Opinion: Disney should leave Florida. It's time for DeSanty World. - Milbank

[question everything]

Mickey Mouse needs a sanctuary city.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Hades) got his state legislature this week to abolish the favorable tax arrangement that brought Disney World to Orlando and kept it there for 55 years. It’s the latest salvo against corporate America from the Trump right, which has already threatened Twitter, Facebook, Citigroup and Delta Air Lines. But now they’re canceling Mickey and Minnie? That’s just Goofy. Taking aim at Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas and Moana? It’s not only cruel — it’s Cruella.

Suddenly, sad times are upon the Happiest Place on Earth. Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, has promised to “grant Mickey and Minnie full asylum in Colorado” and offered Disney a “Mountain Disneyland” retreat from “Florida’s authoritarian socialist attacks on the private sector.” Many Disney fans online are urging Disney World to leave Florida.

Of course, you can’t just put a resort with six theme parks and two dozen or so hotels on a magic carpet ride to, say, New Jersey. (As it is, central Floridians could be stuck with more than $1 billion in debt and a massive property-tax increase because of DeSantis’s anti-Disney vendetta.) But Disney is the place where dreams come true, and mine is that the whole of Disney World, which employs roughly 80,000 Floridians and attracts tens of millions of tourists every year, will take the second star to the right and straight on till morning — and abandon Florida entirely. DeSantis would be left with a 25,000-acre house of horrors in Orlando: an abandoned resort in a state nobody wants to visit, thanks to Ron’s Runaway Railway.

(snip)

Soon, there won’t be much of a constituency left. As J.D. Vance, a Republican Senate candidate from Ohio, put it in a just-released private message from 2016, “We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-education white people, and I have been saying for a long time that we need to offer those people SOMETHING.” So offer them a theme park! Rename Disney World’s ruins DeSanty World.

More..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/22/disney-world-should-leave-florida-desantis

(I don't know why I cannot use the gift link, I thought I can use 10 a month and have not used any..)

[LakeArenal]

1. Yes. But where? Bad weather would be prohibitive.

[Effete Snob]

5. Depends on one's definition of "bad"

Then again, if you are selling soft drinks which require a mortgage to purchase, central Florida in August is "good weather".

But just about anywhere where people stay out in the hot sun too long is a GQP stronghold except for densely-populated parts of southern California which already has a Disney park.

[LakeArenal]

6. That's exactly my thinking.

Baseball and Disney. Both used to be affordable for families

PS even Wisconsin is unbearable in August.

[Effete Snob]

8. Having spent a certain summer week at Alpine Valley, WI annually, back in the day

...I found it tolerable.

[LakeArenal]

12. Stevie Ray Vaughan Concert?

[Effete Snob]

14. Grateful Dead

[bottomofthehill]

2. Disney should just buy Bermuda. The entire island.

[keithbvadu2]

3. GOP World... Groomerville for the kiddies

[Effete Snob]

4. There's a couple of contradictions in perceptions of this situation

First, what DeSantis is doing cannot simultaneously "hurt Disney" and "impose additional taxes on Floridians to make up for the services provided and used by Disney."

The initial point of the deal is that Disney would be in charge of what would otherwise be public services in the affected area. As has been rightfully pointed out, offloading the management of these services would shift that cost away from Disney and onto the backs of Florida property taxpayers.

So, there is an element of "Don't throw me into the briar patch" to all of this, to quote a now-silenced Disney character.

Second, I guess we're all back on the "corporations have the right to freely express opinions on matters of public interest" bus? I thought we had gotten off of that bus and onto "Citizens United unleashed a bunch of horrors I read about on a blog".

Both Disney and Citizens United are/were media companies engaged in the production of audiovisual products. Does the "principle" just come down to what side we are on at a particular time? Because this is kind of dizzying.

[lapucelle]

9. What DeSantis is doing will simutaneously hurt both Disney and Florida taxpayers.

Gov. Ron DeSantis clears a way to revoke Disney’s special district in Florida.

The Florida Senate approved a move to end Disney World’s self-governing privileges starting next year.

Disney’s special zone is called the Reedy Creek Improvement District and gives the company considerable control over the planning and permitting process for construction on its 25,000-acre property, including road building. Reedy Creek also levies taxes on Disney to pay for the resort’s own fire and medical response battalions, among other services. Disney World even generates some of its own electricity through Reedy Creek.

The elimination of Reedy Creek would require the two counties that contain Disney World to step in and provide the services, which would probably lead to increased taxes for residents, according to James C. Clark, a professor at the University of Central Florida. Disney could apply to re-establish the district if it is eliminated.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/business/desantis-disney-world-district.html

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The Citizen's United case involved the independent election expenditures by corporations as an exercise of free speech. Corporations were never generally prohibited from expressing opinions on matters of public interest.

[Effete Snob]

10. The Citizen's United case

Lol, you left out what the expenditures were for.

Citizen's United was making a movie. Donors were funding the movie. The movie was going to be critical of Hillary Clinton. Regardless of their point of view, what gets dropped in the sleight of hand where you describe the case is that it was about producing a movie.

It only becomes an "election expenditure" when, through the magic of reclassification, the fact that the movie is critical of a political figure makes it classifiable as an in kind contribution.

To go the other way on this case would result in FEC review of a lot of political media.

https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-and-citizens-united

Most of the time, if you ask people "Hey, what was it the company Citizen's United was actually doing?" most seem to have no idea that they were making a movie.

[lapucelle]

11. I'm not sure what your point is. The meaning of "election expenditure" is clear.

Neither do I agree with your assumption that "it only becomes an 'election expenditure' when, through the magic of reclassification, the fact that the movie is critical of a political figure makes it classifiable as an in kind contribution."

The "speech" doesn't have to be critical of a political figure. It can be laudatory.

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So just to recap,

- Ron DeSantis's boneheaded move will harm both Disney and Florida taxpayers, and
- corporations have long enjoyed the freedom to express opinions on matters of public interest.

[RicROC]

13. Relocate Disney World to Puerto Rico.

PR needs some fresh $$ coming into their island. I wonder if the land where the Arecibo telescope collapsed would be an ideal place for Mickey.