Remember these areas are mostly Democratic strong holds which means it is icing on the cake for DeathSantis if it costs them more than they can afford in extra taxes. He gets to hurt a large company that disagrees with him even as it brings much needed revenue into the state and hurt the majority democrats in the area as well. Win Win for the fascist governor.
The Reedy Creek Improvement Act essentially allows Walt Disney World to reside in Florida unregulated, acting as its own “government” in a way. The act involved creating a special taxing district that acts with the same authority as a county government.
This situation, while complex, seemed fairly cut-and-dry until reporters started to do the numbers and figure out what the termination of the Reedy Creek Improvement Act would actually mean for local taxpayers.
Mary Ellen Klas, the Miami Herald Capitol Bureau Chief tweeted some more information regarding the situation between Disney and Gov. DeSantis. As you can see, the termination of this act could transfer a whopping $2 billion worth of debt over to taxpayers, resulting in thousands of dollars in tax bills.
Sen. @JeffreyBrandes asks: "My concern is this bill essentially wipes away Disneys' $2 billion of debt…if the legislative intent here is ultimately to attack them, then why would we want to cancel $2 billion of debt?"
Sen. @jenn_bradley says that the debt will be transferred to the "general purpose government" which is likely to be the county. Asked if the 1.7 millon residents of Orange and Osceola should be asked if they want to assume the debt, she avoided an answer.
.@FarmerForFLSen pressed her: Where in this bill (which applies to Disney and 5 other districts) does it say that these six districts don't serve a public purpose? @jenn_bradley concedes there is nothing that says they don't serve a public purpose.
JUST IN: Ron DeSantis’ plan to punish Disney for supporting LGBTQ rights by repealing their special district governing authority would raise taxes on Florida families in the Orlando area by $2,200 each, per @miamiherald.
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) April 20, 2022
I wonder if Disney regrets the millions they have poured into the Florida Republican party. This is the Republican party that claims businesses are people and can do anything they want, is now showing that applies only as long as they do what the most regressive right wing parts of the party want them to do. This is a warning to all big business in red states, toe the line or be attacked. The problem is big companies cannot attract qualified top people to work in bigoted states. They cannot get parents to move to these states. And if the businesses is like Disney that depends on tourism the normal non-bigoted people won’t support the company if they become right wing assholes. Personally I think Disney should immediately pour all that money into Democratic candidates and help bring the state back to its former glory as a Democratic strong hold before so many conservatives retired down here. Businesses like Disney seen the state turning Republican and poured money into the Republican candidates thinking they would stay loyal to the big money donors. We see now that propaganda, ideology, indoctrination, and pleasing the fascist leader is far more important in the minds of the right wing.
The Republican-controlled Florida Senate quickly voted Wednesday to dissolve Disney World’s Reedy Creek Improvement District. The Senate voted 23-16 to dissolve Reedy Creek, with Sen. Jeff Brandes the only Republican to vote against Sen. Jennifer Bradley’s bill.
The Senate voted along party lines to approve Bradley’s bill retracting the Disney carveout. Democrats assailed their Republican colleagues for capitulating to DeSantis out of fear of facing primary opponents.
Critics of the governor say the bills were meant to punish Disney, Florida’s largest single-site employer, for opposing the so-called “don’t say gay” law signed by DeSantis last month.
Read the full article. As you can see below, Bradley’s campaign video is full MAGA.
Republican-led Florida Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would eliminate a special tax district that has allowed Disney to govern the land where its theme parks sit $DIShttps://t.co/yJwn6fkksV
I presume that Disney would no longer have to pay employee wages and benefits to the firefighters and police. Looks like the taxes will be going up for the new municipality it is absorbed into. Not very bright on DeathSentences judgement. Of course, it’s the optics that count for them.
“A 2019 study found Disney dominates the Central Florida tourism industry, according to Oxford Economics, and produced: $75.2 billion annual economic impact for Central Florida. 463,000 jobs. $5.8 billion in additional state tax revenue.”
Well, businesses looking at locating in Florida are taking note of the political tyranny. If the state will fuck over a corporate giant like Disney, imagine what they’d do to a regular company or business.
It’s all GQP theater to warn corporations that they better be on the “right” side of the culture wars. Meanwhile, Florida continues to lose shoreline and fresh water due to climate change, but there’s no Special Legislative Session for real problems.
Yes, it is, and despite our efforts of more than half a century since Stonewall to convince people that we’re worth having around, it’s now abundantly clear that they haven’t been listening to us all this time because they simply don’t care – they want us all dead.
We maxed out what exposure would get us. It was a lot and a big thanks to everyone who risked their family relationships and careers by coming out. Younger generations are more lgbt-friendly as a result. But the generation still in power hates us as much as ever and see this as their last chance to enact their theocratic hate on us. Yes, they want us dead. And their voters show up to keep them in power. Will ours? Sometimes they do but most of the time they don’t.
Example of what I mean about us hitting the limit. I just watched this year’s GLAAD awards. (Not worth your time for the most part, tbh, except for this part.) A mom of a trans son got up and spoke. She had had Abbott and his wife over for dinner to show him what a family with a trans kid was really like. He’s been in their home at their table. I’m sure it seemed to go well. Didn’t change a damn thing. They don’t see us as human. They might be nice to our faces (I know tons of people like this) but they will vote to send us all to firing squads if that was possible.
