We are talking about a business making a choice on how to speak or not speak about something whether it would cause backlash from a political party, a religion, or a government. Everyone wants to scream "They have a right to say what they want" . I am not questioning that. I am saying sometimes you weigh what a choice may result in down the road.
Disney and Universal never would have followed the same permitting process. In the 1980s the City of Orlando was allowed to enforce the EPCOT Building Code as one of the four model codes local governments were required to enforce (a law that came after the Magic Kingdom opened).
Disney MGM opened a year before USF
But a business shouldn't have to fear retaliation from the government due to the first amendment.
People can choose to think whatever they want. That’s why we call it a choice. But it’s not a check. And it doesnt change the constitution as it relates to the courts. Unless of course we change the the constitution.
It does risk alienating its customers and facing retaliation from them. But in our country, it does not risk retaliation from the government.
Government retaliations should not be one of those choices. That being the calculus is a huge problem. This is also not about a single incident and issue. At some point somebody was going to realize that the Reedy Creek Improvement District was a target to try and influence Disney’s creative and management decisions, which is exactly what is happening.
But the business does not have to factor in government retaliation. That’s prohibited by our constitution.
I explicitly said it was as close to a check you could have on an entity that is without any functional checks.
I wasn’t speaking constitutionally. I just said it’s a problem. The courts just came up because that is actually where a lawsuit by Disney would end up. If it got to that point.
I'll give you that, but I think you and I can both agree there's a difference between Lennar building a development and selling the homes off to many individual homebuyers, profiting once, and Disney building an entertainment complex 50+ years ago and continuing to profit off it ever since.
If someone breaks into my house, steals my stuff, and stabs me on the way out, I know for darned sure a crime was committed.
RCID is not as unique as some people here want to believe.
Yeah. A lot easier than addressing the constitutionality of something through a lawsuit. Although in your example, that jackass is still entitled to due process.
The conservative Heritage Foundation once published an analysis of Reedy Creek, arguing that it was a model for private development and upending bureaucracy, allowing a private company to build something that no one had before while getting government out of the way (remember when small government was all the rage?). The analysis argued that improvement districts like Reedy Creek should be adopted all over the country for companies wanting to build innovative things.
The difference is that Disney has to keep paying the bills for the infrastructure while the housing developer gets to pass those off to others. You’re still barking up the tree of Disney avoiding some burden. The District implemented a regulatory environment where one largely did not exist. Disney isn’t getting a whole host of services for which they pay the counties.
I can give you all the same answer. I certainly do not condone what has happened here. Government retaliations should never happen, but they do by both political parties. When you make a choice, there will be a reaction by someone. It may be good for your company, it may be bad, or it may have no result. This is why a business usually looks deep into a choice they make, rather than a knee jerk reaction to some noise on social media.
Again, we are not talking about a single choice related to a single issue. You are in effect arguing that all content and management decisions at Disney, across the globe, should try to avoid political retaliation in Florida, because that is what this is actually about.
