Disney lost its battle in the Florida House after legislation was passed to remove its special district permissions. The Reedy Creek Improvement Districtwas etched out in 1967, which permitted Disney to operate independently from government. Disney has gone toe-to-toe on numerous political issues with Florida in recent years, but its opposition to the Parental Right in Education (liberally termed “don’t say gay”) was the final straw.
The legislation will go into effect on June 1, 2023. Disney will now be required to pay all its taxes to Orange and Osceola counties rather than splitting it between the two and the Reedy Creek Improvement District. A second bill has been opened that repeals Disney’s big-tech law privileges by making it vulnerable to lawsuits if it censors information.
It appears that Disney executives discredited the threats made by DeSantis and thought their 55-year untouchable reign would continue. There have been calls in recent days to replace CEO Rob Chapek. Disney shares have fallen 30% in the past year, despite the S&P rising. The company’s attempt at inclusivity has alienated a portion of its clientele, and it would be wise for them to back away.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 21, 2022 | Sundance
There is still doubt if Elon Musk really does want to purchase the Twitter social media platform. However, Musk himself seems to be putting a lot of his own credibility on the line as he announces the construct of his $46 billion purchase proposal.
It looks like Musk has created a second alternative to the purchase if the Twitter board of directors refuses the original offer. Within the secondary construct, a tender offer, Musk would be able to bypass the board and go directly to shareholders.
(YAHOO) – Elon Musk has secured commitments for $46.5bn (£35.5bn) that would allow him to bypass Twitter’s (TWTR) board and go directly to the social media company’s shareholders with his takeover bid.
Musk said he would personally provide $21bn of equity for the deal with another $12.5bn coming from margin loans, according to paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.
Banks, including Morgan Stanley, have agreed to provide another $13bn in debt secured against Twitter itself, according to the filing.
Musk has not yet determined if he will make a tender offer for Twitter or whether he will take other steps to further the proposal, the filing states.
Tender offers involve making a bid to purchase some or all shares of a company directly from its shareholders. (read more)
There are two ways to buy a publicly traded company. The simplest and most common is a board-approved merger. Talks start in secret, the two sides haggle and then arrive at a deal. Shareholders get to vote, and it is an all-or-nothing affair. Typically with a simple majority, the buyer walks away with the entire company. If the vote fails, the buyer goes away empty-handed.
A tender offer instead makes a direct appeal to shareholders to sell—or tender—their shares at a specific price. It can be used in friendly deals, but its real value is to hostile bidders when the target company’s board won’t engage. Tender offers simply go around them.
And they aren’t all or nothing. A buyer can bid for, say, just enough shares to cross 50%, thus seizing control. From there it could replace intransigent board members with friendlier ones, though in practice, it rarely gets that far. If a tender offer looks likely to succeed, reluctant boards tend to capitulate and negotiate a deal.
Mr. Musk would, with some regulatory paperwork, announce the offer at a specific price. The offer has to remain on the table for at least 20 days.
Those documents would lay out the number of shares he is soliciting. If Mr. Musk, who owns more than 9% of Twitter, takes a bare-bones approach, he would seek another 41% or so.
Meanwhile, Twitter would have 10 days to make its own recommendation to shareholders regarding the tender offer—in this case, presumably that it doesn’t accept it.
If not enough shares are tendered, Mr. Musk could cancel the offer or amend the terms.
[…] “After backing out of an agreement to take a seaton the board, Musk is threatening to cut board salaries to zero, a move he says will save the company nearly $3 million a year. Each non-employee board member earned $225,000 in stock in 2021, according to Twitter’s public filings. Directors, with the exception of Dorsey and his co-founder, CEO Parang Agrawal, also received $12,500 in cash, plus extra fees, ranging from $2,500 to $7,500, for serving on various board committees.
So who are these Twitter board members fighting Musk’s hostile bid? Twitter — which has come under fire for censorship, in part for banning the New York Post’s coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop — is filled with a motley mix of tech vets, retail gurus, academics, philanthropists and former government officials.” (read more)
Do you remember that weird dynamic when President Trump was dealing with North Korea and Kim Jong-un while at the same time having to pretend publicly that Beijing (Chairman Xi Jinping) wasn’t in control of Chairman Kim? There are some similarities here with Elon Musk.
Musk likely has some of the best tech people in the world working for him and advising him. He has to know that Twitter is only operationally viable insofar as the twitter simultaneous user processing systems remain on the backbone of U.S. government big data architecture. Twitter most definitely is not financially stable as a business without govt data-processing subsidy; it’s just too costly and the Twitter service is free for most users.
