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The DeSantis gambit

dudalb said:
Disney just escalated the fight:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/other/disney-scraps-plan-for-new-florida-campus-amid-desantis-feud/ar-AA1bn0ta

Iger puts it beautifully: Do you want the jobs and taxes or not?.
Click to expand...

Florida is still going to get the taxes/jobs. From your link:

"D’Amaro reiterated in his memo that the company still plans to invest $17 billion in Florida over the next 10 years, including the addition of around 13,000 jobs. The company currently employs more than 75,000 people in the state.

Disney declined to provide specific updates on that investment, but has previously announced plans to update park attractions, expand existing parks and add more cruise ships to its fleet in Florida."
 
RolandRat said:
Florida is still going to get the taxes/jobs. From your link:

"D’Amaro reiterated in his memo that the company still plans to invest $17 billion in Florida over the next 10 years, including the addition of around 13,000 jobs. The company currently employs more than 75,000 people in the state.

Disney declined to provide specific updates on that investment, but has previously announced plans to update park attractions, expand existing parks and add more cruise ships to its fleet in Florida."
Click to expand...

A lot of this remains very performative, on both sides. DeSantis is making a lot of noise, and perhaps plans to follow through on threats to directly harm Disney's business, but until that actually happens I doubt Disney will take more significant action to relocate their business.

Virtue signaling to the public is important for both parties, but money is king.

"Cash Rules Everything Around Me"

- Bob Iger
 
Because DeSantis isn't THAT kind of stupid. He knows the whole Disney Special District Thing and Disney's overall Grey Goo business model hasn't been super-popular with a lot of groups for some time now. Disney had enemies before DeSantis.

It's a petty, transparently political move and you're either a liar or an idiot if you argue otherwise and only time will tell if he picked a good target or not, but this wasn't done without thought or at random. DeSantis isn't unaware of what Disney "is."

Republicans are scarily good at finding things that the Left aren't exactly against but are hesitant to defend. See also why the police having arguably having the most powerful union in the country means that no matter how much the Left wants police reform that WILL pull their punches on it because they will not loose against a union.

Republicans are stupid. That's not the EXACT same thing as not being crafty or possessing a low animal cunning.
 
dudalb said:
Disney just escalated the fight:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/other/disney-scraps-plan-for-new-florida-campus-amid-desantis-feud/ar-AA1bn0ta

Iger puts it beautifully: Do you want the jobs and taxes or not?

Now reports De Santis will announce his candicay for POTUS next week, and his plan is to go farthre to the right then Trump at almost everything.
The guy is a moron.He stands little chance of getting the Trump voters, and has lost the GOPers looking for a Trump alternative. I think his decision to run solely on the Culture War was a terrible one. A lot of fiscal conservatives don't given a damn about the cultural issues and probably oppose the culture wars. De Santis has thrown their votes away.
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Lake Norna isn't part of the CFTOD. If the fight is over CFTOD, it seems odd to cancel a project outside of that.

And I don't think that is what's driving this decision. From your link, the original idea from 2021 was to relocate a bunch of Disney employees from California to Florida (ponder why Disney would want to do that for a moment), but many of the employees who would have been moved didn't want to move and voiced their opposition at the time. So this likely has more to do with internal pushback within Disney than it does the fight with DeSantis. And while your link seems to try to link the two issues because of the timing, there's no direct indication, from Disney or anyone else, that they are actually related.
 
TurkeysGhost said:
A lot of this remains very performative, on both sides. DeSantis is making a lot of noise, and perhaps plans to follow through on threats to directly harm Disney's business, but until that actually happens I doubt Disney will take more significant action to relocate their business.



Virtue signaling to the public is important for both parties, but money is king.



"Cash Rules Everything Around Me"



- Bob Iger
Click to expand...
Disney are masters of performance. DeSantis is just a noob.
 
Ziggurat said:
BTW, Disney is in fact closing an attraction in CFTOD: their Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser hotel. But that too has nothing to do with DeSantis. They're closing it because it's overpriced garbage that almost nobody wanted to pay for.
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Hand me the smelling salts. A large company charges way too much for garbage.
 
