Years ago in a city in which I was living, after certain businessmen with political connections had bought up the once thriving, but at the time abandoned section of the downtown area, they proposed renovating that area into a business district of restaurants, bars, and tourist traps, and to avoid the expense of the work needed, proposed adding one cent to the already existing city sales tax for a period of five years.

This temporary sales tax addition brought in the needed funds.

Also being investors in the local class A, semi-pro sports teams, they threw in sports venues.

Granted the result brought tourists and their money into the city and the businessmen’s pockets, for the taxpayers and residents, however, what they got for their investment was more places to spend their money to keep the profits coming. If the plan failed, the city would have a derelict section of the city that had been made into a less derelict section while the owners lost nothing but had improved property they could sell at a profit even if it was torn down for another use.

The questionable purpose of all this was clearly illustrated by the fact that the renovations ended right across the railroad tracks from what had been the “colored” section of this somewhat Southern city that had a more attractive history than the abandoned warehouses and boarded businesses the elites owned because before Jim Crow had gone from passive resistance to integration and equality to a more active exercises of these, there had been a vibrant community of businesses and bars in which Jazz and Blues had actually been born before in their infancy the musicians left for more relatively accepting cities who now claim to be the birthplaces of these genres.

City neglect and urban renewal reduced this area to another derelict area, and, when real estate became cheap enough, it got bought up by investors, the existing bridge was fixed to make it easier to get to, and over-priced condos were built at prices and of such design that the historic nature of the area was erased, and those who had been forced to limit their lives and businesses to that area by design could not, by design, become part of the revitalized area.

This was all sold to the citizens as city pride, and the citizens accepted it that way.

Among the things constructed during the initial revitalization was a baseball stadium. Some city leaders, among them the local newspaper that heavily promoted the sales tax program, owned the city’s amateur class A baseball team and would greatly benefit by having a better home field located within the city surrounded by bars and restaurants as opposed to the rather dilapidated field on which they had been playing. And they got it.

This was repeated in the name of city pride to benefit the same people who were also investors in the city’s hockey team and the basketball team they eventually bought from another city with money they had because they did not have to pay for any stadium or arena construction as these were built by the taxpayers while their own money could be used to make more money for themselves.

I was one of those people who had objected to the plan because there were no guarantees that minority contractors, who were traditionally shut out of opportunities in favor of friends and families, would at least be given the chance to bid on projects. I also objected to the appeals for support from the GLBT Community as the city disbanded the Human Rights Commission to avoid having to include it in the relevant ordinances and continued to deny GLBT citizens basic rights.

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But what really bothered me was that, in spite of having to pay first for the baseball stadium, and later the athletic arena to house that team bought from another city, no arrangements were made either by mailing a ticket to each registered voter, taxpayer, or driver’s license holder to attend at least one game as a thank you, or have this happen by another arrangement. No, those who paid for the stadium had to pay from day one, and in spite of having paid for its construction, the thing was not named in a such a way to acknowledge this was done, but it was named after a corporation that bought the score board at the last minute.

Taxpayers had paid the construction cost for something they could not enjoy, even once, for free while profits kept rolling in for the team’s owners.

In similar fashion U.S. taxpayers in the form of Trump’s Project Warp Speed have been paying for the research being done by pharmaceutical companies who, when a vaccine is chosen, will make a profit off these very same “investors” in order to turn a profit.

If nothing else, the cost of the vaccine should be lower domestically than internationally unless the vaccine that is the most effective and preferred was developed by a company that was not part of Warp Speed and used no tax dollars.

That is not how it works, though.

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