If you accept that Musk is well aware of the cost issue, then he has to have some plan to deal with it – via at least a vision down the road where Twitter is financially viable – or, he’s going to end up needing the same data processing subsidy from the govt, which would inevitably maintain the same ideological underpinning he is trying to remove.
Assuming Musk is legit in his motives, his only leverage in this game of pretend and conquest, is knowing both the provider (govt) and recipient of the subsidy (Jack) do not want the full scope of the public-private partnership exposed.
I have no idea how this is going to end, but we can all see the Deep State is going bananas.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 21, 2022 | Sundance
Keep in mind…. a more assertive, deliberate, strategic and determined MAGA movement is being noticed everywhere. There are new combat rules in response to the leftist onslaught toward our children. Cold anger has turned hot. Some have called this ‘Dark MAGA‘!
Meanwhile…
Leftist favorite Netflix, is hemorrhaging users and just lost 30% of its value. Spotify just refused to renew the leftist idols, the Obamas. The ultra-leftist Disney Corp just lost their special district status in Orlando, and leftist Twitter is on the verge of a hostile ‘free speech’ takeover by Elon Musk.
The political culture wars are raging, Biden’s support amid the American people is collapsing even more, and Dark MAGA is not relenting. Now this:
CNN spent $300 million to launch a subscriber-based platform that didn’t even survive a month:
“CNN+, the streaming service that was hyped as one of the most significant developments in the history of CNN, will shut down on April 30, just one month after it launched. CNN+ customers “will receive prorated refunds of subscription fees,” the company said.”
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 21, 2022 | Sundance
The multinational Disney corporation decided to target conservative lawmakers in Florida after the legislature passed a bill to stop the sexualization of children K-3 in public schools.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called for the legislature to consider the removal of Disney World’s special district status in a previously scheduled special session.
Today, the Florida Senate approved a bill to revoke Disney’s ‘special district’ status in the Orlando area.
(Via Wall Street Journal) – The Republican-led Florida Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would eliminate a special tax district that allows Walt Disney Co. to govern the land where its theme parks sit, as lawmakers target the company for opposing legislation restricting classroom instruction on gender and sexuality.
The GOP-led House will likely vote to approve the measure Thursday. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who called for lawmakers to consider such a bill in a special session he convened this week, has made clear he would sign it.
Losing the nearly 40-square-mile district near Orlando could be a major blow to Disney’s Florida operations.
[The special district] allows Disney to construct new buildings and expand its parks without having to adhere to state or county regulations related to construction, wastewater management and drainage. It encompasses four theme parks, two water parks, a sports complex and hotels, stores and restaurants. (read more)
You may have heard the insane notion that math is fundamentally racist. Equitable Math, a group aiming to make numbers less prejudiced, has noted that its largest founder is none other than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation also funded the initiative “Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction” by the Education Trust-West, which has merged critical race theory with mathematics. “A Pathway to Equitable Mathematics Instruction” has been distributed to schools across America with the aim of “dismantling racism in mathematical instruction.”
How is math racist? One of the workbooks funded by Gates explains: “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false. Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity’.”
The theory that minorities cannot understand mathematics is inherently racist, and the people promoting its use are mainly white liberals with hidden superiority complexes. Equitable Math notes on their website: “Students can arrive at the right answer without understanding the bigger concept; or they can have an “aha” moment when they see why they got an answer wrong.” Is this a deliberate attempt to dumb down American students? It is no secret that the West lags behind the East when it comes to mathematics. Perhaps this absurdity will be yet another reason that the East will dethrone the West as the financial capital of the world.
Armstrong Economics Blog/Technology Re-Posted Apr 20, 2022 by Martin Armstrong (YOU MUST WATCH THE VIDEO AT THE END OF THIS POST)
QUESTION: I’m just curious. President Jimmy Carter said that he saw a UFO which was reported by the Associated Press in January 1978. There are countless reports of UFOs for decades. Some say they have been around for thousands of years. Does Socrates have any ability to confirm or deny such things?
FG
ANSWER: I do not see how Socrates could confirm or deny the existence of UFOs. The modern event that began the flying saucer sighting was Kenneth Arnold who reported seeing several metal objects flying in excess of 1200 MPH on June 24th, 1947. I had an uncle who was in the Air Force during World War II and during the Korean War. He told me when I was a kid that saucers would fly in circles around the planes observing what was taking place. A friend who was a pilot during the Korean War said the same thing.
