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Hello there everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, April 28, 2022. It's about 345 in the afternoon.
My column this week, if you can find it, you can find it at judgenap.com or in any of the normal venues where it's usually housed, LewRockwell.com, WashingtonTimes.com,
TownHall.com. It's about Disney and Florida and the constitutional issues. I won't go through all
the constitutional issues now, but I explain them as best I can in my column. But the one issue
here is not a constitutional one. It's a legal one involving
Florida law. And that is even though the state legislature of Florida, whether it's punitive or
whether because they want to for once follow the Constitution of the United States, has decided to
end its corporatism relationship with Disney, there are two hoops that it still has to jump through,
both of which are very difficult for it. So Disney and Florida entered into this agreement in 1967,
whereby Disney would self-govern the 25,000 acres of the Magic Kingdom outside of Orlando,
Florida. Could you imagine if we could all self-govern? It would
be wonderful. This is what's called corporatism, a symbiotic relationship between the government
and a corporation whereby the government gains the moral, and in this case, financial support
of the corporation, and the corporation is relieved of much of the regulatory authority that normally would be imposed on it
and much of the taxing obligations.
Disney and Florida and the Republicans who run the government got in,
to use the language of the streets here in northern New Jersey, a pissing contest,
and Disney and Florida decided to end this relationship. It'll take a year for it to end,
but there are two steps that must be addressed first and they're painful ones.
Under Florida law, a majority of the residents, the permanent residents in this 25,000 acre area
must vote to accept the abrogation, the breaking of the contract. How many people
live there? 50. Who employs all of them? Disney. So Florida will need 26 of those 50 people to vote
in favor of terminating the contract, otherwise it doesn't terminate. The political and persuasion issue.
Here's the more significant one. The way the law is framed, whenever Disney borrowed money,
and it did so by selling bonds, the bonds were guaranteed by the two counties in which the 25,000 acres sit.
And the law says if Disney goes bankrupt, or if Disney leaves,
or if Disney and the state of Florida no longer have their special agreement,
the two counties are saddled with paying back the bondholders.
Not an easy thing.
Those bonds are in excess of a billion, with a B, dollars.
So the government of Florida may not have been aware of the financial burden it was imposing on the two counties in which Disney World sits by terminating this agreement.
What do I think will happen? I think there'll be some settlement. I think Disney will hang around. It'll enter into some agreements with the state of Florida. Florida doesn't want Disney to go. The bondholders will be paid off in due course. happens when government does favors for businesses by reducing their tax burden. Listen, I believe
taxation is theft. I believe we should have no taxes, maybe tariffs and maybe user fees.
But when we have broad-based taxes, sales tax, income tax, real estate tax, and we all are
required to pay this, and the government does a favor for a business by relieving it of taxes. The government
is not spending less because it's receiving less. It's just shifting the tax burden to other
taxpayers. That's what happened here. And the chickens will come home to roost when that billion-plus dollar bond is due. And it's due soon, Governor DeSantis.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.