A lot of the right this week is upset at Florida for having removed a special set of legal protections for
Disney. It seems odd to me that restoring Disney to a status of equality under the law, using ordinary legislative means, is considered to be a violation of the 'rule of law.'
I wonder -- not to be a conspiracy theorist -- if Disney isn't paying for some of this sort of coverage. This is close to incoherent, and these people are not idiots.
I can only conclude that this kind of exercise has a second-order benefit, namely smoking out 'pretend' conservatives to allow application of an indelible 'Certified RINO' label. I can't think of a single conservative (a real one) that thinks Disney should enjoy special protections for community development or perpetual copyright protections, over and above other corporations and at the explicit expense of the Public Good. I think a vote to protect any corporation with special arrangements is a vote for corruption - even though I'm not so much of a libertarian that I can't accept that sometimes the benefits to Public Good might outweigh the downside. This is not one of those cases IMHO.
ReplyDeleteI have more concern over the "eternal copyright" than I suffer over the Reedy Creek special district. But I have hopes the latter warns the House of Mouse to be more amenable to fair negotiation when the former protections are due for re-consideration.
ReplyDeleteI can't think of a single conservative (a real one) that thinks Disney should enjoy special protections....
ReplyDeleteA lot of folks, Left and Conservative alike, make similar arguments about Twitter, Facebook, at al., regarding censorship and private enterprise.
Those folks, though, seem to have forgotten about a Supreme Court ruling about diners as public accommodations, and that no, private enterprise cannot discriminate on the basis of race. Accommodating the public means accommodating all of the public. It seems to me an easy extension to include the even more basic (if only because much earlier acknowledged) right of free speech in that ruling and extending the ruling to include the plainly public accommodations of Twitter, Facebook, et al.
Eric Hines
I think Elon might share those views. It's looking like the deal might go through, maybe even today. The wailing will be as delicious as the exquisite timing for the 22 election season.
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