The Frankish Reich

Good legal analysis of the many issues created by DeSantis's grandstanding: https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/the-contractual-impossibility-of-unwinding-disneys-reedy-creek?context=search&index=1 In case it was not obvious, 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 by dissolving Reedy Creek. However, even without that explicit language, the bill dissolving Reedy Creek would have problems under contracts clauses of the Florida and U.S. constitutions. Stating that the county assumes the debt is simple enough—actually figuring out what that means is a different story. Reedy Creek spans both Orange and Osceola counties, so how will the debt be divided? Would it be by taxable value of property or by the properties themselves? And how would that apply to the utility revenue bonds when there is no easy way to divide which county the utilities rest in?

I don't disagree that the original purpose of the special district was to foster rapid development/expansion. But having just been there (and really, kids, don't make me go again - I've lost patience with the whole "Disney experience"* and I'd gladly have a few pints in Harry Potter Land up the road), it's wrong to say WDW is not expanding. It is always expanding. The whole new Star Wars area just opened. They're putting a hotel in there for the full Star Wars experience. They just connected up some other hotels by aerial gondola. There's new construction all over the place. It's like some kind of fungus that must continue to grow or it will die. *Yes, it is kind of a "nobody goes there anymore, it's always too crowded" thing.

Obviously I don't think Disney was taking a loss by continuing the RCID. I just pointed out that it not only gave them more control over their property; it also lowered their borrowing/bond interest costs. I do think they'll cut a deal as soon as everyone moves on from Ronnie's little "I can run as the real owns-the-libs candidate in 2024" moment.

Let's set aside the current so-called "Don't Say Gay" controversy and the Disney-DeSantis thing. Speaking as someone coming from a general libertarian perspective: 1. We should take a step back and consider whether the creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District was a net benefit or loss for the people of Orange County and Florida. I think the answer is clearly yes. Would Disney have built WDW without it? Probably. But it was certainly an incentive to keep expanding and developing an incredibly successful engine of economic growth. (If you are an environmentalist, that's a bad thing. So I get that, but I don't get the Republican-based opposition.) 2. More control over the development of Disney's private property is in accord with limited government principles. And it provides proof of the economic value of limited government. The WDW "campus" is remarkably well maintained and organized. It's hard to imagine the State/County doing as good a job by imposing their various zoning/building code demands. It's not as if the roads are crumbling and the hotels are collapsing. It is it's own weird kind of model city. 3. The main economic benefit today (other than avoiding another couple layers of bureaucracy): Reedy Creek, as a municipal corporation/special municipal district, gets to issue bonds as if it were a real city. That lowers borrowing costs, since Reedy Creek bonds earn federal tax-free dividends. If Disney needs to go to the private bond market to finance more development, their bonds probably need to pay a higher rate. Many progressives hate these special municipal districts. Pro-development (read: "traditional Republicans") typically like them for the reasons I just described. I don't know why "make WDW pay more" is considered sound policy by so-called limited government conservatives, other than the desire to punish the Disney Corporation for its corporate political statements (statements it has a 1st Amendment right to make! Read that Republican Supreme Court favorite, Citizens United) that are contrary to Gov. Ron's agenda. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Unfortunately, Florida is all too willing to sacrifice the type of thing that allowed it to make a straight-faced claim to being politically innovative (pro-business policy like Reedy Creek) for crass partisan gain.

Who needs Twitter, Facebook, etc. when we can just start "football" discussion boards to make the world a better place? Big Blitz, you're letting me down here by not tying this into your John Legend Mind Manipulation Theory of Everything.

You mean you don't love the poorly educated?

You know who seems to trust PFF grades? The Bills. I'm not saying they're using PFF, but it appears that their pro scouting is pretty much in line with PFF's. Every OL free agent signing has been a guy PFF liked better than the in-house option (I'm including Bates here because he is both - PFF liked him a whole lot better than the guys who got the majority of the snaps last year). The pure "counting stat" of sacks allowed makes Quessenberry seem like a awful choice, but the Bills are trusting PFF (type) grading rather than that staggering number. It'll be interesting to see if the Bills/PFF got it right.

Just here to say thanks. This is the way the old internet worked. You'd ask a question, or comment on a news event, and someone who actually knows something about the topic would jump in and clarify it for everyone. I miss that old internet. Nicely done, ALLEN1QB and sherpa.

