Mickey Mouse vs Pudding Fingers Ron: Desantis’s War on Disney! Should Disney leave?

[Fan since a Fetus]

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Edited October 24, 2023 by Fan since a Fetus

[Long n Left]

3 hours ago, China said:

Texas judge invites Disney to state after Florida revokes special status

 

A Texas judge is urging Disney to relocate to the Lone Star State following a heated flap with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other GOP lawmakers in its home base over the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

 

DeSantis led a successful push to revoke Disney’s special tax status that effectively allowed the company to self-govern its theme park district within the state. The move, which came after Disney publicly opposed the GOP-backed “Don’t Say Gay” law, has prompted speculation that the Mouse House could leave Florida.

 

In a letter to Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Fort Bend County Judge K.P. George offered to relocate Walt Disney World Resort to Texas – arguing the move would free the company from what he described as “modern day political extremists.” The county is located southwest of Houston, Texas.

 

“While you, your company, employees, and diverse fans face authoritarian, anti-business, and culture war attacks from extremists in Florida, we in Fort Bend are more than ready to welcome the Disney family with thousands of good paying jobs and billions of dollars of investments,” George said in the letter.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

Abbott better than DeSantis? 🤔

 

Rock, meet hard place.

[TradeTheBeal!]

Disney don’t want no part of that power grid.

[Dan T.]

Hey Mickey, head to New Mexico!

[CousinsCowgirl84]

 Can someone please explain to me how this is bad for Disney? I know desantis did it to hurt Disney, but it seems to me all he did was take a lot of expense and liability away from Disney…..

Edited April 26, 2022 by CousinsCowgirl84

[Cooked Crack]

10 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

 Can someone please explain to me how this is bad for Disney? I know desantis did it to hurt Disney, but it seems to me all he did was take a lot of expense and liability away from Disney…..

It probably isn't in the long run. Disney will get back their district. The only thing this stunt is going to do is give desantis some more juice among conservatives nationally. Even if Disney doesn't get it's district back the local governments will probably rubber stamp what it wants just not as efficiently.

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Larry]

5 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

It probably isn't in the long run. Disney will get back their district. The only thing this stunt is going to do is give desantis some more juice among conservatives nationally. Even if Disney doesn't get it's district back the local governments will probably rubber stamp what it wants just not as efficiently.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Disney already owns the government in both counties, anyway.  

[PokerPacker]

10 hours ago, Fan since a Fetus said:

Texas is not in any better shape than Florida. All the same things are happening here. I’m really really hoping we can get Beto. It would be a Yuge waste of money for Disney to move here.

What if Disney managed to flip the state blue?  It's been threatening to go that way.

[No Nonsense]

The people (the Texas judge included) who acts as if Disney can just up and leave Florida must have never been to Disney World. It’s not exactly an amusement park with a couple of Motel 6’s. Lol The place is literally the size of San Francisco. 

 

[Captain Wiggles]

Not only is Disney World its own city and county they employ 80k people in Florida alone. I think it's a losing battle for DeSantis and his stooges. Disney really holds all the cards imo. Makes great headlines I guess. 

[Larry]

And the more publicity it gets the more convinced his followers are that their Hero is standing up to the mightiest "woke" corporation on the planet.  

 

[Momma There Goes That Man]

11 hours ago, PokerPacker said:

What if Disney managed to flip the state blue?  It's been threatening to go that way.

Florida is pretty solid red and getting more red each year. It’s a lost cause 

[PokerPacker]

1 hour ago, Momma There Goes That Man said:

Florida is pretty solid red and getting more red each year. It’s a lost cause 

I meant Texas

[Fan since a Fetus]

On 4/26/2022 at 8:02 PM, PokerPacker said:

What if Disney managed to flip the state blue?  It's been threatening to go that way.

 

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Edited October 24, 2023 by Fan since a Fetus

[China]

Florida can't actually dissolve Disney World's self-governance district, Disney and tax lawyers agree

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday signed a bill that aims to strip Disney of its self-governing authority in and around Walt Disney World, but in their rush to punish Disney for opposing the new "Don't Say Gay" law, Florida Republicans "failed to notice an obscure provision in state law that says the state could not do what legislators were doing — unless the district's bond debt was paid off," the Miami Herald reported Tuesday. But Disney noticed and quietly assured investors the new law won't stand up in court. 

 

The Reedy Creek Improvement District allows Disney to act like a municipal government, setting its own rules, taxing itself to pay for services, and raising funds by issuing bonds. When Florida approved the district in 1967, it pledged not to "limit or alter the rights of the district" until "all such bonds together with interest thereon" are "fully met and discharged."

