The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro gloated over Florida legislation whose sole purpose is to punish and silence an American corporation for its disloyalty to Gov. DeSantis. Never mind that it will likely never take effect.
The legislation, which has now passed the Florida House as well as the Senate, dissolves the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a 55-year-old deal that allows Disney to self-govern its 25,000-acre theme park complex. From The Washington Post:
DeSantis (R) praised the effort, telling potential donors in a fundraising email, “I was elected to put the people of Florida first, and I will not allow a woke corporation based in California to run our state.”
That should tell you all you need to know about how thin-skinned, petulant and dishonest DeSantis is. Disney was never trying to run the state. It merely paused its political donations in the state and condemned DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” bill, designed to stifle teachers. And that was only after an outcry that Disney had not spoken out sooner.
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans claimed to stand for the free marketplace, the free marketplace of ideas and lower taxes. But those days are gone. The punish-Disney-for-disloyalty legislation also punishes Florida taxpayers. More from The Washington Post:
Meanwhile, local officials in Central Florida sounded the alarm, warning the repeal could leave them with a burdensome tax bill. Currently, Disney is responsible for everything including road maintenance, building inspections, 911 emergency calls and sewage treatment at the theme park, which straddles two counties and covers 40 square miles.
“Orange County is going to be stuck with $164 million or more per year in expenses with no revenue,” Orange County tax collector Scott Randolph said. “So they’re going to have to raise property taxes. This is a huge tax increase on the citizens of Orange County that they’ll have to pay every single year.”
But the law is probably more GOP/Fox News performance art than anything. It doesn’t take effect until June 2023 and, as the lone state senator to oppose the bill put it, “Nobody actually thinks this is going to happen. The cost to the state would be astronomical, potentially billions of dollars.”
But the right-wingers don’t care about that reality – because own the libs!
Media Matters caught The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh hinting that violence against Disney is justified. First, he lied, saying, Disney “came out fully in favor of and committed to the sexual indoctrination of children. It proved itself to be an enemy of Florida parents and parents across the country and around the world.” Then he said:
WALSH: Why should [Disney] retain its special privileges in light of that? Why shouldn't it be punished for what it's done? Why shouldn't it be made to feel the pain?
Defense is simply stopping Disney's intrusion. It's just saying, no you can't do that. Offense is punching back and punching back hard and making sure that they feel it. Offense is making an example of them. Offense is taking Mickey Mouse's head and putting it on a spike – metaphorically, of course. And offense is what we need.
Shapiro, on the other hand, went on a Twitter rant pretending that he just wants corporations to be apolitical. Parker Molloy has a great smackdown which has the fringe benefit of allowing me to avoid linking to his tweets:
