Tampa: A Cloud in Florida's Horizon

(Image from Google Maps)

Tampa was one of the most popular relocation destinations in the country. However, repeated flood damage in the last five years has prompted a wave of selling as homeowners want to get out.

In the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, which includes St. Petersburg, a real-estate boom nearly doubled median home values from 2018 to June of this year, according to Redfin data. Young people flocked to the region, looking for a coastal lifestyle at a relatively affordable price.

The Tampa Bay metro area was the fifth most popular relocation destination in the country, according to an analysis by Redfin last year. The population has soared to more than three million.

Hurricane Helene deposited more than 6 feet of storm surge in the Shore
Acres neighborhood of St. Petersburg, Fla. (Photo: Mike Carlson/AP)

But as Shore Acres’s young residents sorted through the storm’s wreckage, only one thing was on their minds: selling.

Ballooning home insurance costs and the perennial threat of violent storms are starting to undermine housing markets throughout much of the state. But in few places has the turnaround been more dramatic than in low-lying communities up and down the coast of Florida that frequently flood.

The Tampa Bay housing market had been softening even before Helene struck. While prices have been flat, the area experienced a 58% increase in supply in August compared with a year ago, and a 10% decrease in demand, according to Parcl Labs, a real-estate data and analytics firm.

About half the homes listed for sale in Tampa experienced price reductions as of Sept. 9, the third highest share of all U.S. major metropolitan areas.

...The area’s affordability, once a large part of its appeal, is also waning as insurance premiums soar. Jacob McFadden was paying $880 a year to insure his home when he bought it in 2020. That amount has since almost quadrupled, to $3,300.

Premiums will likely increase again now. Property damage from last week’s Category 4 storm could be as high as $26 billion, according to estimates from Moody’s Analytics.

Florida is the No. 2 favored relocation destination for Californians.

So where did Californians move to in 2023?

Texas is the top destination for departing Californians, with 13.71% of California moving interest toward the Lone Star State.

Florida is #2 destination for Californians with 7.49% of interest. This confirms other reports that Californians are flocking to The Sunshine State.

Generally speaking, California homeowners who move to Florida have cashed out with substantial equity and should be able to invest in flood protection measures, such as raising their homes on columns, piles, and piers. They can also afford to pay for the higher insurance premiums. However, the exodus of lower-income, typically working-class homeowners from Tampa is a troubling sign that Florida may be peaking,

Those Vagabond Shoes

(WSJ Illustration)

The ex-New York-now-Florida uber-rich are back in NYC for the summer. Conversations with their wealthy friends who stayed behind are laced with one-upmanship (one-up-personship?):

It’s summertime, and wealthy New Yorkers who moved to Florida are back North. From East Hampton to Kennebunkport, everyone’s in the same sandbox now. It’s time to compare who has the shiniest bucket: those who decamped or those who stayed.

Palm Beach: the best decision ever? Yep, or so they claim. They golf before work and take a dip on Billionaires’ Row beachfront after work. It’s only two hours by speedboat to go bonefishing in the Bahamas.

But for true Manhattanites, moving somewhere for fishing ease seems positively boneheaded. Asked if he’d ditch New York for enduring sunshine, mega-developer Aby Rosen prefers the big-boy pond. “Wow, gee whiz, how great I’m so free, swimming with kids in the middle of a workweek,” he responded facetiously. “I mean, who does that? I don’t want to putz around. Midweek, I’d rather go to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center or hear good jazz downtown. Kill me if I have to jump on a boat on a Wednesday evening!”

F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich "are different from you and me." Nothing distinguishes a person more than language, and what the rich talk about is very different from normal people, too.

Sneezing: Letting It All Out

(BBC photo)

I've had some bad hay fever days, but nothing like this:

Florida man sneezes his intestines out of his body at restaurant

A Florida man eating in a diner with his wife recently sneezed so forcefully it caused parts of his intestines to exit his body through a surgical wound, according to researchers.

Details are found at the above link, and your humble blogger has mercifully omitted them from this post. Paramedics and doctors put things back where they belong, and the patient is expected to recover fully.

Despite the sensational nature of this incident, it does have some scientific value: [bold added]

The journal notes that the case is an important one because it fills in gaps in the literature about dehisence, the bursting of wounds.

"While wound dehiscence is a well-known complication, this case is important because evisceration through the abdominal surgical site after cystectomy is poorly described in the medical literature,” the article concludes.