On Saturday night, July 5, 1947, a rancher named W.W. “Mac” Brazel had debris from what became the Roswell Incident. On July 8, 1947, RAAF public information officer Walter Haut issued a press release stating that personnel from the field’s 509th Operations Group had recovered a “flying disc”, which had landed on a ranch near Roswell. During that summer of 1947, it was also the dawn of the Cold War. The U.S. Army Air Forces made a press release announcing that they had recovered a “flying disc” from a ranch near Roswell. Here some 75 years later, the incident remains a defining aspect of the area’s identity. Roswell has a UFO museum and research center. There is even a flying saucer-inspired McDonald’s as well as alien-themed streetlights.
But behind all the UFO mania lies an uneasy truth. The events that transpired that summer are anything but clear-cut, with admitted coverups and conflicting explanations: It was a saucer! It was spycraft! It was the Soviets!
President Jimmy Carter said he saw one in 1969. It is hard to explain so many sightings were always some fictional account. I believe there is overwhelming evidence that sightings have existed for thousands of years. The question is rather straightforward. Are these aliens or are they time travelers from our own future? The physicist Stephen Hawking said in his book “Black Holes and Baby Universes” (Bantam, 1994), “The best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.” That seemed to be a comment more in jest.
Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity proposed that time is an illusion that moves relative to an observer. An observer traveling near the speed of light will experience time, with all its aftereffects (boredom, aging, etc.) much more slowly than an observer at rest. It was suggested that the astronaut Scott Kelly aged ever so slightly less over the course of a year in orbit than his twin brother who stayed here on Earth.
Well, there has been a rash of UFO sightings by US Navy pilots recently once again. Do they come to visit from the future during periods of war to observe? Believe it or not, three US senators were given a classified briefing about UFOs which have been seen traveling at hypersonic speed by US Navy pilots in 2019. It seems the story has hit several sources including Politico.
A spokesperson for Sen. Mark Warner, the vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has confirmed that he was present at the briefing and made a public statement. “If naval pilots are running into unexplained interference in the air, that’s a safety concern Senator Warner believes we need to get to the bottom of.” I find this curious for is someone observing us before we go into war?
My uncle who was a Navy pilot during the Korean War over the Pacific said that the pilots would often encounter UFOs back then as well. Indeed, there were reports carried out in 1947 and 1949, and then there was the major incident of 1952 UFO sighting which was a series of the unidentified flying object reported from July 12 to July 29, 1952, over Washington, D.C. These were perhaps the most publicized sightings that took place. The History Channel covered the story. The radar operator Howard Cocklin did an interview before he died.
Back in the early 1980s, there was a major sighting of a UFO which streaked across the sky from Princeton, New Jersey out past Trenton and off to the shore. New Jersey has actually been one of the hot spots where UFO sightings are far more common.
I actually saw one of these saucers take off when I was late and cut through a field trying to get to a party with a girlfriend in the late ’70s in Princeton. There it was, sitting in a field, and as soon as my lights got close it took off with such blinding light I had to slam on the breaks. There was absolutely no sound – just white light. My girlfriend said we had to call the press. I told her no way, I was a businessman and I could not get involved. The next day, the front pages of the Trenton Times reported thousands of people calling in about a UFO which streaked across the sky.
I found three things very curious. First, I had long been told that out by that field there was a secret base underground that the government had constructed so why would such a vehicle be just sitting in a field near this base? Secondly, the blinding white light and the absence of sound meant the engines had to be magnetic rather than a combustion fuel. The third strange aspect was that it abruptly went straight up, stopped dead, and then made a right horizontal turn at incredible speed. This meant that there had to be some gravitational technology for no occupant could survive such G-forces.
Personally, I find it less likely that someone from another planet visits here and never makes contact given the distance. On the contrary, someone from the future visiting the past but not making contact to prevent corrupting the timeline might be more probable. Since what I saw made no sound and the two forces I studied in school were electrical or magnetic where we only adopted the first, perhaps Climate Change/pollution forces the adoption of magnetic engines in the future. But could a magnetic engine function interstellar or would it be only functional close to the planet?
That said, TIME to me clearly travels in waves as does light itself, but at the same time light also appears to be particles. Michele Angelo Besso (1873–1955) was a close friend of Albert Einstein during his years at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. When Besso died in Geneva, aged 81, Einstein wrote a condolence letter to the Besso family. Albert wrote “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future only has the meaning of an illusion, though a persistent one.”
For decades, the Department of Defense sponsored secret studies of psychic phenomena in hopes of training an elite team of psychic soldiers. There are people with psychic abilities and others who have even contacted people who had previously died. Some have described we go to heaven or hell upon death and other religions believe were are sent back here for another tour of duty until we get it right and can stay in another dimension they call Nirvana.
