Desperate Ron is Desperate

Remember when Florida's idiot governor Ron DeSantis decided to go to war with Disney World and in return got blindsided by legal maneuvers that underscored how idiotic he was?

Well, DeSantis came up with a new gameplan: Begging Disney Inc to just give up and stop fighting him. I may be embellishing his exact words but that's how it's sounding. Kevin Breuninger at CNBC has the official report on it: 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday said that Disney CEO Bob Iger should drop his company’s lawsuit accusing the Republican governor of political retaliation.

“They’re suing the state of Florida. They’re going to lose that lawsuit,” DeSantis said in an interview with CNBC’s “Last Call” set to air in full at 7 p.m. ET.

“So what I would say is, drop the lawsuit,” the governor said when asked what he would tell Iger if he were to give him a call today...

“So all we want to do is treat everybody the same, and let’s move forward. I’m totally fine with that. But I’m not fine with giving extraordinary privileges, you know, to one special company at the exclusion of everybody else,” he said...

There's a criminal investigation going on right now where DeSantis and his state buddies did provide special favors to a company, but I digress. Back to Breuninger:

In February, DeSantis signed a bill putting the district under his control by letting him handpick its five-member board of supervisors. That new board accused Disney of thwarting its power by crafting long-term development deals. In April, the DeSantis board voted to nullify those contracts, prompting Disney to sue in federal court.

The company alleges DeSantis “orchestrated at every step” a campaign of government retaliation “as punishment for Disney’s protected speech.”

DeSantis and the other defendants in the lawsuit have asked for the case to be dismissed.

The governor said in Monday’s interview that he and his allies have “basically moved on” from the feud.

“I would just say, go back to what you did well. I think it’s going to be the right business decision, and all that,” he said...

Know what I hear in DeSantis' pleadings?

Panic.

DeSantis is getting trounced in the primaries before the debates even start. His plan to worm his way into the Far Right voting base's hearts is failing because he doesn't have the crass charisma that trump has. All of his pandering - the legislation to curtail abortion in the state, the anti-gay anti-trans laws, The War Against Woke, the dismantling of Florida's educational system, literal whitewashing of history to deny slavery's true impact on all Americans both Black and White - hasn't won many nationwide MAGA voters to make himself the party's alternate choice if/when trump becomes unavailable as a candidate due to a slight case of JAIL.

DeSantis needs a clear victory in the Culture War he's committed to fighting. Ergo, he needs Disney's scalp on a pike to show off to voters he can crush his enemies.

Thing is, Disney is bigger and more powerful than any mere governor of a state. They've spent decades protecting their brand from trademark offenders and copycats, winning enough battles to remind everyone on the planet you do not fuck with Disney.

CEO Iger and the rest of the corporation has to understand if they roll over now for DeSantis - before any courts have even heard the matter at hand - they become the target of every other tin-pot politician in other states looking to tear apart the "diversity" brand that made the company billions in profits.

If DeSantis really wants to end the lawsuits - if he REALLY wants to prove he's "moved on" from the battle - he needs to undo the legislation that took away Disney's tax district, and DeSantis needs to shut down his cronyist committee he put into place to harass the Disney corporation. If DeSantis goes the extra mile to undo the anti-gay anti-trans laws he signed, that would help smooth over some of the bad feelings he's created in this whole mess.

And DeSantis needs to apologize to Princess Lilibet of Sussex for wasting everyone's time.

Otherwise, Disney ought to pile on the lawyers and lawsuits until Desperate Ron begs for utter mercy.

Remind the world, Iger: Nobody fucks with Disney.

The Mouse Goes To War

Oh it's on.

Via Greg Allen at NPR:

The Walt Disney Company has filed a lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials. Disney accuses DeSantis with orchestrating a "campaign of government retaliation" against the company and violating its protected speech.

It's the latest action in a feud that began more than a year ago when Disney's former CEO said he'd work to overturn a law banning discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the schools. The law, the "Parental Rights in Education Act," is called "Don't Say Gay" by critics.

At DeSantis' urging, Republican lawmakers passed a bill that stripped Disney of its self-governing authority. But before the law took effect, Disney signed a deal with its outgoing board allowing it to retain development rights on the 40-square mile district. It also included covenants that give Disney final say on any alterations to the property.

At a meeting Wednesday near Orlando, DeSantis' handpicked board voted to invalidate that agreement. Moments later, Disney filed a 77-page lawsuit in federal court, charging DeSantis and other officials with violations of the contracts clause, the takings clause, due process and its First Amendment right to protected speech. In its lawsuit, Disney says, "This government action was patently retaliatory, patently anti-business, and patently unconstitutional." The company is asking a federal judge to declare the board's action "unlawful and unenforceable."

And it's turning out a lot of the evidence Disney is presenting is coming from DeSantis' own hagiography that's he been shilling on his "Almost Presidential" campaign (he can't openly announce he's running because current Florida law would force him to resign the governorship... so he's getting the State Lege to invalidate that law only for himself).