Oh no, not THE Kevin Clinesmith. OMG, that's like .... 25 steps from Hillary herself! Kind of the Papadopoulos of the Dems. Posting hint: if you're gonna invoke the screen name of the wildest conspiratorial poster of all time, you gotta do better. Channel your DR! He would've said that the real Hillary was arrested by the military a long time ago. Too bad the mods scrubbed the "Q Analysis" 600 page thread. You'll have to ask DR if he archived it ... somewhere in a hidden bunker in North Hollywood. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/17/fact-check-hillary-clinton-not-hanged-guantanamo-bay/7687922002/

Correct. It's not like there were no prosecutions - and findings of guilt - here. Of course what we have in response is the typical "whataboutism." Yes, the whole Hillary-Fusion-Steele-Perkins Coie thing stinks, and I think it's pretty clear that she was deep into digging up dirt on Trump. But there's a kind of "see, they set up Trump!" thing going on here that assumes that Trump was somehow pure as the driven snow until evil deep state operatives set him up. It's also pretty clear that he and his minions were trying like hell to get dirt on Hillary from Russian state sources. That's why the Bannon quote (above in this thread) is so telling ... that's what one of Trump's key insiders thought of the whole mess, until of course Trump weirdly pardoned him for a completely unrelated offense, and Bannon rewarded him by coming back home to Trumpland. If you want to deflect blame by going to the old "politics is a dirty business," you won't get any argument from me. But that's not going to convince me or anyone other than those in the echo chamber that Trump was just a fine loyal American doing patriotic things ...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/03/donald-trump-russia-steve-bannon-michael-wolff Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian.

Well, let me remind you of how all of this started: Don Jr. "breathlessly" took a meeting with a woman who was almost certainly (and it's not as if she was a master of disguise - she was right out of central casting) was a Russian agent: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/mueller-report-confirms-don-jr-too-stupid-to-collude-with-russia

You do realize that in the government (believe me, I know) a late Friday filing is widely understood to be something you do to BURY, not amplify, a piece of news? And that a pre-holiday (Good Friday/Passover/Easter weekend) filing is even more famously something you do when you want to minimize publicity for a filing or press release? That tells me that Mr. Durham is underwhelmed by his own investigative "bombshell."

Agreed. Montreal was a great baseball city, and one that would be perfect for a MLB team to move to (or for MLB to expand to) - with a nice downtown ballpark it immediately becomes one of the better MLB sites to visit. So why hasn't the NFL colonized Saturday night? Or Saturday afternoon for that matter. I understood this to be an old "don't tread on college football Saturday" thing, but now college games are all over the place anyway, so it's not like they're honoring their part of some kind of gentlemen's agreement. Saturday just seems such a better time slot than the dreaded Thursday.

So you're saying that Darrian is a verb?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/politics/mike-lee-chip-roy-text-messages-jan-6-mark-meadows-overturn-election/ Let's set aside for just one moment whether this was a "peaceful assembly that got just a tiny bit out of hand" or an out-and-out "insurrection." Maybe a minor point, but it bothers me: Mark Meadows was White House Chief of Staff. Not a Trump 2020 Campaign Official. He--and other White House (not campaign) officials--was using your taxpayer-funded position to encourage the Senate to refuse to count state-certified electoral votes. I realize that the last couple decades (maybe longer) have seen an ever-increasing blurring of the line between campaign staff and White House (publicly-funded) staff, but this is the first time we've seen it go quite this far. We were all paying the salaries of some White House staffers who spent their work hours trying to overturn electoral results.

Damn! You got me. There it is, staring at me in the Constitution itself. I think it's Article 1, clause 9(b)(i): "Congress shall make laws and appropriate funds to facilitate interstate trucking operations (including but not limited to the "18 wheelers," "tractor-trailers," and "semi-trucks" that will probably be invented within the next 200 years or so) through the creation of an interstate highway system, including by enacting of a gasoline and diesel fuel taxes to facilitate commerce, to be effective no later than 60 days after the invention of the internal combustion engine, or within 60 days of the invention of diesel fuel or gasoline, or the year 1956, whichever comes first."

