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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, February 27,
2023. It's about three o'clock, or excuse me, it's about 2 30 in the afternoon here on the
east coast of the United States, where in northern New Jersey we're expecting a blizzard tonight of about eight to ten inches of snow. It'll be our first snowfall of the season.
Where the snow never comes down and or rarely in Orlando, Florida, they can't be very happy today
because Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed landmark legislation stripping the Disney company of its authority to control, as if it were the government, which should never exist in a free society,
excuse me, the state and private enterprise, which should never exist in a free society.
Private enterprise must rise or fall on the basis of its ability to service its clients,
not on the basis of its ability to garner a special relationship from the government.
I mean, we all know how this came about.
At the time Disney went down there, where it is now was a swamp.
And the powers that were in Florida in both political parties wanted to lure the then biggest entertainment facility in the country down to Florida.
So they gave away the store.
Here's the land. Buy it cheap.
Write your own laws. We'll stay out. You be the police. You be the government. You collect the taxes. We'll leave you alone. Who wouldn't want a relationship like that? But when the government
does that, it of course raises everybody else's taxes because Disney pays none or very low that that shifts the burden. The government never
spends less when it collects less. It just finds the way
when it's collecting less from one taxpayer to collect more
from the others. So, this is doubly unfair. Government can't
and shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers and
picking favorites. In the first place, the government knows nothing, nothing about how to
operate a business. It doesn't know a winner from a loser. All it knows is people who obey it
and people who pay its taxes. The fact that it chose Disney and helped Disney to become
super rich is a testament to the weakness of government and, no, Disney not looking a gift
horse in the mouth. Now this legislation demands $700 million in back taxes. That's probably not
fair because Disney did everything that it did, expecting it wouldn't have to pay those taxes. It can pay taxes going forward. Are retroactive taxes constitutional? post facto laws, laws that are effective back into time, prohibits all laws that are effective back
into time. But that's not what the Supreme Court has ruled. The Supreme Court has ruled for over
200 years that the ex post facto clause in the Constitution only prohibits retroactive criminal
laws. It does not prohibit retroactive civil laws. When Bill Clinton first became
president in his first year of presidency, he and the Democrats raised taxes. Remember those days,
the Senate had an exact 50-50 tie. So it was necessary for Vice President Gore to cast the tie-breaking vote to raise taxes retroactively.
People that felt it was unfair challenged it, and the Supreme Court said, no, we're going to throw your challenge out.
Retroactive tax laws, retroactive civil laws, changing relationships retroactively may be unfair, but it's not prohibited by the Constitution.
So I don't know where the $700 million tax bill will end up,
probably in some compromise.
But I'm glad that Disney is no longer receiving the special status that no government or no entity or person should receive.
Look, taxation is theft. The government is taking money for services that it doesn't deliver,
and the delivery and the services that it delivers basically stink. But that type of theft and
miserable delivery of services, I suppose, should be fair and should fall on people's shoulders and entities' shoulders equally without special circumstances being given to anyone.
President Trump's administration famously rolled back regulations of the railroad industry. So in the even a stopped clock is right twice a day
category, the Washington Post just a few minutes ago said none of the rail regulations rolled back
by Trump had anything to do with the East Palestine, Ohio disaster. And according to a lengthy piece in the Washington Post,
which I just finished reading, that's correct. Trump's deregulation had to do with a chemical
that they didn't want the trains to carry because it was harmful to the crew. This train wasn't
carrying that chemical. It reduced the two-person crew requirement to one. Well, this train
actually had three people in the crew. The minimum rail safety requirements and the recurring number
of safety audits had nothing to do with why this disaster occurred. So when Donald Trump
was asked at the scene of the East Palestine disaster if he regretted any of the regulation rollbacks.
He said, quote, I had nothing to do with it.
Well, that was a little ambiguous.
Does that mean he had nothing to do with the regulation rollback or that the regulations had nothing to do with the disaster?
The true answer is both.
The rollback decision was made by bureaucrats that worked for him and the rollback
regulations had nothing to do with this disaster. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging
freedom.