 

Obviously, "dissolving Reedy Creek 'limited' and 'altered' its ability to improve and maintain its project and collect its various charges and taxes, and thus Florida would be violating its pledge to bondholders," Florida attorney Jacob Schumer explains at Bloomberg Tax. "However, even without that explicit language, the bill dissolving Reedy Creek would have problems under contracts clauses of the Florida and U.S. constitutions."

 

If Florida gets around its pledge — and "states usually aren't in the business of arguing that their own promises are bad," Schumer writes — Disney's bond obligations would fall to Orange and Osceola counties, raising taxes on residents.

 

DeSantis claimed Monday that "under no circumstances will Disney not pay its fair share of taxes," and "under no circumstances will Disney not pay its debts." But in fact, "Disney has more power now to determine its tax bill than it did a week ago," Orange County tax collector Scott Randolph tells the Herald. "That's what's crazy to me. They want to punish Disney, but this is the furthest thing from that."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[The Evil Genius]

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

 

 

 

So the plan is to just lie and let Republicans eat it up

Edited April 29, 2022 by Cooked Crack

[Captain Wiggles]

DeSantis gonna be all "And Mexico... I mean Disney will pay for the wall.... I mean taxes." 🤭

[Larry]

8 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

So the plan is to just lie and let Republicans eat it up

Been working so far. 

[China]

Florida Taxpayers Sue Gov. Ron DeSantis for Eliminating Disney’s Special District

 

Taxpayers of a county adjacent to Disney’s theme park area have joined the battle of Reedy Creek, claiming that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis violated their rights when he signed a law dissolving the special tax district.

 

In a complaint seeking to block the law filed Tuesday in Florida federal court, residents who live near Disney World argue they and other taxpayers will be burdened with at least $1 billion in Disney’s bond debt if the state follows through with its plan to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District. “It is without question that Defendant Governor DeSantis intended to punish Disney for a 1st Amendment protected ground of free speech,” reads the lawsuit. “Defendant’s violation of Disney’s 1st Amendment rights directly resulted in a violation of Plaintiffs’ 14th Amendment rights to due process of law.”

 

A lawsuit challenging the law was widely expected after Florida lawmakers passed a bill in April stripping Disney of its special privileges of self-governance in retaliation for its opposition to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law.

 

Under the new law, independent special districts that were created prior to 1968 and haven’t been renewed since will be dissolved in June 2023 unless a new agreement is reached. Since Reedy Creek operates much like a local government, including borrowing money for infrastructure projects by issuing bonds, the question of what happens to the district’s bond debt has remained unanswered.

 

Residents of the nearby Osceola county, who filed the lawsuit, say dissolving Reedy Creek will likely lead to increased taxes for the residents of Central Florida to pay off Disney’s bond debt, estimated to be between $1 billion and $2 billion.

 

Disney and residents of the land it owns in Orlando bear the costs of maintaining the area, including paying for emergency and waste management services. The company’s status as a special tax district also exempts it from a host of regulatory hurdles.

 

“Stripping Disney of this special district designation will move these major regulatory burdens unto the county, thereby increasing the Plaintiff’s taxes, and will cause significant injury to plaintiffs,” the complaint states.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

First to predict "DeSantis and the legislature vote to dissolve the county".  

[China]

Why Josh Hawley has introduced new anti-Disney legislation

 

After Florida Republicans approved what some have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” policy, Disney — a major force in the Sunshine State — eventually criticized the GOP’s anti-LGBTQ measure. Whether the corporate giant realized it or not, this one act — publicly disagreeing with a regressive Republican policy — touched off a new culture war battle.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis demanded that the state’s GOP-led legislature retaliate against Disney by scrapping the company’s longstanding special taxing district. State lawmakers did as they were told, and the Republican governor signed the anti-Disney measure soon after.

 

But there’s no reason to see this as a state or local matter.

 

National Review, a leading conservative magazine, reported last month that Disney’s copyright on its signature Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse is set to expire on January 1, 2024, and securing an extension “might be more difficult” as GOP officials turn against the company.

 

It was against this backdrop that Fox News reported this morning:

 

Quote

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is introducing legislation that would strip the Walt Disney Company of special copyright protections granted to the corporation by Congress, while also limiting the length of new copyrights. The “Copyright Clause Restoration Act of 2022” would cap the length of copyrights given corporations by Congress to 56 years and retroactively implement this change on companies, including Walt Disney.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[Destino]

That article reads like a strong win for Desantis.  
 

Quote

More significantly for DeSantis, there is also discussion of allowing the governor to appoint two members to the Reedy Creek board. “These compromises can be done with the least amount of impact,” Stewart said. “We can’t let the governor look like he lost.”

two hard right wingers on the reedy creek board there to enforce the radical right agenda.