Florida's economy is likely to tank

... if De Santis keeps up this level of incompetence

Last week he signed into law SB 1718, Florida's newest anti-immigrant law. This new law forces any businesses with over 24 employees verify the citizenship of their employees or suffer penalties. Even though the law does not come into effect until July 1, it has already had a devastating effect on many projects. Many of Florida's over 800,000 undocumented immigrants are already simply not turning up to work. Building sites that normally have hundreds of workers, have just a few and progress has ground to a halt - same for road repairs and maintenance. Workers employed by commercial cleaners are not showing up to shopping malls and offices to clean them. Truckers are already boycotting Florida in protest against this law - according to the Pensacola News Journal, several truckers, especially Latinos, have called for a boycott and pledged not to enter the state. If that happens, supermarkets and shops will likely run out of items to put on their shelves because ¾ of interstate truck drivers who bring stuff into Florida are Latinos or immigrants or both. Videos of Florida farms filled with produce but having no workers to harvest them have popped up all over social media.

https://www.vox.com/2023/5/17/23725952/ron-desantis-immigration-law-florida


To that you can add the canned Disney project worth US$1billion that would have brought thousands of high-paying jobs to Florida.

https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article275557111.html

The Magic Kingdom made about $1 billion disappear in Florida on Thursday. Amid an escalating feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Disney pulled a serious power move. The company canceled a massive office complex set for Orlando, development that was supposed to bring with it more than 2,000 high-paying jobs. Boom. A billion dollars, evaporating into thin air. That’s the price tag now attached to DeSantis’ over-the-top, politically opportunistic war on “woke.” Disney’s decision is a stunning economic — and psychological — blow to the state, and it’s aimed right at the governor. Coming right before next week’s expected announcement that DeSantis is running for president, the company’s public about-face stands to damage him in the eyes of voters who shrink from the idea of a governor openly attacking a business that bucked him.​

He took on Disney because he was butt-hurt that they criticized the poor widdle snowflake. Disney is a multi-billion dollar company. If he keeps trying to fight them, he will lose.
 
smartcooky said:
To that you can add the canned Disney project worth US$1billion that would have brought thousands of high-paying jobs to Florida.
Click to expand...

This has already been discussed. Despite the framing of the story, there's no evidence of an actual connection. The cancellation was due to internal Disney issues, and it's going to hurt Disney because the move (these weren't going to be new employees, but employees moved from California to Florida) was going to reduce costs, something they desperately need right now.

He took on Disney because he was butt-hurt that they criticized the poor widdle snowflake. Disney is a multi-billion dollar company. If he keeps trying to fight them, he will lose.
Click to expand...

Florida has an annual GDP of $1 trillion. He'll be fine.
 
Ziggurat said:
Lake Norna isn't part of the CFTOD. If the fight is over CFTOD, it seems odd to cancel a project outside of that.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily.

Meatball Ron has shown himself to be unfriendly to businesses in general. It would be understandable that Disney would be hesitant to invest ANYWHERE there while the potential exists that republicans will take additional actions in retaliation. (i.e. they won't just stop at the CFTOD.)

Reminds me of Empire Strikes Back, where Vader tells Lando "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."

And I don't think that is what's driving this decision. From your link, the original idea from 2021 was to relocate a bunch of Disney employees from California to Florida (ponder why Disney would want to do that for a moment), but many of the employees who would have been moved didn't want to move and voiced their opposition at the time.
Click to expand...
I can understand why an employee would be hesitant to uproot their family and move hundreds of miles away.

Of course, the situation is probably made worse by the fact that they would be moving to FLORIDA to live under the American Taliban environment set up by Meatball Ron.

"We're asking you to move hundreds of miles away" is bad enough. "We are asking you to move hundreds of miles away, to a place where if you are gay, a minority, or a woman you will be treated as a second class citizen. But at least you will have more access to guns" seems to be just a tad worse.
 
Ziggurat said:
That's why Ron wants to be President: to be away from the ******** he created.
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And yet, people keep moving to Florida, and away from blue states like California and New York.

Curious.
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Not really that curious.

