Earlier this week, the Walt Disney Company cancelled plans to build a $1 billion office complex near Orlando, Florida citing “changing business conditions”. The project would have brought around 2,000 jobs to Florida. Another potential $17 billion worth of future investment in the state is in peril as well.
Those changing business conditions Disney referred to were in part due to retaliatory measures by Governor Ron DeSantos against Disney after the company publicly challenged the Chief Executive’s “Don’t Say Gay Law” in 2022.
Another series of laws, including one that expands any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools through the 12th grade, along with one that restricts a person’s use of a public bathroom to the sex they were assigned to at birth, were finalized this past week.
Apparently DeSantos, who is focusing on cultural issues in his bid the the 2024 presidential nomination, missed an important lesson.
When North Carolina passed a similar measure in 2017, the state lost close to $4 billion in investments, forcing it to backpedal weeks later after the NCAA threatened to pull out of 7 championship games that were scheduled.
I wonder if Ron is having second thoughts.
The New York Times published an article this morning, "Ron DeSantis Knows That the Best Place to Humiliate People Is in the Bathroom" Somebody needs to tell Gov. DeSantis a response I learned in the dormitories during college, "Don't wish you any bad luck, but hope your urethra and rectum grow shut."
Why don’t we ever learn. Walls don’t work, book bans don’t work, censorship doesn’t work.