I make this point more thoroughly in another comment, but I don't view it as retaliation, and I think only the people who are fixated on the political motivations view it as retaliation. Retaliation implies harm, and I am making the case that removing an unfair advantage, that shouldn't have ever existed in the first place, is not harm. If it's a neutral action (or neutral-positive), then it's not retaliation.
> I don't view it as retaliation, and I think only the people who are fixated on the political motivations view it as retaliation.
Well, yes, nothing looks like retaliation when you ignore motivations. Motivations define retaliation.
Starting out with selectively ignoring the facts most relevant for assessing whether a thing fits into a particular category is a singularly bad way of assessing whether that is the case.
There is no debate that Disney is worse off with the action, so it is harmful.
Even your argument upthread is that this is an adverse change that Disney deserves for other reasons than the actual motivation, not that it is not an adverse change.
You're finally understanding my point. Removing an unfair privilege is only "harmful" to the person with the unfair privilege. Considering the full context makes it not actual harm.
Put it another way: Imagine a law that said white people get 10% off of every purchase. Now that law is repealed, and white people say: "I'm being harmed!" Are they?
> Imagine a law that said white people get 10% off of every purchase. Now that law is repealed, and white people say: "I'm being harmed!" Are they?
Sure. Slave-owners were also harmed when the slaves were freed. The fact that a harm is just does not make it not harm.
Put another way, would you really claim that someone put in prison for assaulting someone was not harmed? In most cases it's going to be pretty clear they were, yet it can still be just for the sake of protecting others.
Kudos for answering, I think the person I was replying to is worried about making a similar response, although it is consistent with their other statements. I disagree that it is harm.
>Put another way, would you really claim that someone put in prison for assaulting someone was not harmed?
How is that the same? In my example, I was removing an exclusive and special benefit. I don't see how putting someone in prison is removing an exclusive and special benefit, unless your view is that the default state is everyone should be imprisoned.
Well, let's actually try to apply your scenario and actually make it analogous to the Disney scenario for a moment. Imagine said law exists. Now imagine "Joe" speaks vocally against a law proposed by the "FiFi" party, which currently happens to hold the majority in the legislature and executive branch office. Now the "FiFi" party is suddenly pushing to remove the discount from "Joe" and no one else.
THAT is what's happening here. Disney is hardly the only business which has negotiated preferential treatment. Stadiums and factories are the two most common examples, but there are plenty of examples of States including Florida providing tax breaks and other special treatments to a variety of businesses. But now it seems you can only negotiate with them if you tow the party line. Disagree and any special treatment you've negotiated will be revoked, while everyone who stayed silent gets to keep theirs.
Now, is "Joe" harmed by losing his discount while everyone else gets to keep theirs? Can you really argue that the above isn't the government suppressing free speech?
>Disney is hardly the only business which has negotiated preferential treatment.
Are you making the case that it's very common, and so it's not special nor unfair? I am very skeptical that more than %0.001 of businesses (1 in 100,000) benefit from these special government privileges. Especially if you consider all people, since corporations are legally people. It smells like crony capitalist corruption to me...far from normal, and very unfair to everyone else. Shouldn't be happening. Take it all away, I don't care what the motivation is, because to me, it's not harm to remove corruption.
Define common. It's common enough that every single one of the 50 states and the Federal government has a variety of special arrangements at some level or another with multiple private entities. But uncommon in that most business aren't large enough, publicly popular enough, or have sufficient lobbying power to negotiate them. I wouldn't even contest your ratio.
Usually these will be around tax breaks but also special water rights, rights to self govern certain things, rights to use public land, exemptions from certain laws, etc. Usually the justification is that it benefits the local economy exactly the same as the justification for Disney's. Yet somehow here Disney is the only one being targeted. Apparently you are allowed to negotiate these things, but the government will renege on it's agreements if you later dare to speak against them.
If Florida was pushing to kill ALL of these arrangements it would be a non-issue (or rather a very different issue). Instead they are targeting only Disney, for daring to speak against their party line, in a clear attempt to silence their speech. No amount of trying to re-frame the issue changes that.
Every one of the 50 states and the fed having provisions for special arrangements doesn't, to me, say that the arrangements themselves are common, only that corruption is common.
I agree, if Florida attempted to kill all of the special arrangements, it would definitely appear less biased to people (although impractical, it could still be purely political cover). If you're making the case that targeting Disney's special privileges vs the other company's special privileges is what makes it unfair, I could get behind that more than other arguments that I've seen. But my response to that would be to expand the removal of these privileges. Since that is far less likely to happen, I'm comfortable with using politically motivated reasons (of any side, I don't care who does it and why) to accomplish it.
> Since that is far less likely to happen, I'm comfortable with using politically motivated reasons (of any side, I don't care who does it and why) to accomplish it.
I cannot begin to fathom this position. Your describing "you can negotiate special privileges if you have enough influence, but only if you never speak against me" as less corrupt than "you can negotiate special privileges if you have enough influence".
Yes, I believe the former is a less corrupt position in a democracy, because it has a natural balance: the opposing side will work to remove those special privileges. In the latter, there is no check to balance it, so it is more corruptible.
> Removing an unfair privilege is only "harmful" to the person with the unfair privilege.
Yes, so (independent of whether the status quo is just or not) the act is:
(1) harmful to Disney, and
(2) motivated by Disney’s exercise of its first amendment rights.
> Considering the full context makes it not actual harm.
No, it doesn't. It makes it harmful in a way you believe is warranted for reasons other than the actual motivation.
