"We Built That"

Signage and big screens at the RNC read "We Built It".

The Tampa Bay Times Forum, draped with this message, is a publicly financed and publicly owned venue, financed using $80 million in city and county bonds, backed in part by taxes.

Both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions are directly financed, in part, by taxpayer money. According to the FEC, The Presidential Election Campaign Fund gave public grants of over $18 million to each convention.

The city of Tampa Bay, financed by federal and local dollars, paid $2.7 million for beautification projects and infrastructure upgrades to get ready for the RNC, which improved highways, planted trees and redesigned signage.

The city has also received $11 million from the federal government to complete The Riverwalk, a two-mile greenspace near the Forum utilized by RNC attendees.

The federal government also provided a $50 million grant to provide security for the RNC, which is being used to pay police overtime and enhance equipment.

I get that they're not claiming that they built the arena, but it serves to illustrate the point that "we" are direct and indirect beneficiaries of state, local and federal spending. Spending made possible by our collective contributions.

Infrastructure spending is needed and important. It's how and why we have public spaces, with roads and bridges and bike paths allowing for, among other things, consumers and producers to get together.

We did build it in a sense, but that's not really the underlying message of those signs. The message seeks to divide us, but we're all in this together.

It may sound trite and possibly naive. Maybe, but I'd still like to have issues framed in a way that doesn't seek to push us hither and yon.

I expect we'll see more, yet different "messaging" at the DNC. In either case, pandering to low-brow BS is not helping.