If I ever have surgery during allergy season, I'm pumping myself full of antihistamines.

Ingenious, But He May Not Have Thought It Through

The Florida police took a selfie with the passengers,
a U.K. couple about to be married, at the arrest. (WFLA)

Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to criminal ingenuity. In this case a Florida crook knew that car-rental companies could prevent a car from starting once it had been turned off. [bold added]

A Florida Uber driver is accused of using a stolen rental car to give rides and then leaving the car running for weeks to avoid it being disabled, deputies said.

The 27-year-old Uber driver was renting a Chevy Equinox from a company in Orange County when he stopped making payments, according to an Oct. 26 news release from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office...

The company had installed devices in their rental vehicles that could be remotely activated to stop the car from restarting in the case that someone stopped paying for the vehicle, the sheriff’s office said.

But the driver knew about this feature, so instead of returning the Equinox or making the payments, he chose to leave the vehicle running for “three straight weeks” to prevent it being disabled, according to the release.

During that time, he was using the car to drive for Uber.

Sure, the guy "borrowed" the vehicle, but he did honest work for three weeks.

One has to wonder, though, what his exit strategy was since the car rental company had his information. It notified the police that the car was stolen, which led to the arrest.

And Just Like That It's Over

Happiness in Philadelphia (USA Today/SI)

After your humble blogger declared a rooting interest in the Miami Marlins, they were swept out of the playoffs by the Phillies:

The Marlins lost to the Phillies on Wednesday, 7-1, at Citizens Bank Park to end their 2023 season getting swept in the best-of-3 series in Philadelphia. Miami lost the series opener 4-1 on Tuesday.

The Phillies dominance in a two-game series left no doubt as to which was the better team. The Marlins greatly exceeded expectations by making the post-season tournament, and the quick end mercifully obviated any obsessing over individual mistakes or umpires' calls.

General Manager Kim Ng deserves a contract extension, and failing to give her one would stoke a needless, foreseeable controversy. Ownership should take care of her contract expeditiously so that everyone could start working on next season.

Florida Woman

Every Asian-American knows this expression:
don't mess with me (WSJ photo)

Kim Ng holds a number of firsts: in 2020 she became the first woman and the first person of East Asian descent to be a general manager of a major league baseball team. Her roster moves helped the Miami Marlins, who have a payroll of $105 million (#22 out of 30, the league average is $165 million), to make the playoffs this year.

Digression: both her parents are of Chinese descent, hence the "East Asian" qualifier. Farhan Zahdi, who is Pakistani-Canadian ("South Asian"), became general manager of the Dodgers in 2014.

Kim Ng upends another stereotype: despite her Asian upbringing and going to the famously quantitative University of Chicago, she eschews analytics in favor of a traditional approach:

The Marlins open the wild-card round against Philadelphia on Tuesday night with a team Ng designed by prioritizing old-school principles such as avoiding strikeouts and the pursuit of higher batting average—ideas that are far from cutting edge in today’s data-driven game...

The question for Ng and the Marlins is if this traditional approach still has a foothold in today’s game. Her tenure as general manager thus far has featured a contradiction: She’s a reluctant symbol of social progress in baseball, but her day-to-day work reflects reverence for another era.

Ng asserts that she is not “new school” nor “old school” in her mentality. She just wants to build a balanced roster, a philosophy that has fallen out of fashion as baseball executives increasingly seek to construct teams made up of extreme outliers.

The Giants didn't make the post-season, and I didn't intend to pay attention to the MLB playoffs. Now I have a rooting interest.

Winning by Losing

After the acquisition fell apart in 2016, NEE and HE's stock prices diverged, even before the Lahaina fires.

(This post is related to yesterday's about the collapse of Hawaiian Electric Industries' stock price.)

Seven years ago Florida-based NextEra Energy (NEE) failed in its attempted acquisition of Hawaiian Electric for $2.63 billion. The deal was rejected by Hawaiian regulators.

The ostensible reason was that NextEra did not provide enough details about whether its green-energy plans were sufficiently compliant with Hawaii's own goals. In truth there was a local element that would have resisted any takeover of HE, a Hawaiian institution that was more than 120 years old.

NEE, with a current market cap of about $137 billion, must be thanking its lucky stars that the deal fell apart. With a wealthy Mainland parent company who would be convenient to blame, the Maui victims and lawyers would try to extract $billions in damages from HE's parent.

