Nordwave Florida

I am taking a guess, but from the looks of it, Florida must have voted heavy for Obama, taking a page right of his handbook.

And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II. A few years ago, journalists – citing the chasm between Miami’s high cost of living and its low level of income – began predicting that South Florida and its perpetual population-growth machine would soon face the unthinkable: a falling head count. Now it’s official. The region – Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties – lost 27,400 residents between 2008 and 2009, while Florida as a whole lost 58,000. That’s not exactly a mass exodus for a state of 18 million; but it’s the first net outflow in 63 years for a state that considers itself the new California. “It’s difficult for the working middle class to justify living here,” Mike Jones, president of the Palm Beach County Economic Council, conceded to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “As much as they may love the sunshine, as you squeeze them out, they may find it in their best interests to move.”

Jones gets it, but residents are starting to question whether the rest of their leaders do. Homeowners, especially in Broward and Miami-Dade, have been falling out of their flip-flops in recent days as they open their preliminary property-tax notices to find increases of 15% or more. That’s sizable in a low-income region where the median property-tax bill is already some $3,000, and it’s doubly frustrating given that property values have slid by some 25% during Florida’s housing bust. Residents have barely digested the recent news that their hurricane-insurance premiums, which can top $5,000 a year for most South Florida homes, will rise 10% a year for the next three years (vital, officials claim, for handling claims from the next big storm). And their public utility, Florida Power & Light (FPL), is lobbying the state for a 30% rate hike (vital, FPL execs insist, for upgrading infrastructure). “It all seems out of control to people here at the time when they can least absorb it,” says Dr. Jose Valladares, president of the conservative Fair Property Tax for All in Miami-Dade. (Read about Florida’s property-tax revolt.) Source>>>