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DeSantis expands his anti-business activism by threatening Florida's farmers and other businesses [1]
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Date: 2023-05-15
Republicans are the party of business. As Calvin Coolidge — the epitome of the laissez-faire, fiscal conservative that Republicans pretend they are today — told a gaggle of newspaper editors in 1925, “The chief business of the American people is business.”
Ninety-eight years later, another conservative Republican, who is as far removed from Coolidge’s aphoristic small government as can be self-engineered, believes that the business of government is to interfere in business. Ron DeSantis started his crusade against corporate America by attacking Disney for speaking its business mind.
Today, under the guise of border control in a state that does not border a foreign country, DeSantis is putting Florida’s agricultural, hospitality, construction, and landscaping concerns at risk. Last Wednesday, after saying, “We’re bracing for some turbulent times ahead,” he signed an anti-immigration bill, SB1718 , passed by the Florida Legislature during the recently ended session.
Beginning July first, the new law will :
Require business owners to use E-verify to check employee work eligibility
Suspend employer licenses for unqualified workers
Human smuggling penalties enhanced
Bans local governments from issuing identification cards
Requires hospitals to collect data on immigrants without legal status
The “troubling times” are based on Ron's estimation that the end of Title 42 will impel a tsunami of brown people across America's southern border. So far, to general surprise, the anticipated increase in immigrants has not materialized . However, Republicans never design their policies to address reality. They are merely fear-mongering to drive MAGAs to the polls. If people get hurt, that is icing on the cake.
If Republicans wanted to get serious about tackling immigration, they would have enacted laws making prison sentences mandatory for business owners and senior executives who hired ineligible workers. DeSantis may boast that E-verify will achieve the same end. Where is the evidence? It is a truism in American business that as long as the only punishment for a company breaking the law is a fine, companies will continue to transgress — and write off monetary penalties as a tax deduction.
DeSantis is reportedly not an idiot. I am sure he knows what happened in Georgia in 2011 when that state cracked down on agricultural workers and ended up with crops rotting in the fields.
On the other hand, Ron is as thin-skinned, petulant, and spiteful as the man he seeks to replace as the GOP standard bearer. So expect common sense to take a beating in DeSantis’s campaign to burnish his bigotry.
How much will Desantis's anti-corporate truculence cost the state? Who knows. Georgia farmers lost $75 million. And DeSantis is not just threatening agriculture.
Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors that in the wake of DeSantis’s crusade against the company, it would review a planned decade-long $17 billion investment in Florida. Unlike DeSantis, Iger will not be hasty, rash, or driven by pique. However, when one partner in a 56-year mutually beneficial relationship starts acting irrationally, the other will likely review their options. Disney has cash. Other states are aware of this fact.
As Iger put it ,
“Our plans are to invest $17 billion over the next 10 years, which is what the state should want us to do. We operate responsibly. We pay off our share of taxes. We employ thousands of people and … we pay them substantially above the minimum wage dictated by the state of Florida. We also provide them with great benefits and free education. So I am going to finish what is obviously kind of a long answer by asking one question. Does the state want us to invest more, and employ more people, and pay more taxes, or not?”
A reasonable person would pick up the phone and make nice with the cash flow. It is a Governor’s responsibility to manage his state for the benefit of its citizens. However, Ron is not someone interested in doing right by other people. He views his office as means of self-gratification and as a milestone on his way to higher office.
To that end, he treats Florida’s Legislature as his cheerleading squad. They have played their part by rewriting Florida law to grease Ron’s skids. In April, they dropped the requirement that a Florida politician resigns their current office if they choose to run for another position — but only if that position were President or VP of the US.
Supporters of the measure denied it was to benefit DeSantis. At the time, GOP Rep. Ralph Massullo claimed “It is an individual office that is unique. It is the chief executive of our country. This isn’t just for our governor, it’s for anyone in politics.” Who knew there were multiple elected officials in Florida running for the presidency?
DeSantis is an oddity. He promotes the policies of a populist firebrand while having all the knee-buckling charisma of a cost accountant with a Xanax habit. His war on LGBTQ, minorities, history, and the truth in general — today, he signed a bill banning diversity, equity, and inclusion at Florida’s public universities and colleges — has been popular with a broad range of Republicans.
But Trump and the conservative chorus will hang Ron's anti-corporatism around his neck like an anvil as they push him off the pier.
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