Political Business News

In the last few days there have been two bits of business news that have stirred up a lot of political interest. The legislature of Florida revoked some of the special privileges it had granted the Disney corporation decades ago for its operation in that state, and Elon Musk’s offer to take Twitter private was accepted by that firm’s board.

I think the action by the Republicans in Florida was both improper and a tactical mistake. Disney’s CEO is free to take a side in a political dispute without politicians punishing his company for doing so. As a tactical matter DeSantis and the legislature had won the political dispute with over bill banning teachers from discussing sex or their sex lives with very young school kids. Voters were on their side. They could have taken their win and gone on with business, leaving Disney to try to solve its problem in public relations. Instead, by revoking the privileges when they did, they came across as vindictive bullies and gave the people running Disney a chance to present themselves as wronged innocents. (As an aside, some Republicans also tried to foul their victory up by presenting the issue as one about “groomers”, when the actual point was that discussing sex and sexual activity with a bunch of second graders is inappropriate, irrespective of the motives or interests of those wanting to do it. There is a reason people call the Repubs the stupid party.)

There are conservatives who think that what was done to Disney made sense strategically, and that opponents of the left who disapprove are trying to impose rules in a knife fight. Executives of many big corporations support and side with the Democrats and the left far more than they support and side with the Republicans and conservatives. While some of this probably is due to the executives’ ideological beliefs, there are other plausible explanations. One is that Republicans and conservatives have generally been favorable or at least non-threatening to businesses and corporations, while Democrats have tended to make noise about cracking down on them in one way or another, and leftists claim to despise them. Seeing that, an unprincipled corporate weasel might easily decide the pragmatic thing to do was to take the Republicans at least partially for granted and spend more of his time and money kowtowing to the Democrats and the various leftist pressure groups. There surely are plenty of corporate weasels out there. So these conservatives argue that what the government of Florida did to Disney is a useful warning to other corporations that Republicans can play rough too and should not be taken for granted. Of course their argument depends first on the assumption that politics in this country has reached the point of being a knife fight. One the worst things Trump and Trumpism have done for the conservatives is getting so many of them to think it has.

Musk’s takeover of Twitter is the more interesting news both for the likelihood Twitter will get better and the reactions from the Democrats and leftists to the takeover. While I think the world would be better off it Twitter did not exist, it does and does importantly, and so it will be good for the company to begin treating diverse opinions and political views equitably instead of tilting in favor of the leftists. The notion that it does tilt in favor of the left should no longer be controversial. The fervid overreaction and even panic from Dems and lefties over the possibility of an even handed Twitter amounts to an admission that the company has been their valuable ally. One would have thought they would have noticed that.