Amb. Victoria Neuland joins Morning Joe to discuss attempts at diplomacy with Russia, why she says Putin cares little for his own people and the impact sanctions are having on Russia.
Ayman Mohyeldin: “That judge—who was rated unqualified to be a judge—has the sole power to loosely or narrowly interpret the word ‘sanitation,’ and change the rules for hundreds of millions of Americans.”
Understand this is about installing right wing propaganda as the preferred way of thinking at Florida schools. If you read the article these quotes come from you see the issue is that the Republican majority took issue that education did not demand allegiance to the idea of the “Americans all ways right exceptionalism” and that crediting agencies stopped the Republican leaders from taking over the school. On student talks of bring right wing media provocateurs to speak at the school now and got cheers. I will put some quotes from that article first, then the main story from Joe my god.
The measure, Senate Bill 7044, was signed a week after an “intellectual diversity” survey was sent out to all university staff, students and faculty. The survey, required in a bill approved last year, posed questions asking if students felt their professors used their platforms to inject their viewpoint and asked all about their political beliefs. The statewide faculty union called for a boycott of the survey and several faculty leaders expressed fear that it would chill free speech.
The bill signed Tuesday also took on accreditation agencies, requiring state universities to switch accreditors after each cycle. Some faculty leaders have expressed fears that the measure could cause Florida schools to lose research funds and federal student aid.
The provision stems from friction last year between some state leaders and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, the accrediting organization for universities in the Southeast. The group had raised questions about political influence at Florida State University and the University of Florida.
At FSU, the issue arose after education commissioner Richard Corcoran made a bid to become the university’s president. Corcoran spoke at Tuesday’s news conference in favor of the bill.
Tuesday’s event also featured Taylor Walker, a conservative student from FSU majoring in history. She spoke of bringing conservative commentator Ben Shapiro to campus, sparking applause from residents at The Villages.
“As a conservative on a college campus, sometimes you have to face some hurdles,” Walker said. “There still are some individuals out there who think woke narratives are the only narratives that should be taught on college campuses. As a history major, I can attest to that. As I go into my classes, my professors hold me to high standards, as they should. This bill gives me the opportunity to hold them to the same high standards that they should be held to.”
Notice the idea pushed is that professors only teach left wing woke stuff. Oh my god the right is so abused. These are college age students and they had a choice to go to any school that supported their ideas but went to these schools because they taught an accredited higher education that the right doesn’t agree with so they legislate that if the teaches teach that stuff they don’t like they will fire the teachers. The right doesn’t want education they want indoctrination. Repeat by rote how great the Republican autocrats authoritarians are!
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed a bill that makes it harder for faculty at state universities to retain tenure, framing the legislation as another way that he and the Legislature are working to prevent educators from bringing their political views into the classroom.
In a wide-ranging news conference at The Villages that took swings at Twitter and alleged that textbook publishers were peddling hidden agendas, DeSantis criticized what he called “lifetime appointments” for university professors.
“We need to make sure the faculty are held accountable and make sure they don’t just have tenure forever without having any type of ways to hold them accountable or evaluate what they’re doing,” DeSantis said.
DeathSantis must be trying to raise from the dead “Trump University” because that’s how other colleges and university will view the education level of Florida students.
It’s a continuum that we saw with Joe McCarthy and worse. Meet Trofim Lysenko.
No doubt, the intended long-term outcome is to force university professors seeking employment to avoid Florida, which will allow Republicans to shut down public higher education for lack of qualified teachers.
They’ve been warning us for decades that their goal is to destroy public education, including at the university level. They know it’s their now-or-never chance to finally do it.
When discussions turn to the rise of authoritarianism, crackdowns on the press or the judiciary are usually front and center. Equally under threat though, is academic freedom. In a healthy democracy, academics have the freedom to research, teach, and act as a corrective to societies, governments, and institutions, which are supposed to protect them.
Across the world, authoritarian leaders are targeting universities and professors to silence critical thinking and crush academic freedom. In Hungary, Turkey, Nicaragua and Mexico universities, academics and scientists, have come under attack from the authorities as governments try to restrict freedom of expression.
A Florida manpleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court to threatening a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney Roger B. Handberg for the Middle District of Florida made the announcement.
On April 19, David Hannon, 67, of Sarasota, entered a guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher P. Tuite to an information charging him with one count of threatening a federal official.
According to information presented at the guilty plea hearing, on July 16, 2019, while in Sarasota, Hannon sent an email to U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar threatening to kill her.
Hannon sent the email following a televised press conference held by Representative Omar and three other U.S. Congresswomen.
In his threatening email, which had a subject line that read, “[You’re] dead, you radical Muslim,” Hannon referred to Congresswoman Omar and the other Congresswomen of color as “radical rats,” and asked Congresswoman Omar if she was prepared “to die for Islam.”
The email further stated that Hannon was going to shoot the Congresswomen in the head.
David Hannon, 67, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, sent an email to Omar in July 2019, after Omar and three other members of Congress held a televised news conference criticizing then-President Trump.https://t.co/8fwExHWZEw
Scottie's Playtime 