Photo: E+
Top Three Takeaways – June 23rd, 2021
- Florida’s growing like a weed in rainy season. While digging through the FDLE’s annual uniform crime report I realized something when comparing crime rates year over year. Population change. All last year we’d been told we’d been growing at 800-900 people per day. As many as that is and as big as it sounds, it still was way underselling what really was happening here last year. A quick check of the 2020 Census estimates for Florida reveals a population of 21,538,187. The FDLE’s annual report reflecting Florida’s population through December of last yearat21,596,068 Floridians - or 57,881 more people than we’d previously known. There are two takeaways here. If you thought Florida might have been shafted by the Census, you’re right – I'll not dig into conspiracies regarding whether it was intentional to deny Florida an additional vote in the Electoral College and another seat in Congress, but yeah – they shorted us in count fairly considerably. Also, we didn’t add 800 or even 900 Floridians per day last year. Try 1,061! As for South Florida, while growth continued everywhere, Palm Beach County added more people than Broward and nearly as many as far more populous Miami-Dade over the past year to make Palm Beach County the fastest grower...
- 50 years and counting? Winning’s good. 50-year winning streaks unheard of until now. As Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis often says... Florida is for winners and when it comes to combating crime we’ve been on a winning streak for the ages. So, speaking of Florida’s annual crime report...the news was good as Florida experienced an impressive 14% decline in overall crime in 2020 more impressive – it marked the 50th consecutive year in a decline in Florida’s overall crime rate. This included double-digit declines in crime in all of South Florida with Miami-Dade, county posting the biggest decline of all. And that takes us to what’s happening now. Is this where the streak ends? We’ve seen a surge in especially violent crime in Miami-Dade which actually continued a trend from last year. While overall crime was lower driven by a 17% decrease in property crime, likely due in part to more people being home during the pandemic, violent crime was already on the rise in Florida as it increased by over 2% - these included murders rising by 15% driven largely by domestic issues likely due to the pandemic. With most Floridians back to living their lives but with acts of violence seemingly always in the news, is this the year Florida’s crime rate rises and the streak ends? Let’s hope not.
- They’d like nothing more. The “they” to which I’m referring is the left and the subject of the “more” is Trump and DeSantis. Today’s Q&A addresses whether Trump would turn on DeSantis in a power struggle over 2024 presidential aspirations. First, I’ll point out that when the left is talking about 2024 in June of 2021 – it tells you all you need to know about Joe Biden. Second, the left would love nothing more than for Donald Trump to turn on Governor DeSantis. They tried to destroy DeSantis and only made him stronger and are quickly realizing that the only way he might be taken out is from within. But here’s the thing. It won’t happen and they’ll be left wanting (and likely out of power starting in 2023).