I mean, not only DeSantis but every one of his allies in Florida's government have been open about their actions against Disney as retaliation for Disney's pro-gay stance:

It has been said before, but Florida Republicans are marvelously stupid. pic.twitter.com/GA0SZdW4kp

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) April 26, 2023

Other than DeSantis failing to promise barricading all of I-4 so that nobody can get to the Magic Kingdom, Disney's got an open-shut case of retaliation here.

We're at one of the craziest moments in the modern Republican / Conservative movement, one that had been supercharged by a fundamental(ist) belief by the Far Right in the sacred rights of large corporations to Do Whatever Thou Will. That cornerstone belief in Capitalism and supporting businesses to be as unregulated and free of government restraint as possible... is now burned to ash as DeSantis wages a Scorched Earth campaign using government power to punish a business. It turns out that businesses making trillions are still liable to the totalitarian fantasies of Far Right political leaders who demand loyalty and meekness from their corporate allies when it comes to Culture War Supremacy.

It turns out that being pro-gay and friendly on other civil rights issues is a great business model as it attracts more buyers than boycotters, but it undercuts the fearmongering and sadism that the Far Right seek to impose on the nation (if not the world).

And so, DeSantis made attempt after attempt to bring Disney to heel, to force them to renounce their gay-friendly activities at the theme parks. He's not just trying to seize control of the Orlando-area theme park and the surrounding properties, he's trying to use his hand-picked board of lackeys to impose control of Disney's own corporate policies and marketing (with threats to censor Disney for everything in opposition to the Far Right's Christianist agenda) outside of Florida.

Disney, trying to avoid getting into a political dogfight, used the legal system however they could as a large corporation - with a literal army of lawyers at their command - to work around every stunt DeSantis pulled. When it looked like DeSantis was going to succeed getting the legislature to revoke the older Reedy Creek special district board with a stack of business cronies and wingnut allies, Disney got ahead of that effort by getting the older board to create a business plan that negated any future attempts by the new board to undermine Disney's operations, and tied it into the British Royal Family as a way to rub it in (God Save Lilibet of Sussex of the House of Windsor, long may she reign as a Dinsey Princess!).

DeSantis should have taken the hint then that Disney could outfight and outlast him. But like any bully - like the Culture War absolutists among the Far Right convinced of their destiny to rule and ruin - DeSantis could not back down.

So now it's a legal battle, where the bloodshed gets nastier.

The Battle of Reedy Creek just escalated. All of central Florida is at risk now.

Stay safe out there, folks. You might get caught in the crossfire (DeSantis shuts down the Disney Village shopping area for asset forfeiture) OH SON OF A BI---

DeSantis' War On the Mouse Escalates to Desperation

Ron DeSantis simply cannot give up his war against The Mouse.

Even as Ft. Lauderdale struggles to recover from this weekend's flooding, DeSantis is laser-focused on bullying Disney World Orlando through threats and demands to break that corporation for their pro-Gay policies.

DeSantis is throwing out there every suggestion he can think of, from getting the state legislature to undo the Law Against Perpetuities that Disney used to block DeSantis' incoming hand-picked board of interlopers to proposing the construction of unwanted projects and buildings in the Reedy Creek district to worsen the tourism value of Disney's parks. Dylan Abad at WFLA has the story:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis teased the possibility of erecting a new state prison near Walt Disney World’s Orlando resort while speaking at an event in the park’s district on Monday.

While the press conference centered around DeSantis’ ongoing feud with the company, the governor took a moment to acknowledge the board’s control over district-owned land...

“People said maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks,” DeSantis said with a grin. “Someone even said, ‘Maybe you need another state prison.’ Who knows? The possibilities are endless and that is now going to be analyzed to see what makes the most sense.”

The idea of placing a state prison inside the vast district stems from the political expectations that local communities do not WANT a state prison within running distance of their neighborhoods. The threat of prisoners escaping tends to get an HOA screaming NIMBY, and DeSantis wants to alienate Disney World from the cities - from Polk, Osceola, Lake, and Orange (maybe Seminole) Counties - within that range. DeSantis thinks he can get the locals to blame Disney for the new prison, but everyone can see the idiot proposing this is himself.

Building other amusement parks within the Lake Buena Vista area could go against the land-use agreements for Disney itself, and that's arguably a fight that the courts will side with the corporation vs. the state in every regard (Capitalism cannot be denied).

Thrown into this is DeSantis' open bullying, where he announced his effort to get the state legislature to re-write the safety inspection laws so that ONLY Disney parks undergo special inspections, while the similarly sized theme parks in the area - Universal Orlando, Sea World, and LegoLand - retain the exceptions that large-scale parks have been getting. This kind of intentional focus on just ONE company while letting other similar businesses in the same area avoid it is so obvious a punishment that Disney's lawyers ought to overturn it in federal courts as an unfair restriction on business (Again, Capitalism cannot be denied).

