Dissolving Disney's Reedy Creek would cause massive tax hike to Orange County

Conspiracy? Doubtful. Master stroke on the part of Disney? Quite possibly. Let me get this straight...Disney publishes something that angers the State government, so said government makes a significant retaliatory strike which will reduce Disney's autonomy and increase the amount of red tape they have to deal with...but will also significantly reduce the company's tax burden, reduce the scope of responsibilities they have to manage, and very suddenly offload a very expensive infrastructure operation onto a couple of counties that are ill-equipped to manage or pay for that operation.

I'm trying to see how this is anything but a net win for Disney, and a loss to literally everyone else involved.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The autonomy is worth the cost. Compare their infrastructure improvements in the last decade, especially with roads and energy, and compare that to the crappy road situation that Universal has at the county's leisure.

No there is not “plenty of blame to go around”. It’s crap like that de-motivates voters and allows crap like gov dips**** and his party to continue to get elected.

The writing was on the wall the day the purple signs went away.

CreditWh0re said:

No there is not “plenty of blame to go around”. It’s crap like that de-motivates voters and allows crap like gov dips**** and his party to continue to get elected.

I don’t think there’s plenty of blame to go around in this specific situation. I don’t see why it should matter to the state government that Disney doesn’t like a bill. They moved several thousand jobs to Florida and are a huge boost for the economy. It shouldn’t matter to the government what they say about the bill, and it strikes me as immensely petty of the state government that they’re doing this. I say this as a conservative-leaning moderate. The right is getting WAAAAY too extreme for me.

That said, and I know this is kind of running off on a tangent, but looking at the overall situation in our country, yes, there is plenty of blame to go around. I’m big on air travel, and seeing the current administration try to reinstate the mask mandate is but one example of many as to why folks like our governor get elected. I know a lot of people who very much aren’t right-leaning that hate that mandate as much as anyone.

FFS. You’re worried about a face mask? That what makes your peepee shrivel, and not the effing COUP that almost succeeded last year??

take a seat pal, and watch your reruns of Cucker Tarlson

These anti mask, anti vax people are driven by pure selfishness. They aren’t willing to undertake a little discomfort to help other people stay healthy and possibly save lives. THIS is the type of people these hate bills are aimed at appeasing. The bottom of the barrel

I don’t like wearing a mask I don’t like getting the vax I’m willing to do it for others Neither takes away my “freedom” But these selfish right wingers take away other peoples freedom when they don’t do anything to protect the vulnerable They definitely aren’t Christian as the proclaim

But hey they get to inflict pain on others. And that’s their unlimate satisfaction in life

I’m not sure why I’m bothering with this, but I’m vaccinated and boosted and I was fine with the mask mandate for a substantial portion of its implementation. I’m just saying that I’m seeing a lot of folks not in favor of it being extended any further, including folks who swing wide to the left.

I’m also not a fan of what DeSantis is doing here, as I said, and I’m very much upset that the January 6th attempted coup took place. I didn’t vote for Trump in either election, by the way.

I get your frustrations. I do. I do ask, however, that you don’t lump all of us who tend to lean more toward the right with the extremists. Some of us are actually pretty open to ideas on both sides of the aisle.

DOJ is not trying to get the mask mandate reinstated. If they were, they would have asked for a temporary stay on appeal. What they're going to do, likely after the mandate would have expired anyway, is argue that the CDC was in fact within its authority to issue the mandate.

And yeah, if the coup attempt, voting restrictions and transfer of election supervision to partisans isn't the thing you're most concerned about, democracy is in serious trouble.

Ah, I misunderstood the issue around the DOJ. Forgive me for that.

As for the other stuff, yes, it does bother me. I never said it didn’t. Did you not read where I said that I didn’t vote for Trump? How several of you now seem to have substantially mischaracterized me and my argument is pretty concerning, though. I get that you’re legitimately frustrated and worried about a lot of the nonsense going on by right-wing politicians. I’m not particularly okay with the fact, though, that you’re straw-manning me when I’ve said multiple times already that I’m not okay with the shenanigans you’re referencing.

