Mayor White and the shirtless neighbor

As a politician, you dread those made-for- YouTube moments.  Mayor Bill White had one of those earlier this week.  There he was, launching the Houston's million tree program.  He was standing at the podium, near Memorial Park, looking all Mayoral.. when.. a guy who lives across the street walked over.  He went right up to the mayor, sans shirt, and said something like "There are cars parked on my property, you need to move them."  The Mayor was pretty calm, and the man was quickly hustled off by HPD officers.

Following that, the Mayor quipped, "I thought about showing up without a shirt... but my son says he wouldn't be able to go to school and I couldn't be his father anymore."  You can see the video via abc13.com here.

The back story is that my friend lives next door to the shirtless man!  He's apparently well known for giving his opinion, having shown up at my friend's house to offer his own opinions during a Super Bowl party one year.   The city folks wanted to point out that all the cars were parked on the city's right of way and none were in the man's yard.  Still, it's good to know that citizens are entitled to their opinions and others are entitled to YouTube.

Comments

[Jeem]

Mayor White is cool!
I am proud that he is our Mayor.

[W. Zeis]

Why on earth does the city need to spend money better spent on police on planting a bunch of trees? People will plant their own trees, developers will plant trees, trees will plant trees, squirrels will plant trees, God will plant trees, birds will plant trees, do-gooders will plant trees, run-off from rain will plant trees, accidents will plant trees, dogs will plant trees, hurricanes and tornadoes and fires will plant trees, homeless people will plant trees, wind will plant trees, Johnny Appleseed will plant trees, cemeteries will plant trees, nurseries will plant trees.

So why does the city need to spend money planting trees? Stop spending public money for stupid purposes!

[Houstonian]

Trees are part of our environmental future. Without them, humanity will be extinct.

A wasteful use of public money is to bail out individuals who bought the American dream who at the time knew they could not afford it and overextend themselves on a daily basis and want the government, i.e., public money, to bail them out. A waste is saving the individuals who did not evacuate with the mandated order and needed rescuing. A waste is the thousands of individuals who will not fix their own fences because they want FEMA to do it. A waste is the thousands of individuals who will not go buy a blue tarp because they want the County to buy it and install it for them. Need I go on?

[Houstonian]

. . . . but I am, as well, proud of our mayor for his infinite coolness!

[W. Zeis]

Humanity would be extinct without trees, plants, algae, and whatever produces oxygen from carbon dioxide. My point was that we have a sufficiency of sources to plant trees; we don't need government expenditures to do it, unless the government wants to reward certain friends in the tree-producing business. We can argue about other government waste. "Government waste" is redundant, yes?

[W. Zeis]

By the way, Miya Shay, qui bono? Who benefits from this city expenditure of nearly a million dollars? The Sisters of Mercy? Not likely. Which corporation is providing the goods?

[Hailey]

I think Mayor White is great. I wonder where the heck the Mayor's security detail was? If I was Mayor White I would be pretty upset that they did not stop the man.

[Hailey]

After seeing the video I still think the Mayor's security details should have stoped the man before he got that close to the Mayor. It wasnt until the mayor was intreupted that 2 of the officers did anything.

[PeggieC]

Hailey - Honey - use spell check if you can't spell interrupted. It makes you look ignorant.

[cameron]

i think most of us knew what she meant....no reason to get all corrective here

[taina]

how dare you call someone you don't know ignorant

[Robert]

Taina is ignorant of the definition of the word ignorant...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ignorant