Despite the propaganda against non-Christian religions being pagans, as I have mentioned before that neither the Greeks nor the Romans saw all their “gods” as creators. They were more like some Marvel superhero who was there to torment you if they felt like it. You would go pray to Poisden not because he created you, but because he was in charge of the sea. You would go to his temple and pray to him for safe passage. It was not the same concept of a God who created everything. Upon death, Zeus could not judge you, he would make a recommendation to the Three Fates who judged you.
The Greeks influenced their later conquerors the Romans in many ways which included their views of the afterlife. The idea of fantastic rewards or horrific torments to come after death was not a Christian theme to impose obedience. Instead, it was a rather graphic view in the writings of the most famous and talented poets of the Roman world. In fact, the great Latin poet Virgil (70-19 BC), like his Greek predecessor Homer, tells the story of a descent to the underworld where Hades ruled which we now call Hell. The Romans believed that the dead would first go to the underworld (Hell) where their souls were judged. If a person was judged to be undeserving of punishment, their soul would go to the Fields of Elysium (Haven). The concept of an afterlife predated Christianity.
In the Middle Ages, many Christians destroyed statutes assuming that each one was some sort of god. In fact, they were more like photographs of a deceased member of a family. Here is what remains of a statue of Germanicus. It was not only beheaded by the Christians, they chopped off its nose and carved a cross on the forehead. Germanicus was the adopted son of Tiberius but he was convinced that Piso’s wife, Plancina, had poisoned him. Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, whom Tiberius had installed as governor of Syria, was frustrated and seemed to believe he was overshadowed by Germanicus.
Even going further back to Egypt, there is the legend of Osiris who is killed by his brother Set. Plutarch, the Greek historian, tells us that Set conspired against Osiris with seventy-two unspecified accomplices. When people still mourned Osiris, Set had his body chopped up into 42 parts and disbursed around the kingdom. His wife Isis gathers all the parts and restores Osiris’s body, often with the help of other deities, including Thoth, a deity credited with great magical and healing powers, and Anubis, the god of embalming and funerary rites. Osiris becomes the first mummy, from which he then rises from the dead. Hence, this is why the Egyptians mummified their bodies so upon last judgment they would rise from the dead like Osirus. However, the missing part of Osiris was his penis, which Isis has to reconstruct with magic because the original was eaten by fish in the river. According to Plutarch, this is the reason the Egyptians also did not eat fish.
This differs from some Egyptian accounts where the penis of Osiris is found intact and is resurrected. Isis then magically becomes impregnated and gives birth to Horus. Then Horus avenges his father’s death. The Osiris legend is perhaps the oldest resurrection story in the ancient world.
Obviously, most religions accepted the idea of an afterlife and some believed in a last judgment and resurrection while some believed you simply went to the underworld or Elysium, and still, others believed you were sent back here until you learned your lessons and no longer needed to go through the cycle of birth, life, and death. The Egyptians would go to great lengths to preserve their bodies for the resurrection.
There is uncanny evidence that TIME is another dimension that flows in regular cycles. The Economic Confidence Model has picked so many turning points right to the day even decades in advance. If TIME were merely linear, then that would be impossible.
To me, I would venture that all of these sightings are not grey men from other planets, but from our own future. Perhaps we may have been visited once or twice by Aliens, but if so we were too primitive to bother with. That is all speculation and people will believe what they want to believe. I am only interested in TIME and for me, I tend to agree with Einstein.
TIME flows like the waves in the ocean. You can count the rhythm between each wave and see the pattern which emerges by just watching the intervals as they crash upon the shore.
Thus, the essence of TIME aside, just maybe these visits are from the future rather than some other galaxy. If so, the parody of Kirk meets Biden might be more on point. Of course, YouTube Removed it for anything that questions the mental capability of their fearless leader of the free world must be silenced.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 19, 2022 | sundance
Jumpin’ ju-ju bones, Governor Ron DeSantis detonated a thermonuclear political bomb on the Disney Corporation today.
A special legislative session has been called to approve the new congressional districting map. However, in an unexpected announcement, the Florida governor said that, in addition to a new congressional map they’re voting on, lawmakers “will be considering termination of all special districts that were enacted in Florida prior to 1968, and that includes the Reedy Creek Improvement District.”