I read this in my morning NY Times newsletter yesterday and as I read it I actually thought "hmm, sounds like something Coasterbuzz was ready to discuss long before it actually happened" but it didn't seem relevant anymore to any of our active conversations. But what the hell, let's throw it in here

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/briefing/mask-mandate-covid-spread.html

I haven't worn a mask in public in months, but when I fly in a few weeks, I'm OK with doing so. I'm planning on it. It's not even a Covid thing, because I can generally point to being sick after flying about 50% of the time. And generally avoiding humans for almost two years, I doubt I have much immunity to anything.

sirloindude said:

I’m not sure why I’m bothering with this, but I’m vaccinated and boosted and I was fine with the mask mandate for a substantial portion of its implementation. I’m just saying that I’m seeing a lot of folks not in favor of it being extended any further, including folks who swing wide to the left.

I'll back you up on this. I'm left leaning (to the point of being called a loser liberal who probably hates cops by one of my lovely neighbors) but I am ready for the mask mandate on federal transportation to end officially. I don't want to elaborate since there is already a 200+ page thread on the topic.

I get the logic behind it, but I think there comes a point where the risk to a substantial part of the population is effectively minimized, and I don’t think anyone should have to go out of their way to accommodate people who can take preventative measures but choose not to do so, i.e. those who are eligible for vaccines but choose not to take them. Mind you, I don’t think very many of those people expect us to wear masks on their behalf anyways.

Now, if folks want to continue to wear them, go for it. I don’t hold anything against those who wish to continue to do so. It doesn’t affect me one way or the other. I just don’t think it should be a requirement anymore.

To expand a bit, this constant 'both sides are to blame", is what causes people (typically moderates) to sit out. Hard core MAGA's will walk over broken glass to vote if they think it will screw over some non-christian brown liberal gay person. Remember that Biden won by less than 70K votes across 3 states. W won by less than 500 votes in a SINGLE state, (or by 5 votes on the SC, depending on how you want to frame it).

A constant barrage equating the two parties on FB and Twitter, and even here, causes people to tune out. Those same people, if reading things like Jeff's cogent explanations, might actually make the effort to vote instead of "both parties suck" and "both sides are to blame".

That's why I'm piling on that sh*t. It's got to end.

I disagree.

I cannot stand the radical Right and I cannot stand the radical Left. If I could, I'd cherry pick ideas from both sides and form a perfect (to me) moderate candidate. This makes casting my vote even harder, because instead of voting for what I want, I end up voting against what I don't want. I've voted for both parties, BTW.

Anyone who wants to vote will vote, I believe. It's like my parents always said, "if you want something, you'll find a way to make it happen."

Whether it's true or just conjecture, anyone who either sat out or voted for Trump because they were angry at Hillary beating Bernie has Shirley learned their lesson and will not let it happen again.

"Radical left" is a bogeyman invented by the Trump wackos. Whomever is supposed to be, they certainly don't have any authority or hold elected office. I mean, they're labeling Biden that way, who is as irritatingly center as possible.

"The right" has made so many boogeymen that they're even advocating for more taxes, larger government, less freedom of speech, and more regulation for Disney and they are trying to cancel them. If it weren't for being afraid of the woke mob, socialism, CRT, immigrants, brown folks, and LGBTQ+'s what would the Republican party (not the historical one, but the Fox News dominated one of today) even do?

Trump incited a deadly terrorist attack on the US Government with the goal of overturning an election. It would be damning enough if that were the extent of it, but a nontrivial number of members of Congress not only helped Trump avoid consequence for that attack, but continue to work at making an autocoup easier to pull off in the future.

Any suggestion that the two parties are even remotely the same is not only fanciful to the point of absurdity, it also continues to push us further toward fascist authoritarianism.

Republicans are essentially ruling by minority because we cling to a political system that was created before trains existed let alone the Internet.

Also, the “radical left” doesn’t actually vote because they think the entire system is bull****.