DeSantis keeps digging this foxhole, thinking he can win this war against a corporation that's already shown to have the legal smarts and firepower to punch back in ways to make DeSantis bleed on-camera even more.

I dunno who's more delusional about winning an unwinnable war: Putin or DeSantis.

And having said all that, if Princess Lilibet of Sussex does use her powers under the Laws Against Perpetuity to decree it, we can well see Disney World building their own state prison to counter DeSantis' corrupt version, only this state prison will be the most enjoyable, fantastic prison in the World (the prison with the most water slides wins)!

THE TOP TEN RIDES GETTING BUILT IN DISNEY'S SING SING PARK:

10. The Bitcoin Pirates of Silicon Valley

9. Elsa's Frozen Lesbian Blanket Party

8. It's a Small Cell Block After All

7. TRON's Lightcycle Breakout

6. The Black Hole (aka Solitary)

5. Hall of Alcatraz Escapees

4. Haunted Electric Chair

3. Mickey's House of Pain

2. That Spinning Teacups Ride (EVERY park should have a teacups ride)

And the NUMBER ONE RIDE OF DISNEY'S SING SING PARK:

1. DeSantis' Wild Primary Ride (Closed for Repairs)

DeSantis Wants His War On The Mouse

Is Princess Lilibeth of Sussex gonna have to get in here and separate you two?

It's turning out that Governor Ron DeSantis - eager to win a Culture War battle against a pro-gay corporation like Disney and embarrassed on the international stage by Disney's legal maneuver to deny him that victory - wants to go on a full-out Salt The Earth campaign against the House of Mouse. Via Gabrielle Russon at Florida Politics:

Disney has been under fire from Republicans since last year when the company took a public stance on the state’s parental rights in education legislation, which critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

As revenge, the Legislature approved a new law this year taking control of a Disney-appointed government board that oversees the resort’s infrastructure and emergency services. DeSantis appointed five new members to run the board.

But the latest twist has been Disney’s old governing board approving long-term deals stripping the state-controlled board of its power. The agreements were approved in a public meeting in the final days before the state took over.

Speaking Friday in Ocala, DeSantis vowed the state will work to overturn the agreements made by the old board.

On Thursday night, DeSantis hinted at other steps the state could take against Disney as he spoke at the conservative private Hillsdale College in Michigan.

“We’re not just going to void the development agreement they tried to do. We’re going to look at things, like taxes on the hotels, we’re going to look at things like tolls on the roads, we’re going to look at things like developing some of the property that the district owns,” DeSantis said, according to Florida Playbook published by Politico reporter Gary Fineout.

“They are not superior to the people of Florida. So come hell or high water, we’re going to make sure that policy of Florida carries the day. And so they can keep trying to do things. But ultimately we’re going to win on every single issue involving Disney, I can tell you that...”

It should be interesting to note that DeSantis was speaking at a conservative private college in Michigan instead of a public gathering in his own state of Florida. This is because DeSantis isn't doing this for the people of Florida: He's doing this so he can win over Culture War Far Right Republican voters in 2024.

We should also note how DeSantis is threatening to raise taxes on the surrounding hotels, converting the roadways into the Disney World complex into tolls to force more financial burdens on the locals, and seizing Disney's properties - would that be eminent domain or asset forfeiture? - to develop unwanted - likely costly and environmentally destructive - construction projects to make the region an ungodly sight. This is all coming from a man representing a political party that openly despised taxing large corporations, and from a man crowing about how his defense of "freedom" has saved Florida from dreaded a) liberalism b) socialism c) academic research or d) all of the above. The hypocrisy of DeSantis' threats underscore that it's not about taxes or freedom, it's always about getting everyone else to obey The Party him.

Given the location of Disney World on the Florida map, DeSantis is talking about wrecking havoc not only on the Disney World Resort area but pretty much everything between Polk, Lake, Osceola, Orange, and Seminole Counties. If DeSantis is going to blockade every roadway into Disney, he's going to have to set up tolls on both ends of I-4 surrounding the area. The wider the scope - adding tolls to the side roads from Lake and Seminole into the region, as well as key locations across Osceola and Orange - the more damage he can inflict on the local communities who need to work/live there.

If DeSantis is feeling extremely petty, he can put toll booths right at the intersection of I-4 and US 27 in Davenport, which happens to be a serious traffic bottleneck for everyone from Tampa and Lakeland trying to get to Orlando the city (which is further northeast from Disney). And he can refuse to set up the radar-scan type drive-by checkpoints that modern toll systems are using: He will set up the coin machine ones, the kind that break down every other hour and require you carrying $10 worth of quarters every time you try to go through.

DeSantis is also willing to impose his punishments on other businesses, not only the local stores and retailers who rely on tourism to survive but also on the large hotel chains who will feel the losses if DeSantis' taxes makes it too expensive for people to visit, eat, or shop across the Orlando metro. This won't be just a headache for the locals, this is going to turn into a business disaster across the whole nation.