But the fact that an adverse government action would be warranted for reasons other than the actual motivation does not make taking the same action in retaliation for exercise of Constitutional rights permissible.
I'd like to hear your answer to my white privilege example, since I think that make it very clear why you're against the actions against Disney, and why I am for them.
> I'd like to hear your answer to my white privilege example
Your white privilege example includes no impermissible motivation, and assumes an initial state that would not merely be undesirable policy, but bright line prohibited by the 14th Amendment.
While the Disney special district may be undesirable in some model of fairness, it is not unconstitutional, and the action to remove it does have an impermissible motivation. So the analogy fails on key points.
The point I'm making is about harm, which has been the whole crux of my argument. In my example, are white people being harmed by having the 10% discount removed?
> The point I'm making is about harm, which has been the whole crux of my argument. In my example, are white people being harmed by having the 10% discount removed?
Obviously, yes, they are worse off after the change.
> Ok, we disagree on the definition of harm is all.
Yeah, I just don't get the “if I stab you, but you actually deserved it, you aren't actually harmed by it.”
Whether or not that's how you view harm, that's not the understanding of harm that is operative in law. Justification is a separate consideration from harm there, even if you conflate them together.
Puncturing someone's body with an edged weapon is clearly harm, but thanks for totally misrepresenting my position as a last minute jab to an otherwise civil conversation.
> Puncturing someone's body with an edged weapon is clearly harm
So, now your position is that the rule that whether or not there is justification for an act which causes someone to be worse off than previously determines whether that change constitutes harm is only applicable to certain kinds of changes which make the subject worse off, not generally?
Your concept of “harm” becomes less clear the more you say about it.
But it remains the case that it's not the usually definition of harm, or the one applicable to whether it is acceptable, under the Constitution, for government to act in a certain way in response to the exercises of Constitutionally-guaranteed free expression.
>is only applicable to certain kinds of changes which make the subject worse off
Yes. It's not a difficult concept. Children often get upset about rules that are enforced on them, and feel "worse off." Doesn't mean it's harm. Context matters. The world isn't binary.
Also, it's ok to just disagree, since it's clear we disagree on the definition of harm. No need to start constructing strawmen of my position.
> Children often get upset about rules that are enforced on them, and feel "worse off." Doesn't mean it's harm.
Are you saying that losing the benefit of the special district doesn't actually make Disney worse off, and that they are just an immature corporate child lacking the maturity to understand the benefit Daddy DeSantis and Mommy Leg are giving them by taking away their Reedy Creek sucker?
Or is this a complete non-sequitur to distract from the fact that Disney would, in fact, be worse off after the change?
It's not actually harm, yes, that's what I have been saying. For the 3rd time, we disagree on the definition of harm. No, that doesn't mean I think you should be allowed to stab people.
Despite the way it has been spun, Disney's special district status is not particularly unique. There are 1844 active special districts enshrined in Florida state and county law. Disney, Sea World, Universal, and other theme parks, all have special districts to allow them control over the development of their properties.
> Motivation plays a part, but it is ultimately the action that defines if it was retaliation. The action has to be harmful.
Retaliation is about the why, not the what. Retaliation is me doing B because of A.
def: Retaliation: The act of retaliating, or of returning like for like; retribution; now, specifically, the return of evil for evil
In this case, it's about Disney acting in a way that pols don't like. "But here’s the issue, when my 14-year-old or my 10-year-old ask for special privileges? They behave! And they don’t expect those special privileges if they act like jerks. So Disney is learning that they are a guest in this state." - FL Rep Randy Fine
No, and you're twisting what you know retaliation to be, to pretend that is merely "cause and effect." That's very deceptive, because I think you know that it doesn't make much sense to say "He gave me a nice gift, so I retaliated with my own nice gift."
transitive verb
to repay in kind retaliate an injury
Words have dictionary definitions, legal definitions, and connotations (note: the especially). Your usage above is consistent with both the dictionary and legal definitions of retaliate, but would be confusing to most English speakers because of the connotations.
The retaliatory motivation of this law is clearly documented in articles, speeches, Tweets, and other forms.
The structure of the law reinforces the retaliatory nature of the legislation: the law goes into effect immediately and dissolves the 6 special districts a year from now. The 6 special districts may petition the government to re-establish their special districts after they have been dissolved. This places a massive and unique burden on Disney since Disney and the two counties that it's property spans (Orange and Osceola), must take on an enormous amount of work and expense, to transition infrastructure and services to the counties before the special district is dissolved on July 1, 2023. Then, if the government grants the petition to re-establish the RCID, the counties and Disney will have to unwind all that work to transition the infrastructure and services from the counties back to the RCID. That wasted transition work will cost both Disney and the two counties' taxpayers 10s or even 100s of millions of dollars, and will have served no rational legislative or business purpose.
If the goal of the bill was to simply to require the re-establishment of the 6 special districts that were not re-established since the update to the state constitution, then the bill should have allowed the special districts to petition for re-establishment any time starting now, before dissolution, rather than requiring the special districts to dissolve before they can petition for re-establishment.
And I bet that Disney's petition to re-establish the district will not be passed, if it is passed at all, at the same pace as the law to strip them of the special district rights in the first place. The SB-4C bill was submitted, passed with no debate in either House or Senate, and no public comment, and signed into law--including a change to the special session rules that allowed it to be considered and passed--all in the span of 96 hours. Most bills take weeks or months--not just 4 days--and go through substantial debate and public comment periods to get through that process.
