If you don’t live under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The bill doesn’t actually say that or anything resembling that, but facts are of little use for radical activists on the left or right.

I am one of the five or six people that actually read the bill, and I’m a supporter of it based on that. One of my life principles that I only recently discovered was necessary is “don’t talk to kindergarteners about sex, sexuality, or sexual identity if you aren’t their parent.” Call me old-fashioned.

But that isn’t the point I’m making today. What concerns me is the feud between Flordia Governor Ron DeSantis and The Walt Disney Corporation that came about as the result of this bill.

Disney, as you may know, is largely run by a group of politically-correct Californians that are always eager to “support the thing,” as it were. With a massive presence in Florida, their natural reaction was to criticize the bill regardless of what it actually said. That was silly, but highly predictable and of relatively little consequence. I don’t see them moving Disney World out of The Sunshine State anytime soon. Besides, free speech. Right?

My frustration is, oddly enough, with Ron DeSantis. His response to Disney’s criticisms was to begin eliminating special districts in Florida. In short, Walt Disney World has been permitted to largely govern itself and its property in Orlando since its arrival in the 1960s. They also have massive tax benefits. These have been in place for decades and is something Disney has been able to consistently rely upon.

Now, it is a whole other, and worthwhile, debate as to whether they should have had self-governance and special tax treatment in the first place. Other businesses don’t have those benefits. This is perhaps an example of the government picking winners.

But, it is an arrangement that Disney has had with the government of Florida and likely impacted its decision to set up shop there in the first place many decades ago. Now, DeSantis is using his power as a political weapon to take down his enemies. I don’t like that, and neither should you.

Government wields tremendous power. Imagine, for example, setting up nuclear power plant in a particular jurisdiction. It requires enormous capital to do so and is effectively impossible to move.

The state or local government could incentivize your power plant project with great tax breaks to get you there. Once you’re locked in, they could retract those tax breaks. Now that isn’t very fair. It diminishes trust in government, our ability to rely on our most foundational institutions. And trust is directly correlated with economic prosperity for self-evident reasons.

My impression is that DeSantis had previously expressed his interested in removing special districts before the “Don’t Say Gay” fiasco, so perhaps the timing is simply coincidental. But I wouldn’t give a politician, even one with whom I often agree, the benefit of the doubt. They rarely deserve it.