DeSantis is behaving like a bully who's been punched in the face by a bigger, better trained fighter for the first time in his life, and doesn't get the idea that he needs to take a step back and accept the loss.

What he's threatening to unleash isn't going to just affect Disney's corporate leaders, it's going to affect an entire region of Florida with millions of residents, about a third of whom directly rely on the resorts and parks Disney runs and about another third who have businesses affected by Disney's well-being. Tourism is Florida's $50 billion meal ticket, and DeSantis is willing to crash and burn most of that for his personal vendetta against an enemy of his own choosing.

I quote Machiavelli often. Machiavelli's warning to would-be Princes - to would-be dictators like DeSantis - is that they need to avoid being hated. And nothing, Machiavelli added, makes people hate you more than fucking with their livelihoods.

If DeSantis thinks that punishing everyone else is going to make all the other residents and business owners hate on Disney, he's an idiot. Everyone is watching this, everyone knows who is putting the screws on here, and it's DeSantis and his GOP allies. If DeSantis thinks he's shielded from public outrage and discomfort due to a Far Right Culture War that's distracted Florida voters into siding with Republicans, he's going to wake up to a reality where people will shift their anger towards the Republican Party that's punishing them for things they didn't do.

This is a scorched Earth tactic that never ends well for anybody.

I keep begging my fellow Floridians to wake up to the real dangers that a rabid, hate-driven Republican Party brings to our state and our nation. 

Please for the love of GOD stop voting Republican. Please for the love of GOD let DeSantis fall to his own doom. 

The Mouse Knows How to Play (w/ Updates)

Well, there's actually been a lot going on in the war between Bully DeSantis and The House of Mouse (aka Disney Orlando) since last I wrote about DeSantis going after Disney for their pro-gay stances. 

After DeSantis' November re-election - and the establishment of super-majorities in both houses of the state legislature - DeSantis carved out a more humiliating law that took complete power of the Reedy Creek Improvement District away from Disney's corporate kingdom, and planned to stack the incoming board with lackeys and anti-gay wingnuts that would look for any excuse to dump their Culture War bullshit on everything Disney runs (even dictate company policy - straight-up censorship - outside of Florida!).

Part of me remained a little shocked by what DeSantis was attempting. I've grown up - my life since my family moved to Florida in 1977 - with the belief that you do not fuck with Disney. They go after day care centers, for God's sake. And yet it seemed to me that Disney - this massive, multi-billion dollar entertainment entity, this behemoth that has enough money it can buy nations if it had to - was rolling over and playing dead to let this godless tiny bully have his way with them. I was wondering when the fabled army of Mickey Mouse lawyers would show up to sue DeSantis and the Florida GOP back to the stone age.

Well, it turns out that army of lawyers already scorched the Earth before DeSantis' lackeys could grab the keys to the Magic Kingdom. Skyler Swisher at the Orlando Sentinel has more:

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handpicked board overseeing Disney World’s government services is gearing up for a potential legal battle over a 30-year development agreement they say effectively renders them powerless to manage the entertainment giant’s future growth in Central Florida.

Ahead of an expected state takeover, the Walt Disney Co. quietly pushed through the pact and restrictive covenants that would tie the hands of future board members for decades, according to a legal presentation by the district’s lawyers on Wednesday...

I was hoping more along the lines of giant dragons melting everything DeSantis owned into a scrap of metal, but this might work.

The previous board, which was known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District and controlled by Disney, approved the agreement on Feb. 8, the day before the Florida House voted to put the governor in charge.

Board members held a public meeting that day but spent little time discussing the document before unanimously approving it in a brief meeting.

DeSantis replaced those Disney-allied board members with five Republicans on Feb. 27, who discovered the binding agreement the previous board approved.

DeSantis and Disney clashed over the corporation’s opposition to what critics call the “don’t say gay” law, which limits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools...

Among other things, a “declaration of restrictive covenants” spells out that the district is barred from using the Disney name without the corporation’s approval or “fanciful characters such as Mickey Mouse.”

That declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England,” according to the document.

A development agreement allows Disney to build projects at the highest density and the right to sell or assign those development rights to other district landowners without the board having any say, according to the presentation by the district’s new special legal counsel...

So what happens here is that DeSantis and his cronies can't interfere with Corporate Disney's power to sell and develop the land in the special district and... and... wait a minute. Back up to that earlier bit.

Valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England”???

It's a Rule Against Perpetuities, an ancient English Common Law practice that applies to modern law - even in the United States - in obscure but powerful ways. Not all states observe it... but Florida DOES.

Did Disney just tie their Magical Kingdom to the fates of the British Royals of the United Kingdom?!

(Taps one of Charles' son on the shoulder) "Yer a Disney Prince, Harry!" (yes, Disney is stealing this from a Warner Bros. franchise... which has a theme park at Universal just up I-4.)

