Crusaders Anti-vigilance Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor and 2024 Republican White House candidate, will stop at nothing in the face of the Sunshine State’s major employer, the almighty Disney. DeSantis owns it from the entertainment company. Then-CEO Bob Chabeck criticized an education law last year that prevented Florida schools from teaching topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity until age nine. Its opponents call the law “Don’t Say Gay”.
DeSantis called the media on Monday to sign an ordinance that would allow the board to control the 100-square-kilometer Reedy Creek Development District on Lake Buena Vista near Disney World. The world’s most famous amusement park has been around since 1971. Renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, the site will no longer be governed by a board of people close to the agency, but by five members chosen by the governor.
Announcing this Monday, DeSantis is gearing up for a busy week that continues this Tuesday with the release of her second memoir. Dare to be free (The Courage to Be Free), said: “There is a new one Sheriff In this town”. He preferred the phrase, which he had already uttered last week. The legislation passed the parliamentary process in a Congress whose both houses are comfortably dominated by Republicans, allowing the governor to carry out the objectives of his agenda. Hurry up, before his presidential candidacy is announced. The Magic of Disney World In an apparent reference to the Kingdom, DeSantis added, “The corporate kingdom has come to an end.”
Under DeSantis’ reign, Florida’s ultra-conservative experiment, “Culture has no rest. got up”, has become a favorite insult of the American right, used to define those who “stand up” to injustices to fight against racism and inequality and in support of feminism, LGBTI rights or trans people. All these groups have become the governor’s obsession and he seems to have reaped a lot of revenue from them, with the results of last November’s elections in which he won by a margin of 1.5 million votes over his opponent.
“Disney was up against something [la ley educativa] “He was just meant to protect young children and make sure they go to school and learn to read, write, add and subtract, and the teacher doesn’t tell them they can change gender,” DeSantis said Monday. “I think most parents are OK with that.”
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The action against Disney, though harsh, is only a partial victory for DeSantis. As of June 1, 2023, his original idea was to make the district split between Orange and Osceola counties disappear. Municipal services such as electricity or water, as well as the costs of the police, ambulances or firemen, both have to take care of the accounts accepted by the company since 1967. In addition, they will have about a billion dollars in debt. Those little details made Florida lawmakers push back. For a moment last fall, after Bob Iger returned to control Disney and replaced the struggling Sabek, the multinationals and the government seemed poised to sign a peace deal.
While the DeSantis California company could not eliminate the tax benefits enjoyed by the company, the new board members would have the power to levy taxes, build infrastructure and borrow money for theme park-related projects. The law removes permits that Disney would have never used to build its own airport or even a nuclear power plant.
Profiles chosen for the new panel, which will meet for the first time next week, include Tampa attorney Martin Garcia, whose investment firm contributed $50,000 to the governor’s re-election campaign, and Bridget Ziegler, founder of the conservative organization Moms. Liberty, which is behind several book ban campaigns in libraries and school curriculums across America. Faced with the prospect of watching movies from the 1980s and often appearing to hone his rhetoric at a multiplex, DeSantis, a graduate of Yale and Harvard, threatened Monday: “So fasten your seat belts.”
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