As NBC notes, “The Reedy Creek Improvement District in the Orlando area shields Disney from local government regulations and from local property taxes, which could be worth as much as $200 million per year, by one lawmaker’s estimate. Legislators in both chambers predicted the legislation — which could end the 55-year-old taxing district next summer — would pass by Friday.” WATCH:
DeSantis knows he has a sky-high approval rating in the state, and he is moving fast while the public still has the cultural antagonism and political weaponization by the Disney Corporation in the headlines.
The Disney Corporation previously announced they were going to fund political attacks against the Florida Legislature for creating laws that protect children from sex predators in schools. Disney openly announced they support grooming efforts by teachers in K-3 education to sexualize children and discuss gender identity issues for children under 9-years-old without parental consent.
Ron DeSantis and the Florida Republican Legislature are about to deliver big revenge against Disney for that decision. In the political, cultural and all things corporate business world inside Florida, the removal of Disney’s special district status is huge.
(NBC , FLORIDA) – […] The prospect of the Legislature taking such a direct shot at Disney, the state’s largest private employer and traditionally one of the most powerful political players in the Florida capital, was unthinkable until the DeSantis era.
“This is a governor who is willing to buck your traditional elite establishment and corporate America,” Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls said. “And maybe that’s a difference in politics over the last 20 years, but I think that we’re starting to live in this really unique time.”
DeSantis is in a uniquely powerful position as governor. His favorability ratings are so high in the GOP that they rival those of former President Donald Trump’s in Florida, according to polls. If Trump doesn’t run for president in 2024, polls suggest, DeSantis is well positioned to be his heir apparent in two years as an early front-runner for the Republican Party’s nomination.
In a sign of his political clout, DeSantis had already forced legislators back to Tallahassee this week for a special session to rubber-stamp a proposed congressional map he drew after vetoing maps drawn by the Legislature — both unprecedented acts for a Florida governor. (read more)
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 16, 2022 | Sundance
In the ongoing public battle over Twitter as a speech platform, one actual user of Twitter, Chris Bakke, wanted to see who exactly these Board of Directors are, who are attempting to stop Elon Musk from purchasing it.
Chris Bakke then noted how little of the actual stock is owned by the company’s Board of Directors. Sans Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey, the combined ownership of the entire board equates to 77 shares of stock, worth around $3,200 bucks.
The Board of Directors [SEE BoD LINK HERE] consists of academics, tech executives, business and policy wonks, and a random baroness who doesn’t even use the service. These are the people who are making fiduciary decisions for all Twitter stock owners without any financial stake in the decisions they make for the company.
BOARD MEMBERS – (2) Bret Taylor, Independent Board Chair; Co-CEO, Salesforce (former Google exec). (3) Parag Agrawal,CEO, Twitter. (4) Mimi Alemayehou, Senior Vice President for Public – Private Partnership at Mastercard. (5) Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Professor at Stanford (former Google exec). (6) Egon Durban, Co-CEO, Silver Lake. (7) Robert Zoellick, Former Chairman of the Board of Directors of AllianceBernstein Holding L.P. (8) Patrick Pichette, General Partner, Inovia Capital; Former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Google. (9) Martha Lane Fox, Founder and Chairperson, Lucky Voice Group; Former Co-Founder and Managing Director of lastminute.com; Crossbench Peer, House of Lords. (10) Omid Kordestani, Former Executive Chairman, Twitter (former Google exec). (11) David Rosenblatt, CEO, 1stdibs.com, Inc. (former Google exec). (12) Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder, Twitter; CEO and Co-Founder, Square.
Further evidence the motivations behind the Twitter board have nothing to do with stewardship for their shareholders. Again, this is yet another datapoint highlighting the background structure of Twitter that Musk is exposing.
Twitter is not making a decision to decline the generous offer by Elon Musk because of stewardship or fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. The financials of Twitter as a non-viable business model highlight the issue of money being irrelevant. Twitter does not and cannot make money. Growing Twitter only means growing an expense. Growing Twitter does not grow revenue enough to offset the increase in expense.
There is only one way for Twitter to exist as a viable entity, people are now starting to realize this.
What matters to the people behind Twitter, the people who are subsidizing the ability of Twitter to exist, is control over the global conversation.
Control of the conversation is priceless to the people who provide the backbone for Twitter.
Once people realize who is subsidizing Twitter, everything changes.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 14, 2022 | Sundance
Appearing on Stage in Vancouver earlier today with the head of TED Chris Anderson, Elon Musk discusses why he has made a financial bid to purchase the social media platform Twitter. The video is prompted to 11:40 when Musk takes the stage, the first part of the conversation surrounds the Twitter announcement that had made global headlines only a few hours earlier. WATCH:
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America