There are a lot of reasons people might move to Florida.... Better weather conditions in Florida as compared to New York, plus the higher number of people in California/NY keeps housing prices high. The ability to have year-round amusement parks brings in tourist jobs.

Much of that has little to do with what the state government is doing, and even an incompetent boob like Meatball Ron can't completely overcome the natural advantages that Florida has.
 
Segnosaur said:
Meatball Ron has shown himself to be unfriendly to businesses in general.
Click to expand...

Uh... no.

How long was Disney World closed for the Covid pandemic? Four months. How long was Disneyland closed for the Covid pandemic? More than a year. Gavin Newsom did far more damage to Disney than DeSantis ever did.

It would be understandable that Disney would be hesitant to invest ANYWHERE there while the potential exists that republicans will take additional actions in retaliation. (i.e. they won't just stop at the CFTOD.)
Click to expand...

If you had read dudalb's earlier news story on the topic, rather than just an editorial, you would have seen that this is explicitly not the position Disney is taking. Ignore the clickbait headline and actually pay attention to what's being said. First, the considerable internal Disney pushback even before any feud with DeSantis:

Many Disney employees balked at the company’s relocation plans when they were first announced in July 2021 by former CEO Bob Chapek. While some left the company, or transitioned to other posts within Disney that would not require a move to Florida, others held out hope that the plan would fizzle out after a postponement.​

And sure enough, it's fizzled out. And as for further investments in the state:

D’Amaro reiterated in his memo that the company still plans to invest $17 billion in Florida over the next 10 years, including the addition of around 13,000 jobs. The company currently employs more than 75,000 people in the state.​

Disney is going to continue to invest in Florida, because they're going to continue to make money in Florida. That's not about to change. The idea that this cancellation has anything to do with the Iger/DeSantis fight isn't coming from any of the parties involved. It's coming from uninvolved third parties who want to make something out of it for their own purposes.
 
Disclaimer: I am not an agriculturist.

smartcooky said:
Last week he signed into law SB 1718, Florida's newest anti-immigrant law. This new law forces any businesses with over 24 employees verify the citizenship of their employees or suffer penalties. Even though the law does not come into effect until July 1, it has already had a devastating effect on many projects. Many of Florida's over 800,000 undocumented immigrants are already simply not turning up to work. Building sites that normally have hundreds of workers, have just a few and progress has ground to a halt - same for road repairs and maintenance. Workers employed by commercial cleaners are not showing up to shopping malls and offices to clean them. Truckers are already boycotting Florida in protest against this law - according to the Pensacola News Journal, several truckers, especially Latinos, have called for a boycott and pledged not to enter the state. If that happens, supermarkets and shops will likely run out of items to put on their shelves because ¾ of interstate truck drivers who bring stuff into Florida are Latinos or immigrants or both. Videos of Florida farms filled with produce but having no workers to harvest them have popped up all over social media.

https://www.vox.com/2023/5/17/23725952/ron-desantis-immigration-law-florida
Click to expand...


It seems to me the harm caused by this law will mostly affect Floridians and migrant workers who have been working in Florida.

Florida's agricultural industry will suffer, but that's only 1.5% of Florida's economic output. Those of us who live outside Florida can expect to pay a little more for vegetables, oranges, flowers, products that use sugar, and so on, but DeSantis and his apologists will not hesitate to blame those higher prices on their political enemies, and their connection to this law will be so indirect that few voters will recognize the connection.

Although Florida accounts for a little over 3% of US exports, most of those exports should be little affected by this law. I was surprised by that, because I thought Florida's agricultural exports would be more important than they are.
 
Segnosaur said:
Not really that curious.

There are a lot of reasons people might move to Florida.... Better weather conditions in Florida as compared to New York, plus the higher number of people in California/NY keeps housing prices high. The ability to have year-round amusement parks brings in tourist jobs.

Much of that has little to do with what the state government is doing, and even an incompetent boob like Meatball Ron can't completely overcome the natural advantages that Florida has.
Click to expand...

California has better weather than Florida, so that's really no explanation at all. And property prices in California and New York aren't high simply because of the number of people who live there. Furthermore, New York actually has fewer people in it than Florida.
 
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