Live data from Hacker News

The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

news.bloombergtax.com

191–200 of 220 posts

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#191

I don’t think the elimination of the Reedy Creek district is meant to ever actually occur. The point is twofold. To send a message that dissent from the business community will not be tolerated. And, to keep stoking the fires of the culture wars. When they get their people denouncing the opposition as “groomers”, they are achieving their objective.

But naming the opposition "white supremacist", "far right", and "racists" is perfectly accurate and OK.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#192

I don’t think the elimination of the Reedy Creek district is meant to ever actually occur. The point is twofold. To send a message that dissent from the business community will not be tolerated. And, to keep stoking the fires of the culture wars. When they get their people denouncing the opposition as “groomers”, they are achieving their objective.

But naming the opposition "white supremacist", "far right", and "racists" is perfectly accurate and OK.

When people espouse positions that are friendly toward white supremacist ideology, and adopt policies that are demonstrably racist, I think it's absolutely reasonable to call them white supremacists and racists. When people hold positions that are quite clearly far down the right side of our traditional political spectrum, I think it's correct to call them far right.

It's not an ad hominem attack or partisan name-calling to say someone is if they actually, factually fit that description.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#193
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be some sort of cognitive bias towards believing that a majority of political decisions are "posturing" or facades. If I'm being honest I fall for this interpretation way more often than I'm comfortable with.

There has to be some sort of cognitive bias that because someone says that one particular political decision is posturing that they therefore must be advancing the idea that "a majority" of political decisions are posturing.

I think you're misunderstanding me.

What I'm trying to express is that whenever someone opines that something "is posturing", I'm heavily inclined to agree.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#194
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be some sort of cognitive bias that because someone says that one particular political decision is posturing that they therefore must be advancing the idea that "a majority" of political decisions are posturing.

I think you're misunderstanding me. What I'm trying to express is that whenever someone opines that something "is posturing", I'm heavily inclined to agree.

OK, but that's not at all what you said. You said there was a cognitive bias towards believing in posturing, which means that these beliefs (that political decisions are posturing) are both prevalent and likely to be wrong.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which means that having a law that says teaching human sexuality can't happen is impossible to do without turning the teachers into uncaring robot like beings. How archetypally liberal to define the difference between humans and “uncaring robot like beings” in terms of being able to talk about “human sexuality.” It’s really an obsession isn’t it.

The word sexuality has a specific meaning that is much broader than you are giving it credit for. http://dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=sexuali... We are, after all, talking about a law and a legal system where definitions are somewhat important.

So relying on a real dictionary, M-W, I get: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sexuality

> Definition of sexuality : the quality or state of being sexual:

> a : the condition of having sex

> b : sexual activity

> c : expression of sexual receptivity or interest especially when excessive

I don’t think I’m being a prude in saying that third graders shouldn’t be learning about any of this.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#196
post #31
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And just to make sure this is clear: they aren't making donations to anyone in Florida, Republicans or Democrats alike. The Republican response to this was to punish Disney. We can't know what the Democratic response would have been since Democrats aren't in charge of anything in Florida. "Keep donating or we'll punish you" is an interesting stance.

”Keep donating or we'll punish you" is an interesting stance. It can’t be legal, surely?

IMHO, we didn't design our government to be impervious to pressures generated by large non-governmental financial entities, perhaps because the Founding Fathers hadn't completely taken in the possibilities apparent in the success of the Dutch East India Company. But I'm not a historian.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait—who is “slicing and dicing” the polling here? The main political debate right now is over where to draw the line for elective abortions. Texas draws it at 8 weeks, Mississippi at 15, and Roe at 22-24. Asking people a question framed in terms of weeks or trimesters produces a much more accurate reflection of the culture than asking them about a legal decision that most people have never read. Most people think th…

Your entire comment is slicing and dicing. Making claims about what is "a more accurate reflection of the culture" is slicing and dicing. Just stand up for what you believe in. Stop trying to speak on behalf of "the culture" which is in most ways not accurately knowable, and even if it was, is of dubious significance. Most major shifts in societies (not all, but most) occur in opposition to "the culture".