In NextEra's case the failure to make a deal was the best deal.

Enjoy the Moment

In two days it will be Super Bowl Sunday, and many couples will not be in the same moment together.

Some will gravitate toward watching the game, and others will revel in the social gathering. Perhaps everyone will intersect at the food table.

For the record last year's Super Bowl on February 7, 2021 in Tampa was not a super-spreader event. Hillsborough County chief epidemiologist Michael Wiese:

"While we didn’t really have a lot [55 cases] that was associated directly with the Super Bowl, we do know that the community kind of celebrated and got together in response to the events, which did show some increase in the transmission during the weeks afterward."

The transmission rate was low a year ago, and that was before vaccines were available.

Stay out of nursing homes, pop that Vitamin D, and enjoy the game.

California: Number One No Longer

Steve Breen/San Diego Union-Tribune

All the signs were there, now it's confirmed: California is not the best place to start a business. [bold added]

Washington, Texas and Florida are the best states to launch a technology startup, beating California’s Silicon Valley, according to a new index that ranks the vitality of national and global innovation hubs...

The Draper Innovation Index grades U.S. states and countries world-wide based on a range of local factors that its developers say support a healthy startup ecosystem. They include regulatory, economic, investment and workforce trends, along with less common indicators, such as openness to cryptocurrencies. Sources of data include the World Bank, the United Nations, the Nasdaq Stock Market and dozens of other private- and public-sector organizations.

The grades are then distilled into three broad categories, each with a separate rank. They include trust and transparency in local governments, the potential for development opportunities, and an overall rank based on the balance of all factors combined.

China, for instance, ranks second for emerging opportunities, but drops to 51 for government quality, according to the index. Its overall rank is 13. The U.S. tops the rankings in all three categories...

Although California scores high for its thriving tech sector, the state’s overall grade is weighed down by red tape, high taxes and other state regulations, [venture capitalist Tim] Draper said.

For decades Silicon Valley companies have expanded in other States for the reasons cited above--lower taxes, regulations, and labor costs--but the dam started to break when venerable California enterprises like Hewlett-Packard and Oracle undertook the costly process of moving their headquarters.

There is no credible challenge to the progressive politics that have caused talent and wealth to flee, so look for California's downward slide to continue.

Jesus' Wife (Not)

Karen King holds the papyrus in question
(Boston Globe/WSJ photo)

It wasn't great literature, but it was a provocative page-turner back in the oughts.

I read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code in 2005, which (spoiler alert!) promulgated the theory that Jesus married and had children. Though fictional, the book sparked keen interest in the theory that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife. Fame and fortune would flow to the scholar who would find proof of this thesis.

In 2012 Harvard Divinity Professor Karen King unveiled the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife based on a papyrus fragment that purportedly said,

"“Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .’ ”

According to journalist and book reviewer Alex Beam in the WSJ

A married Jesus would turn the Catholic Church on its head. The papyrus hinted at a wife named Mary, presumed to be Mary Magdalene, painted as a prostitute by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century. The New Testament, however, never mentions a marriage, other than in references to the Church or holy Jerusalem as Christ’s spiritual bride. Christ’s purported bachelorhood undergirds the Catholic doctrine of priestly celibacy. If the papyrus accurately described a wife of Christ, “this means that the whole Catholic claim of a celibate priesthood based on Jesus’s celibacy has no historical foundation,” noted Ms. King, a feminist scholar and expert on the apocryphal, second-century Gospel of Mary.

Journalist Ariel Sabar's latest book, Veritas, recounts the history of Professor King's blockbuster finding, the subsequent re-examination, textual and physical, of the papyrus, and its ultimate debunking. Not helping Professor King's credibility was the background of the person who produced the fragment, one Walter Fritz. Mr. Fritz was a Berlin Egyptology student who ended up in Florida making pornographic films.

Ariel Sabar accuses Karen King of desiring and driving toward a conclusion that the evidence does not support.

“[Ms. King’s] ideological commitments were choreographing her practice of history,” Mr. Sabar writes. “The story came first; the dates managed after. The narrative before the evidence; the news conference before the scientific analysis.”

Ideological objectives have subverted premier education and news institutions that once held the search for truth (veritas) to be their highest calling.

Now their mission is combatting some -isms and elevating others. The truth takes a back seat to the narrative.

And if you want to take down the 2,000-year-old Christian narrative, you're gonna need a bigger piece of paper.