This is where it gets tricky. Are the rules only counting the current descendants of Charlie, which would mean the grandkids under William and Harry both? Or does this extend to future generations, which technically implies the rules are upheld until the Windsor bloodline is officially done (which could take centuries)? (Update: see below)

Either way, the Disney lawyers have set up a situation where DeSantis can't demean or devalue or bully or break the House of Mouse in any way. Even the legal battles over this arrangement could take years to resolve - the delaying tactics alone could take five to ten years to hurdle past - and those are years DeSantis can't afford to slip away.

DeSantis is campaigning now - technically off-the-radar, because Florida laws require him to resign from his current office if he's running for another - for the Presidency, and he's doing it by pandering to the worst parts of Culture War hysteria the Far Right enjoys. Hammering at an "evil pro-gay company" like Disney would have been cheap easy points to score. But if he can't impose his will on Disney's corporate policies - if he and his lackeys can't make Disney change their tune about gay rights, if they can't force Disney to dispose of gay/trans characters on their cartoon shows and streaming service, if they can't compel Disney to shill Christianist bullshit as they hoped to - then he's got nothing to offer the GOP voting base this 2024.

This may not stop DeSantis and his allies in Tallahassee. They can arguably come up with more laws to hammer at Disney's corporate rights in order to humiliate them further. But all that does is expose the hypocrisy of the modern Republican ideology. You'd think a pro-business political party wouldn't do this, but the GOP is no longer pro-business. They're an authoritarian religious cult, obsessing over absolute loyalty to their dogma and themselves, and they will undercut businesses - even ones as profitable and powerful as Disney - as well as people to get their way.

I do hope the Disney lawyers unleash that broom army to drown DeSantis' team of lawyers. Wash 'em all away, Mickey.

Quick update: If the deal holds, if Disney is able to stave off DeSantis' upcoming legal fight, the youngest "current living descendant" of King Charles III is Princess Lilibet of Sussex, Harry and Meghan's daughter born 2021. 

Current British life expectancy is 80 years. Given she will have access to the best doctors and care, we could expect Lilibet to live at least 85 years, after which those 21 extra years added on would mean 106 years before DeSantis' hand-picked board of Culture War meddlers can even order office supplies on the Reedy Creek dime. And by then, the 2024 primaries will be LONG over.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Plus, the Magic Kingdom FINALLY has a REAL Disney princess to celebrate. It's all yours, Lilibeth Diana of House Windsor. Start working on your singing skills for the inevitable three-musical-picture deal with the studio.

Update 3/30/23: There's a detailed report with the Disney Tourist Blog that keeps up with the parks. Even the blogger Tom Bricker was caught off-guard by the company's sleight-of-hand here:

In terms of commentary, I don’t really know what to say. Throughout the Reedy Creek battle, every effort to predict specific outcomes based on legal analysis has proven futile. In our most recent article that touched upon the RCID takeover, I conceded that this was not how I expected the saga to play out.

With that said, there’s one way I’ve been right on the money all along: that this is not about the law, passing meaningful legislation, or the tough and thankless work of local governance. It’s about political theater; scoring a “win” in today’s era of ‘politics as team sports’ and the ongoing culture wars. The goal isn’t to govern; it’s to grab headlines and dominate the news cycle.

Serious analysis isn’t appropriate here because these aren’t serious people with sincere motivations. That’s likely why Disney opted against fighting this previously and instead put out deferential and conciliatory statements. The company’s calculus was that it’s not as easy to “fight” a one-sided culture war. The satisfaction (my note: for DeSantis and his Culture Warriors) was in the struggle...

This was never about reform. This was about control. And Disney is doing everything they can to deny DeSantis any control.

Fight Back: DeSantis Can and Should Lose

Well, Governor DeSantis signed the bill this Friday ending Disney's special tax district, basically giving every resident of Osceola and Orange Counties the middle finger regarding their property taxes going up 20 percent. He's also violated Disney's Constitutional rights (thank you Mitt Romney - oh GOD did I just say that - for reminding us "Corporations are people, my friends."), if Ian Millhiser has the right info on this (via Vox.com):

Florida’s decision to strip a government benefit from Disney because, in DeSantis’s words, Disney expressed “woke” opinions and “tried to attack me to advance their woke agenda,” is unconstitutional. And it’s not a close case.

As the Supreme Court said in Hartman v. Moore (2006), “official reprisal for protected speech ‘offends the Constitution [because] it threatens to inhibit exercise of the protected right.’” Nor does it matter how the government retaliates against a person or business who expresses an opinion that the government does not like — any official retaliation against someone because they engaged in First Amendment-protected speech is unconstitutional...

The "Don't Say Gay" law that's at the crux of this fight, according to Millhiser, is unconstitutional itself:

The law is unconstitutional because it is so vaguely drafted that teachers cannot determine what kinds of instruction are permitted and what kinds are forbidden — although it remains to be seen whether a federal judiciary dominated by Republican appointees will strike the law down...

