Ah, the Sneaky Six, you remember them, right?
The six county commissioners who have crossed their fingers and their paths and criss-crossed their words by sliding in their $100,000 vote-buying slush fund.
Yep, they were back in the news again, last week overturning Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger's appropriate veto.
They say they did it because they needed the money to help the communities, including schools. They still did it after they were reportedly advised that those funds were not available to help schools.
There were even accusations this week and demands for an apology from Coppinger.
What? If any apology is due it's from the Sneaky Six to the voting public.
But when that appeal for an apology went over like giving your wife a fruit cake for Christmas, they went simply silly straight to the sheriff. Apparently, the next step after slight of hand and hollow allegations is trying to get a public official arrested because he defended his boss against the cash grab of the beloved Sneaky Six.
Simply put, six figures - that can't go to schools, mind you - will curry a lot of favor with voters. We all can see why they'd want to keep that powerful political pot of power. No one other than the Sneaky Six, though, can possibly see why they think the public wants to fund their vote-buying antics.
This is every bit as bad a fundraising idea as Hillary Clinton's foundation taking funds from terrorist organizations. Heck, in some ways it's worse. At least the Clinton Foundation gets its funds from donations rather than reaching into taxpayers' pockets.
Coppinger was trying to be fiscally responsible to his bosses - you, me and the rest of the county taxpayers - and save $900,000 in this year's budget, and he's supposed to apologize for that? No way.
But we're pretty sure G. Gordon Liddy and the Watergate warriors felt they needed an apology from The Washington Post for all the "negative" publicity back in the day, too.
Where's Big Foot?
Speaking of the erstwhile Mrs. Clinton, the New York Post reported that some newly released emails contain references to her meeting with Santa.
Before we learned that Santa was her hairdresser - insert joke here - we tossed out some possible answers to the potential question of "Who is Santa?"
A) The guy in charge of Christmas, swinging down to give gifts;
B) A secret alliance who offers advice on Arctic drilling;
C) A typo for Clinton's contact on getting former Cubs third baseman Ron Santo into the Hall of Fame;
D) A curvy young brunette impressed with the Clinton charm (wait, that's Bill's secret Santa).
Happy July 4th
Happy Birthday, America. We owe a huge debt to a huge multitude that made a huge sacrifice.
So enjoy your cookout today. Did you know that we Americans eat 150 million hot dogs over the holiday weekend? Stretched end to end, 150 million hot dogs would travel from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles more than five times.
Want more facts about frankfurters? Mickey Mouse's first words on the movie screen were "hot dog."
Finally, today's annual hot dog eating contest on Coney Island in New York will feature Joey Chestnut, the competitive eating champ. He's looking for his eighth title and has averaged more than six hot dogs per minute in the 10-minute competition in his career.
Chick Lock
Our area's Lock(ness) Monster, the Chickamauga lock, has received some new funding.
Hooray. This has been a decade-long fight that spanned Zach Wamp's U.S. House tenure and now is a pet project for Chuck Fleischmann; it has been dubbed the "Chuck Lock" by some.
Now that funding on the new lock appears to be a lock, it's time for the 700 block of Market Street to become the unofficial hand-wringing project around town.
Payday
Whoever said violence doesn't pay never met boxer Floyd Mayweather. The boisterous Mayweather lived up to his nickname "Money" in his most recent fight against Manny Pacquiao.
Mayweather, who negotiates a piece of the pay-per-view kitty, made a touch more than $220 million for the May 2 fight.
For context, that's more than NBA future Hall-of-Famer Tim Duncan has made over his career, and it averaged out to more than $101,000 per second of fight time for Mayweather.
That's a sweet-paying science.
Until next time.
Read Jay Greeson's online column the "5-at-10" Monday through Friday at timesfreepress.com after 10 a.m. Contact him at jgreeson @timesfreepress.com and follow him on Twitter at @jgreesontfp.