There was a fire at the derelict abandoned governor’s mansion last night.  See the Statesman report and the KXAN report.   Not to worry, the guv is quite safe, enjoying a European vacation.  Even if he weren’t galavanting around the continent, it’s still no biggie because the guv don’t live there no more.  While the rickety crib is in midst of a $10 million renovation, Ricky’s been hanging at a real mansion to the tune of $10K a month rent - courtesy of your tax dollars.

The really sad part is that for $10 million smackaroos, you could have razed that monstrosity and built a real mansion.  Heck, for $10 million large, I’ll bet we could find someone who could build a house that would meet modern building codes and say, maybe even have a fire suppression system…. 

Better yet, why don’t just we evict the speaker from his crib in the capitol and let the governor stay there?  It would save us at least $10K a month - which would be a couple of tanks of gas for us regular folk.  At least we’d have an elected official - well, a 39% elected official - living large on the taxpayer/lobby dole instead of a selected official. 

We could build yet another ginormous highrise of ugly ass condos there for the rest of our elected officials to live in during the session.  That way, the Texas Toothless Ethics Commission wouldn’t have to keep investigating all those state reps and senators who use campaign funds to pay *rent* to their spouses.  We could close it down after sine die and make them all go back home to their districts where the voters could actually see them every once in a while.

What a concept.

UPDATE   UPDATE   UPDATE:  The State Fire Marshal’s office has found evidence the fire was intentionally set.  Uhm…. that would be arson.  Looks like Little Ricky will just have to tough it out in West Lake a little longer.

There’s a reason we call them DIMocrats…

This is just going to be soooooooo much fun.