So there is a big "If" attached to that possibility, although we've seen Roberts' Court reject some of the more extreme Far Right attempts at legislation due to such vagueness. Back to the fight:

Think of it this way: Imagine that José owns a bar in Orlando. One day, José tells the local paper that he dislikes Ron DeSantis and plans to vote for DeSantis’s opponent in the upcoming election. The next day, the state sends him a letter informing him that “because you disparaged our great governor, we are stripping your business of its liquor license.”

José does not have a constitutional right to sell liquor for profit. And the overwhelming majority of Florida businesses do not have a license permitting them to do so. But if Florida strips José of his liquor license because the government disapproves of José’s First Amendment-protected speech, it violates the Constitution.

Disney’s ability to govern the Reedy Creek Improvement District is no different from Florida’s hypothetical decision to take away José’s liquor license. If Florida has a legitimate reason to strip away this benefit from Disney, the Constitution most likely would permit it to do so.

But no one can be punished because they express a political opinion...

If DeSantis and his fellow Republicans had come up with some valid excuse - some evidence of criminal misdeeds involving those special tax districts, financial evidence that removing those districts is a benefit to the state and its residents in some way - then they ought to be able to pass that bill and get it through judicial review.

Problem is, DeSantis and his fellow Republicans have made it clear in public that this law is meant to punish Disney for their public opposition to DeSantis' anti-gay agenda. DeSantis openly accused Disney of attacking him promoting their "woke agenda," and his Lt. Gov. Jennette Nunez admitted on Eric Bolling's Newsmax show that all Disney has to do is change their position on gay rights and they can have their tax district back (it won't expire until 2023). There's no true reform element to what DeSantis is doing: He is straight-up kneecapping Disney as a warning to everybody else to stay out of his way.

DeSantis thinks he's in full control of the situation, and he thinks he's untouchable.

But he's not untouchable. He can lose, not only in the courtrooms where his actions can turn on him. He can lose at the ballot box, especially because he's more vulnerable than he wants to admit.

In 2018, he only barely won election as Governor by barely 35,000 votes, in an election with 8.2 million voters out of 11.5 million or so registered voters.

Orange County has roughly 854,000 or more total voters, Osceola has 245,000 or so voters. Granted, a sizable majority in both are registered Dems (361,000 / 98,000), but how many of them are going to show up to vote now to express their displeasure? How many No-Party Affiliated (NPA) voters (264,000 / 86,000) are now willing to show up and vote their displeasure? How many of them are now willing to join the Democratic Party?

Because what DeSantis and the state GOP did legitimately hurts them, strikes at their incomes and their businesses: They are now looking at the possibility their tourism industry will take a huge hit.

All those county residents gotta do is, they gotta go get their Voter Registration forms - county elections offices have them, your DMV offices have them, your public libraries have them - and get them filed this Monday. Register for the first time, or otherwise re-register and change their affiliation to Democratic. Hell, let's see how many registered Republicans in those counties (214,000 / 56,000) decide to re-register to NPA just to send DeSantis a message?

Because they STILL have a First Amendment right to send DeSantis a message saying "You Suck." He can try to retaliate all he wants, but he deserves to lose that fight if he keeps pushing it.

Punch back, Florida voters. Your votes matter, your voices matter, and DeSantis deserves to lose for what he's doing to our families and to our businesses.

The Battle for Florida: DeSantis Declares War On the Mouse

(Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for adding this blog article to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please leave a comment below and peruse the rest of the blog, thank ye!)

When my family moved to Florida, I was seven. We lived in a part of Florida that had just exploded with new housing and thousands of relocating Americans, at the forefront of the 1980s population boom that turned Florida from a swamp-infested minor state to the third most-populated in the nation.

Part of that boom relied on the development of a major tourist attraction called Disney World, built outside of Orlando by Walt Disney's corporation in an attempt to expand his theme park empire. The popular Disneyland of southern California brought the company fortune in the 1950s but when he needed to add more rides, all the surrounding land had been bought up by developers who added their own businesses to feed off the tourism trade. By the 1960s Disney realized the next time he started a theme park, he needed to buy up all the land possible first, then start the theme park and expand from there.

The best place he could do that was Florida, where land was cheap and few people lived because the heat and humidity of most months made it untenable for non-agricultural or shoreline living. Picking a spot where a big enough airport existed to help with the flow of tourists and near an interstate to handle traffic, Disney quietly bought up as much as possible between Orange and Osceola counties in order to ensure construction of multiple theme parks and associated hotels/resorts under the company's control.

All of that land development still required a lot of corporate control, so Disney's company worked out a deal with the state of Florida by 1967: Reedy Creek Improvement District, a special taxing district run by the corporation. Disney would be responsible for paying and managing the infrastructure costs and constructions, much like its own city/county: In return, Orange and Osceola residents didn't have to pay anything towards the district, which benefitted both counties when businesses grew up around Disney's area and the population/work force grew to fill all those tourism jobs.