> Making claims about what is "a more accurate reflection of the culture" is slicing and dicing.

You don't think it's possible to get a gist of what the public thinks generally? Most Americans (60%) think that abortion should be "generally legal" in the first trimester, while only 28% think that it should be "generally legal" in the second trimester: https://news.gallup.com/poll/235469/trimesters-key-abortion-...

Insofar as Roe requires abortion to be "generally legal" in the second trimester--a position that 70% of Americans reject--it is a departure from the culture.

> Just stand up for what you believe in. Stop trying to speak on behalf of "the culture" which is in most ways not accurately knowable, and even if it was, is of dubious significance.

I believe in democratic values. I believe culture belongs to everyone, and cultural changes should be driven bottom-up, through social consensus, not top down by legal elites, big corporations, etc.

> Most major shifts in societies (not all, but most) occur in opposition to "the culture".

Much more so in the U.S. than in other developed countries, and that's a bad thing. Most European countries ended up making elective abortions available in the first trimester in response to changing social views. In the U.S., legal elites rammed through a second-trimester rule that decades later is still at odds with public opinion.

Likewise, in 2015, the U.S. the Supreme Court found that the Constitution's implicit marriage right encompassed same-sex marriage. A year later, the European Court of Human Rights reached the exact opposite conclusion--finding that the express marriage right in the European Convention on Human Rights did not extend to same-sex marriage: https://eclj.org/marriage/the-echr-unanimously-confirms-the-.... Accordingly, countries like Germany legalized same-sex marriage in 2017, through the ordinary legislative process, with the support of 73% of the population.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#198
post #82

They can unwind it regardless of any contractual obligations. State can simply pass a law and dissolve any contract with stroke of a pen.

If you had read the article, you would have learned that the state can't do that, and why they can't. That's what the entire article is about.

The article says "Under the U.S. Constitution, a state can only impair an existing contract if the impairment is reasonable and necessary to serve an important government purpose.". I hope you can see how broad and left to interpretation this is. In the worst case, state can modify its constitution and compell to disolve this specific contract. Courts only exist to protect the constitution and they need to follow the law created by legislature. Courts are not there to create new laws.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s forcing the Democratic Party to start making 180 degree public shifts of some of their classic positions on things like [...] limits on free speech/censorship. [...] Its driving liberals out of the Democratic Party I'm unclear on what you're trying to express here. "Free speech" is a liberal value, and the topic at hand is an anti-free-speech, pro-censorship bill by the opposing party. It seems one of these two…

I was referring to the numerous stories I have seen in the media by left leaning pundits since Musk’s offer arguing censorship as a “good thing”.

I'm pointing out that it's weird to act as if it's a "Democrat" thing in a thread about literal, state mandated censorship on the other side.

This is a personal bugbear of mine, but almost everyone actually agrees that "censorship" is a good thing, they just call it "moderation" when they happen to agree with what is being censored. The two terms are fundamentally synonyms with different connotations, and there's no agreed upon line as to which is which. Even free speech "absolutists" generally agree that some types of speech that should not be allowed (spam, child porn, and "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater" being the three most common examples).

The culture war isn't over whether limitations on speech are good, it's an argument over what should be censored, and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

Re: The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

#200

While I appreciate a clear explanation of the legal situation surrounding the Reedy Creek bonds, I am still pretty amazed that the fact of a Governor of a state saying explicitly "we are going to punish a corporation for speaking out about our legislation" has not generated more pushback. I don't think that corporations are people, nor do they deserve the full protection of the first amendment (particularly those inc…

I think that there is a feeling that the other side is attempting to move policy forward that is not supported by a majority of constituents but is rather leveraging an artificial amplification on media (social and otherwise) to make it appear otherwise and, as such, is a blatant, clear, and obvious subversion of process. I think that that feeling, whether right or wrong, is used to justify taking the gloves off.

>I think that there is a feeling that the other side is attempting to move policy forward

Which policy?

Post reply on HN