Thank you. A surprisingly fair and even-handed reply. As for what DeSantis said about getting back at Disney: DeSantis said he does support the legislature going after privileges that are “really unique to Disney,” such as repealing the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act, which established the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a tax district that lets Walt Disney World essentially operate as its own city outside the purview of the local government. The governor said there’s a “whole host of stuff” the legislature could look at in relation to Disney and it was “up to them to decide,” but he thinks it’s “right to be looking at this and reevaluat[ing] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/04/01/florida-gov-desantis-wants-to-punish-disney-but-wont-go-after-its-corporate-tax-breaks/?sh=4f38ec784745 Government action to punish an individual or corporation for exercising its free speech rights. So that's what's different about it.

Do I support Twitter banning the Babylon Bee? A. Not if I owned Twitter. Their main offense is terminal unfunniness. But do I support the right of a platform to decide who it allows to post on it? Absolutely. Part of free speech is deciding what speech you don't want to engage in. Do I support Twitter banning Trump? A. Not in the abstract. But again, they're a private company, they should be able to make their own rules. If Elon Musk buys them and decides he wants to ban @TheRealJeffBezos, well, have at it. How is the state of Florida [trying to] silence Disney? A. Not by the Governor b!tching about Disney. That's fine. That's politics. Should he have more important things to think about? Of course. But, whatever. But when you start talking about punishing them by taking away special (pro-Disney World development) provisions in the law for expressing their political opinions? Yeah, that's trying to silence them. (He's bluffing because Disney would sue, and their lawyers are a hell of a lot better than Florida's. But still.) Example: the Bills new stadium deal. The State of New York negotiated it. The theory is that keeping the Bills in Buffalo will be a net economic gain for NYS, even given the money up front. (I don't believe that, but, again ... whatever.) NYS made the deal, Pegula will build the stadium, sales taxes will flow in, etc., etc. Let's say its 2026 and the new stadium is built. Pegula decides he's gonna go full Trump and run for office. He starts tweeting some crap the new Governor doesn't like. The new Governor says "I'm taking away this or that tax break or special accommodation we gave him to build that stadium." That's the government punishing a private company for expressing an unpopular political opinion. These concepts aren't that hard to grasp. I get that I'm a lawyer, most aren't, so that's why I'm explaining it. But try to follow and then try to present a reasoned response. Not "it's o.k. when DeSantis does it because he's right and Disney is wrong."

Which is why we should definitely use the power of the State of Florida to silence Disney. These people are so hermetically sealed into their Tuckerverse that they can't see how contradictory their posts are.

And on a related topic: Today I just learned that the U.S. trucking industry is built on a tech infrastructure of roads and bridges that are built or highly subsidized by the U.S. government! Allow me to stop and let that sink in ... ... O.K.. I'm done. It seems like the government builds infrastructure that private companies then use by creating profitable enterprises. (The cut-and-pasted comment above is perhaps the stupidest Musk/Twitter take yet)

I'm sorry. I must be stupid. Using the power of the government to chill free speech of a company seems to be exactly what you and you ilk railed against not so long ago. If you don't want to go to Disney, then don't. Keep Ron DeSantis out of it.

2021: "This whole cancel culture thing is out of control!" 2022: "Cancel Disney!"

It just so happens that the best "games" (see how I changed the emphasis?) have been, with the exception of The Comeback, not the best results: 1. 13 seconds. OK, maybe because it's still fresh in my mind (as in a fresh wound), but really ... have you ever seen a more entertaining game of football? 2. Wide Right. How can nobody else list that? The PTSD Mind Eraser at work. 3. The Comeback. Just wow. 4. The Music City "Miracle." That one is the NFL equivalent of the Stanford Marching Band. No other game comes close. Are there other franchises that have been involved in 4 epic games like that? So what if we lost 75% of 'em!

Am I banned from discussing economics if I say: - this is the Fed's fault for keeping interest rates way too low for way too long - this is the Congress's fault for overstimulating the economy - this is Trump's fault for not pushing back harder on Congress because it was an election year and he didn't want "the worst recession since 1982" on his record - this is Biden's fault for urging even more spending and even more "COVID relief" long after the time it became apparent that the problem was going to be one of an overheated economy, not slack demand - this is Putin's fault for starting a completely pointless war that will have serious and lasting ripple effects in the economy, from the price of energy to the price of wheat This is our fault for not seeing it coming because we are so wrapped up in not ever having to give up anything, not even for a brief moment to let things rebalance. We demand - I say demand! - a bubble economy to make us all feel rich.