Everybody - except for the massive income inequality that non-union labor has to cope with - kind of won with that deal. Today, Orlando is one of the largest metros in the nation, only second behind the South Florida (Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach) area in the state itself. Florida generates more money from tourism dollars than any other industry. And its allure has drawn in other industries - aeronautics, health care, energy, financial firms - to employ hundreds of thousands more. 

There may be a Busch Gardens theme park in Tampa, a Legoland in Winter Haven, a... well, does Coral Castle count as a theme park? No, it's a roadside attraction my bad. (Big thanks by the way to Neil Gaiman for shouting out the mermaids of Weeki Wachee in his work American Gods) There may be a Universal Studios park in Orlando itself, a Sea World park just down the road, and a hundred attractions along International Drive, but EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING in the Orlando metro revolves around Disney World.

They don't call it Mickeytown for nothing...

This makes it all the more insane that the Florida Republicans running our state - basically operating as one-party rule since 1998 - led by autocrat-wannabe Ron DeSantis have decided to nuke Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District from orbit.

To the Tampa Bay Times (linking to the Associated Press reporting):

The Florida House of Representatives on Thursday gave final passage to a bill that would dissolve Walt Disney World’s private government, handing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis a victory in his feud with the entertainment giant over its opposition to a measure that critics have dubbed the “don’t say gay” law.

The move could have huge tax implications for Disney, whose series of theme parks have transformed Orlando into one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, and serves to further sour the relationship between the Republican-led government and a major political player in the state. Disney did not return an email seeking comment Thursday...

See, what happened is that DeSantis is angling for the 2024 Republican nomination for the Presidency - he's hoping that current overlord donald trump will be in handcuffs by 2023 - so during this legislative year he pushed for a lot of culture war laws he could sign to win over the GOP's racist/sexist voter base.

That not only included a racist "anti-CRT" law that essentially made it illegal to discuss the history of racism in both Florida and the United States, it also included the "Don't Say Gay" law that makes it illegal to "discuss gender identity" to the point where teachers could get fined saying the word "gender" on school grounds in front of students, and regardless of grade level due to an "age appropriate" clause vaguely worded enough to threaten even high schoolers. When that "Don't Say Gay" law was finally discussed in the legislature and passed by the GOP-controlled House and Senate, there was a lot of media discourse about how Disney World - Florida's biggest private employer - would handle the matter.

See, over the years Disney has garnered a reputation for being Pro-People i.e., a megacorporation that actually thinks about marketing to gay/lesbian/transgender audiences as well as the other demographics (yes, there is always a profit to be made). There's been Gay Days organized at the theme parks since 1991. Disney has never openly denounced the appropriation of popular characters - especially Elsa from Frozen - as gay icons, which helped maintain the fanbase. They market it all - even as they sell themselves as "family-friendly" - as an inclusive community where love and acceptance matters more than culture war posturing.

However, Disney is still a business, and a pretty big one at that: So they've always had their eye on keeping their corporate taxes low and government regulation off their backs. This means a lot of campaign contributions to Republicans on a regular basis, especially at the state level to ensure nobody messed with the flow of revenues.

So when Disney's head honchos were all asked about how they felt about Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill, their first response back in March was... well, hem-hawing at best. Which led to a major walkout of Disney employees angered by the spineless owners. Shamed by the public display, the CEO took a harder stance early in April, after which DeSantis still signed the bill into law while accusing Disney and others who opposed it of "grooming" kids, like the theme park was staffed by registered sex offenders.

And at that point, DeSantis called for a special legislative session - usually the state legislature works for six weeks to pass bills, and if it misses anything they have to hold special sessions at taxpayer expense - not only to force the legislature to approve his gerrymandered nightmare of a Congressional map but also to remove Disney's special tax district as punishment. Back to the AP article in the Tampa Bay Times:

The bill passed by the legislature on Thursday would eliminate the Reedy Creek Improvement District, as the 55-year-old Disney government is known, as well as a handful of other similar districts by June 2023. The measure does allow for the districts to be reestablished, leaving an avenue to renegotiate its future. The bill now moves to DeSantis’ office to be signed into law...

Democrats have criticized the Disney proposal as clear retaliation against the company and warned that local homeowners could get hit with big tax bills if they have to absorb bond debt from Disney — although such details are far from clear.

Disney is one of Florida’s biggest private employers, last year saying it had more than 60,000 workers in the state. It is not immediately clear how the company or local governments around its properties would be affected if the district was dissolved...

You can kind of see the carrot the Republicans left in the bill, where they could re-institute the special district if only Disney would behave like a good little puppet for DeSantis' political ambitions.

But the Republicans are risking a lot on this brash and open assault on a major economic revenue source for the entire state. If Disney World is curtailed, shut down, reduced in any way, that's a serious hit to the surrounding hotels and restaurants responsible for the hotel and sales taxes flowing into Tallahassee. 

One noted effect of losing the special district status is that Disney would have to fire the county-level emergency services people - the EMTs, the fire fighters, the police - working within the district. The district itself disappears, meaning the counties it's in - Orange and Osceola - would have to pick up the slack and staff those services themselves. Those counties would start have to paying for all that, not Disney.

