stealing from people who live in new houses by overcharging them and using that surplus to undercharge people in old hurricane-vulnerable houses.)
Finally, as a minor fact-check point in a field (politics) where nobody cares about facts, the Florida homeowners insurance market has not actually collapsed. Rates are trending down, especially after inflation adjustment, after some legislative changes during the DeSantis administration that cut back on litigation between homeowners and insurers.
Photos from Day 2 (yesterday) of PBI’s reincarnation as DJT (“Donald J. Trump International Airport”)…
A nod to Donald Trump’s famous passion for fine art:
Purely functional signage:
Note that the (1988) terminal remains dedicated to Navy fighter pilot David McCampbell, who became famous by shooting down airplanes (maybe not the best possibility to remind passengers of as they check their bags?) and then retired to Palm Beach County:
The history of the airport is preserved:
The renaming is a rather bizarre turn of events given that Trump has been the airport’s worst enemy ever since he purchased Mar-a-Lago, notably in obstructing the expansion of 10R/28L to accommodate “real airplanes” and, thus, add flights (now it is just 3214×75′ vs. 10001×150′ for 10L/28R). Mar-a-Lago is indeed almost directly in line with 10R so Trump’s fight against the airport wasn’t irrational. This article describes a history of conflict going back to 1995:
A 1995 lawsuit by Trump over airport noise ended with the county agreeing to lease Trump the land where he later built Trump International Golf Club. A 2010 lawsuit by Trump over airport noise was dismissed.
Here’s the geometry that makes the conflict inevitable:
Today is a dark day for billionaire Democrats who’ve been avoiding New York City and New York State income tax by living 183 days per year in Palm Beach. Their Gulfstreams are now parked at “DJT”, President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Google is #Resisting. If you say that you want to fly from an airport named after the worst U.S. president ever to one named after the best U.S. president ever (JFK gave us the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and open borders (Lyndon Johnson had to finish the last two)), Google Flights responds that nothing is available and that one must fly instead from “PBI”:
(Maybe because the IATA code won’t officially update until August? On the third hand, the site could silently fix the discrepancy and simply display flights from what is still “PBI” for baggage tags.)
Airnav’s budget is smaller than Google’s, but their site is fully up to date with today’s change:
Garmin pilot shows that a new FAA VFR chart is apparently available:
