Greeson: A question for the Philadelphia mayor who is angry at Tennessee

Jay Greeson
Jay Greeson
photo Jay Greeson

Everyone from the leader of the free world on down is pushing their opinion on who can use which potty.

President Obama chimed in recently about the transgender restroom brouhaha that has become the most divisive bathroom gender issue since the "seat up" or "seat down" controversy.

Earlier this week, Philadelphia Mayor John Kenney banned all city employees from publicly funded, nonessential travel to Tennessee because of the state's recent new law allowing mental health counselors to turn away LGBT clients.

OK, that's your right, Mr. Mayor.

And there are a lot of folks who question the decisions behind and the relative worth of these controversial laws, and that's fine.

These are emotional issues, for sure.

But here's a question for Mayor Kenney - and the rest of the leaders of the governmental bodies across the country managing our tax dollars - why have we not already put a stop to ALL publicly funded, non-essential travel?

Trump-Ryan meet

Reportedly, Donald Trump and Paul Ryan had a sit-down this week to hash out their differences.

This had to rank somewhere between the restaurant meeting between Michael Corleone and Sollozzo and an alien having a conversation with a fungo bat on the scale of awkward.

Ryan has spent most of his political career working to get to the top of the GOP establishment. Trump has spent almost all of the last 15 months trying to topple it.

Now, with all of the 1,209 Republican folks who entered the race for the party's nomination save Trump watching from the sideline, Ryan is left with the harsh realization that he has two options: Get behind Trump and hope for the best; or, fight Trump, and, at best, secure the November election for Hillary, and, at worst, splinter the party.

Little was mended or revealed publicly from the meeting, but I would have loved to have seen it and been able to read the thought bubbles.

Here's a guess on how that could look:

Every time Trump speaks, Ryan tunes him out after three sentences and ponders the urge to touch Trump's 'do.

Then, every time Ryan starts speaking, after three sentences, Trump starts hearing Charlie Brown's teacher's taunting "wah wah wah wah WAH."

Riverbend tradition

More breaking news this week from the annual downtown music festival from this newspaper's Barry Courter.

Among the announcements was news of the first professional wrastlin' event ever scheduled for the festival.

Talk about knowing your target audience.

Heck, we've seen dozens of heavy-set white dudes with their shirts off wrestling at Riverbend through the years.

Thankfully, they have now made it official.

School board or coach's convention

Man, that Thursday work session of the Hamilton County school board sounded like a barrel of fun.

In truth, the tasks ahead of that group are of the utmost importance.

But the quotes, oh man, the quotes.

- "Think outside of the box." Haven't we heard that so often now that it actually may be really different to think inside the box?

- "Adding to the bureaucracy." Sadly, it feels like everyone is adding to this -ocracy or that one.

- Finally, and this one made me laugh: According to media reports new Interim Superintendent Dr. Kirk Kelly is looking for a public relations director. When informed of the news, always outspoken board member Rhonda Thurman said she is not interested in paying six figures for someone to inform the board that "teachers are still teaching and students are still learning."

Discretionary funds

Regular readers of this column know my disdain for those six-figure discretionary funds the Hamilton County commissioners control.

Those $100,000 bank accounts are back in the news as the county budget is again being hashed out.

Kudos to the commissioners for talking about the issue openly in front of the budget issue rather than trying to sneak it in the back door in the 11th hour of the process, as happened last year.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com. His "Right to the Point" column runs on A2 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

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