Adding on top of that is a bond liability Disney has tied into the Reedy Creek finances, a massive debt worth around $1 billion (it might even be $2 billion) that those counties - not the state, which is really rubbing it in hard - would have to cover. If we refer to that CNBC article by Robert Frank:

Reedy Creek has bond liabilities of between $1 billion and $1.7 billion, according to the district’s financial filings. Under Florida statute, if Reedy Creek is dissolved, those liabilities are transferred to the local governments — either Bay Lake or Lake Buena Vista, or more likely, Orange and Osceola counties.

State Senate Minority Leader Gary Farmer, D-Fort Lauderdale, tried to amend the bill to include further study of the bond debt, but the amendment failed on a voice vote.

Farmer said the bond debt could total more than $2 billion and that tax authorities are increasing their estimates as they learn more about Reedy Creek’s outstanding liabilities.

“This is a very real impact, the extent of which we don’t fully understand yet,” Farmer said.

If the liabilities of $1.7 billion or more are transferred to Orange and Osceola counties, he said, the debt could amount to $1,000 per taxpayer...

In short: If Reedy Creek goes, the state government gets all the money while the local counties are forced to pay the bills.

All of this damage happening all because DeSantis and his fellow Republicans are vindictive assholes.

This is only part of the stuff that can happen if (more like when) DeSantis gets his revenge on Disney.

What happens when the Walt Disney Company, megacorporation generating around $68 billion a year, decides to fight back?

Remember at the beginning of the article when I mentioned my family moving to Florida? We moved to the Tarpon Springs area, and during those early formative years I witnessed up close the Disney company going after a day care center right off Klosterman Road. The day care had painted on the exterior a number of kid-friendly cartoon characters, among them Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Disney did not approve, because they were not affiliated to that day care. I didn't fully understand as a kid what trademarks meant and "controlling the brand" was all about, all I knew was a big business in Disney was going after a tiny local business on the side of the highway.

What I learned back then was something a lot of people understood over the decades that Disney turned into the media behemoth it is today: You do not fuck with Disney. You NEVER fuck with Disney. They go after day care centers, for God's sake.

This is an international company, with a reach extending to nearly every country on the planet. They hire hundreds of thousands of workers at theme parks across the globe. They make movies and television shows every minute of the day. They own the franchises of nearly every cultural foundation - their own animated characters, Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, they just bought 20th Century Fox a couple years ago to seize the X-Men characters for future MCU planning - of modern fandom. They only things they don't own are Star Trek and Dr. Who, and Gods help us if they ever buy those up.

And they have on staff hundreds of lawyers all working to ensure protection of their trademarks, to brush aside lawsuits and damage claims, with a ruthlessness that would impress Sith Lords.

In terms of this retaliatory - and rushed - law DeSantis is about to sign, Disney can easily send an army of lawyers to poke enough holes in the law to where the courts - even the Republican wingnut ones - can invalidate it. 

On top of the legal fight about to ensue, Florida Republicans ought to start realizing that Disney - and a number of Disney's corporate allies - may not be sending fat checks to their campaign war chests, which is an important thing this midterm elections cycle. It wouldn't be logical of Disney's CEO to help pay for a political party that just kneecapped him and stripped one of the most profitable pieces of Disney's corporate empire of its power.

While businesses may think the Republicans are the "Pro-Business" party, what DeSantis and the Florida GOP just did demonstrated that when it comes to pandering to the voting base on culture war issues, the Republicans will sacrifice and abuse their corporate "buddies" for cheap political points. Republicans, it turns out, are NOT really Pro-Business: Republicans are Pro-Power, and they are not going to share that power with anyone...

Would Disney roll over on this issue? I wouldn't expect them to: Show DeSantis or any other bullying politician that you're willing to cave, and all the other state governors and elected officials will pile right on. So I would expect Disney to take stock of the state political landscape, take a deep breath, and begin funding Democratic candidates - especially the centrist Pro-Business ones - with truckloads of SuperPAC funds and ad support and voter turnout efforts.

For all the gerrymandering the state Republicans have done, they are still vulnerable to voter turnouts (DeSantis barely won in 2018 by little over 3,000 votes). This stunt the Florida GOP is pulling is about to hit the wallets of hundreds of thousands of residents - and not just in Orange and Osceola counties - in a way that they'll view as unforgivable. No amount of culture war fearmongering can distract from families coping with higher property taxes and lost jobs.

If the Florida Republicans are kneecapping you with punitive laws to make you suffer, you fight back to make sure those Republicans are out of office by the next election (which is this November).

And that's all the LEGAL stuff Disney can do to punish DeSantis for starting this culture war fight. You might expect some of the illegal stuff like literal kneecapping to happen over the next couple months.

In the meantime... well, in THIS fight between Wingnut Assholes vs. Corporate Overlords, I'm gonna have to side with the Corporate Overlords. 

#GoDisney 

and #SayGayFlorida