I have always taken solace in the knowledge that when the inevitable Category 6 hurricane comes ashore in Palm Beach County, it will have to blow through Mar-a-Lago before it can get to me.
So really, I should be pleased that the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County is working overtime to build an even bigger oceanside barrier of financiers and oligarch-wannabes. There are 902 billionaires in America, and the BDB isn’t going to stop luring them here until Palm Beach sinks under the weight of their mansions.
The newest bait: No Zohran Mamdani.
“I’m leaving if he wins!” shrieked New York’s upper crust, assuming that the masses would miss them. (They won’t.)
“Come to Florida then!” responded the BDB, assuming that our masses want them. (They could have asked first.)
“I’m outta here,” said convicted felon, scam artist, serial liar and former Congressman George Santos. I would throw in “disgraced,” but Chuck Schumer already grabbed that one.
“I’d rather the evil I know than the evil I don’t want to know,” Santos told the New York Post.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” shrugged the city.
Even Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer has gotten in on the action, although it’s unclear how economic appeals on The Benny Johnson show on YouTube are going to reach the C-suite. You know, the same Benny Johnson who, ahead of the 2024 election, was being paid in part by Russia. Russia. The actual communist people. Johnson said he didn’t know about his commie support. But the Florida man probably knew what he was doing when he hysterically super-spread the lie that immigrants were gnawing on puppies in Springfield, Ohio.
This isn’t to say Palm Beach County won’t peel off the disgruntled rich. But a little truth in advertising could inform their choices.
Coming to escape the snow? Stay to enjoy the July through September forecast of warm sponge punctuated by penthouse-flattening hurricanes!
Rejecting urban sprawl? Wait till you get a load of state leaders’ pave-state-parks plan.
Great dining? May I suggest the gastronomic adventure of people packing heat at the Publix deli?
Those private schools the state will give you money for your kids to attend? Do you know how many teach math? The Florida Department of Education doesn’t.
Or is it the lure of no taxes? You know what you get when you don’t pay taxes? Not much. Not much education, not much flood prevention, not much affordable health care.
You also get Mamdani. America owes its wealth to a robust middle class, but it has been bled to the point of anemia in part because of concessions made to the rich. It’s not that Americans have suddenly embraced socialism, unless you count the White House, where businesses are being forced to fork over a chunk of their company to the government. Very Karl Marx. No, socialism didn’t get Mamdani to the mayor’s mansion. Understanding the middle-class squeeze did.
But why must the non-middle class fleeing the specter of free NYC bus rides use Palm Beach County as a welcome mat? There are already two perfectly serviceable Floridas in New York state. There’s the Florida in Montgomery County and the Florida in Orange County, which as an added bonus comes with the Florida Union Free School District, which sure sounds like our Florida, where private school teachers are free to explain how Jesus saddled dinosaurs.
And not teach math.
Neither should be confused with the New York in Florida (pop. 30-something) and its admirable crime rate: The last major caper was the theft of Ms. Irene Godwin’s garden plow.
Nobody knows how New York got to have two towns named Florida while Florida got just one New York, but here’s the bottom line: Palm Beach County has more billionaires than major commitments to struggling families and retirees. So please, feel free to flee to the Floridas in New York, or the New York in Florida.
Just maybe not here. And definitely not George Santos.
Pat Beall is a Sun Sentinel columnist and editorial writer. Contact her at beall.news@gmail.com.