Both a Plus and Minus for the Resume

30 felony charges, stealing or extorting over $100,000 in Bitcoin, stealing Twitter accounts--despite his flawed morality and actions a teen-age Florida boy will be rich before the age of 30:

A Florida teen has been arrested in connection with the massive Twitter hack earlier this month that impacted the accounts of Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West and other high-profile users.

Although 17-year-olds can be prosecuted as adults in Florida, it will be a win-win if the kid serves his time helping out the Florida cyber-crime unit.

The 17-year-old Tampa resident, who was arrested Friday, was hit with 30 felony charges in connection with the hack, according to Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren.

Breaking into Twitter requires more skill than downloading a few hacking tools off the Dark Web.

See Something, Saw Something

Sister Margaret Anne shows how the Carmelites do it.

Slowness is Good

I missed the video three months ago, but it's gotten a second life on the internet. A 12-foot alligator nicknamed "Humpback" walked across the footpath in the Circle B park in central Florida. Pedestrians watched from a distance that was still much too close for me.

If I ever do go to Florida for pleasure, I will be sure to bring someone in my party who is slower than I am.

One Form That I am Happy to Fill Out

As I've stated before, it's the complexity of the income tax system, not the income tax itself, that I find particularly vexing. And because the tax laws are so complex and confusing, and because the Internal Revenue Service has been known to exercise its powers in a draconian manner, many taxpayers are understandably terrified. This is the milieu in which tax scammers operate, and your humble blogger, who is not an angry person, absolutely despises them.

(Image from brightscope.com)

At last some good news out of Florida, from where I've been getting recent calls:

Agents working with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration have arrested five individuals who impersonated Internal Revenue Service employees and demanded payment from taxpayers.

TIGTA agents arrested the five suspects in Miami without incident Monday for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Jennifer Valerino Nunez, Dennis Delgado Caballero, Arnoldo Perez Mirabal, Yaritza Espinosa Diaz, and Roberto Fontanella Caballero are allegedly responsible for nearly $2 million in schemes that defrauded more than 1,500 victims.

Another bit of good news: the Treasury Department has a scam reporting page. This is one form that I am happy to fill out.

Good for a Chuckle

It's time for my monthly phone call from tax scammers in Florida. The April 15th call was from (305) 587-2971. Today's was by "Steve Martin"(!) at (754) 999-3188.

Hi, this message is intended to contact you. My name is Steve Martin, and I’m calling regarding an enforcement action instituted by U.S. Treasury intending your urgent attention. Ignoring this message will be an intentional second attempt to avoid initial appearance before a magistrate judge or a grand jury for a Federal criminal offense. My number is (754) 999-3188. I repeat, (754) 999-3188. I advise you to cooperate with us and help us to help you. Thank you."

Like the earlier call, the voice is male with a slight accent (this one sounds Indian).

Also, the syntax has errors that would never be made by a college-educated person whose first language was English. For example, "instituted by U.S. Treasury" would normally be read in an official notice as "instituted by the United States Treasury Department," and "to avoid initial appearance" should have the article an before initial.

The famous Steve Martin is a lot funnier.

Tax (Scam) Season

According to the Internal Revenue Service there has been an upsurge in scams that threaten taxpayers with legal action by the IRS:

The IRS has seen a surge of these phone scams in recent years as scam artists threaten taxpayers with police arrest, deportation, license revocation and more. These con artists often demand payment of back taxes on a prepaid debit card or by immediate wire transfer. Be alert to con artists impersonating IRS agents and demanding payment.

Case in point--the following message was left on our answering machine today:

"Regarding an enforcement action instituted by the United States Treasury intending to [garbled] against you. Ignoring this message will be an intentional second attempt to avoid an initial appearance before the magistrate judge of a grand jury for a Federal criminal office. The number to reach us would be (305) 587-2971. I repeat the number is (305) 587-2971. I advise you to cooperate with us. Thank you."

Of course I didn't call them back. I wish there was a way to "cooperate" with these scammers and even send them a few $$ to help nail them on wire fraud or some other charges. However, law enforcement advises that it's best not to do anything and let the authorities handle the situation.

The most successful cons prey on people's greed (unclaimed million$ in a Nigerian bank account), hopes (cures for an incurable disease) and fears (ruin by the IRS). It's a sad reflection on the relationship between the government and the governed that the fear scam has been so successful.