On April 22, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill dissolving the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Put that way, it sounds rather routine, but it isn’t. DeSantis called a special session of the legislature  just to get this done. The only thing routine about it is that it’s an example of Rule Number One in Florida politics since 2018: Don’t publicly disagree with Ron DeSantis, or he’ll throw a tantrum and try to punish you.

The Reedy Creek Improvement District is, as you’ve probably heard by now, 38.5 square miles of land in Orange and Osceola Counties owned by the Walt Disney Company. In 1967, the man himself decided to build an amusement park in the area, but he wanted — and got — something in return: Self-governance.

Disney ran Reedy Creek as, essentially, its own polity. It taxed itself to build roads and provide services normally provided by government elsewhere.  And it largely got to do things its way instead of Tallahassee’s way.

As a result, the Orlando area became a global tourist mecca. Disney did well, of course, but so did the area’s other businesses and the two counties’ residents. Among other things, the population of the Orlando metro area grew from about 275,000 to more than two million over the 55 years of the district’s existence.

Then Disney said something Ron DeSantis didn’t like. Specifically, it condemned the state’s recently passed “parental rights” law, better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. And for that, DeSantis decided, Disney had to pay.

The move was also presumably politically calculating. Positioning himself as opposed to “woke” Disney couldn’t possibly hurt him with Florida’s Trump-addled Republican base, and Orange and Osceola counties voted for his Democratic opponent by huge margins in 2018 anyway. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer is: A lot.

From here on out, instead of taxing itself liberally to provide excellent public services, Disney will just fork over  taxes to the counties’ governments. Disney may actually end up paying more, but local residents are likely to get less for the money. After all, those governments aren’t used to doing the things that Disney’s been doing (and doing pretty well) for 55 years.

And Disney’s self-taxation subsidized lower property taxes for the counties’ residents, whose property taxes will likely go up by 20-25%.

Then there are the district’s bond obligations. With the passage of DeSantis’s revenge bill, those obligations — about $1 billion — are no longer Disney’s. They’re now owed by the county governments. The counties’ taxpayers will take it in the shorts yet again.

In 2018, DeSantis received 218,856 votes in Orange and Osceola Counties … and won the statewide gubernatorial election by only 32,463 votes.

Holding everything else constant, only 16,232 — 7.4% — of his 2018 voters in those two counties would have to change their minds in 2022 to send Ron DeSantis packing.

When the voters in the two counties see their new tax bills, revised upward  courtesy of DeSantis’s tantrum, they’re going to be mad. And they’re going to know who to be mad AT.

Messing with Mickey may have just ended DeSantis’s political career.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

When Elon Musk bought the single largest stake in Twitter, then announced plans to acquire the whole company instead of just accepting a seat on its board, the response varied:

Hosannas from many on the “right” who feel like they don’t get a fair shake from Twitter’s moderation/ban policies.

Wails of anguish from many on the establishment “left” (not the real left — that would be us libertarians) who’ve become accustomed to an echo chamber which “protects” them from THE BAD PEOPLE and their heterodox political views.

Perhaps the craziest take on the prospect came from former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who opined in The Guardian that Musk’s “libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ Internet” is “the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth.”

You know, the dictators, strongmen, etc. who shut down social media which won’t censor for them, and sometimes even attempt to shut down Internet access entirely if the peasants revolt.

Twitter’s board got busy passing a “poison pill” policy to prevent Musk’s takeover. Meanwhile, Musk says he’s secured $46.5 billion in financing to make it happen.

My question isn’t whether Musk should be “allowed” to buy Twitter (he should, if its shareholders are willing to sell). It’s why he would want to shell out that kind of money for an old and busted platform with likely insoluble problems,  when he could build something better, and likely more successful, for a fraction of the cost.

In many ways, Twitter is an ideal platform for seeing only what you want to see. You can block users whose posts you don’t want to read. You can screen who’s allowed to follow you. If you really hate some particular point of view, you can easily build yourself a “silo” to mostly hide that point of view from yourself.

Given those facts, Twitter’s content moderation policy SHOULD be “grow up, wear a cup, and learn to use the block button instead of whining to us.”

Instead, the company has developed a policy — and worse, an entrenched culture — of user content micromanagement apparently based on the slogan “for the love of God, won’t someone PLEASE think of the Karens?”

If Musk buys Twitter, he’ll  inherit not just that policy but a workforce who’ve shown themselves willing, even eager, to enforce it. How many will quit or have to be fired to revive the platform after years of declining user numbers?

Instead of spending $46 billion on Twitter, Musk should spend $4.6 billion: $1 billion on initial infrastructure, $1 billion hiring a work force that’s on board with doing things his way, $1 billion on promotion, and a $1.6 billion bonus to me for suggesting this.

He’d probably sign up 10 million users on day one and average a million a day for the first year. Especially if SpaceX launches and Tesla events stream exclusively on Muskrat (that name suggestion should bump my bonus up to $2 billion).

And all of us (well, except for Twitter) would be better off for more competition in the social media marketplace.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

A mismatch between the title and sub-title to Matt Lewis’s April 18 column at The Daily Beast — “Canceling Student Loan Debt Only Leaves a Broken System in Place,” and “Democrats are delusional if they think student loan debt forgiveness is going to save them and Biden at the ballot box” — perfectly illustrates the fallacy of mistaking bad policy for bad politics.

In the body of the column, Lewis makes a couple of reasonable policy arguments against student debt forgiveness: It benefits the rich more than the poor, and it perpetuates a “higher education bubble” in which students pay far too much for schooling given the economic benefits they can expect to get out of a degree.

Lewis veers onto the shoulder and triggers the rumble strip, though, when he tries to jump from those policy arguments to the claim that a move by President Joe Biden to forgive student debt would hurt rather than help Democrats in the November midterms.

His case, in summary: A lot of people without student debt will resent subsidizing forgiveness, and will blame it on Democrats. “[T]here are around 43 million people who stand to be ‘winners’ from this policy, [but it] likely pisses off more people than it pleases.”

I’m a soft “no” on student loan forgiveness — I favor simply making student debt eligible for discharge in bankruptcy like other debt — but on the politics, Lewis is all wet.

First of all, his number for “winners” is low.

Suppose there are 43 million student debtors who will be pleased with forgiveness.

Suppose that each of them has only one living parent, who will likely be pleased to see a child out of crushing debt.

Suppose that only 10 million of the 40 million have spouses or voting age children who don’t have student debt but will be happy that the household is benefiting.

That’s at least 96 million people — 15 million more people than voted for Joe Biden for president in 2020.

It’s an average of more than 220,000 people per US House district. By my quick count, only 14 of 2020’s 435 congressional election winners enjoyed a margin of victory greater than that 220,000. In close races, even a fraction of those “winners” can make a big difference.

Now to the other side of the ledger: The people student loan forgiveness “pisses off.”

There’s an old saying about government programs — benefits are concentrated,  costs are diffuse. Ditto gratitude for those benefits and resentment of those costs. That’s why we have, for example, corporate welfare. Corporations lobby constantly. Taxpayers care a little for about a minute.

In this case, the “winners” will be more motivated than the “losers” in terms of  their votes (and their enthusiasm TO vote).

The “winners” got a big favor. The “losers” may eventually see, and might even notice, a small tax increase.

Student loan forgiveness may not “save” the Democrats from losing the House and Senate this November, but it certainly won’t hurt them at the ballot box. And that really has nothing to do with whether forgiveness is sound policy.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY