What up, Tejas? Oh, your health care system isthe worst in the country, you rank 51st in the attainment of high school diplomas, and Rick Perry has just chopped $8 billion from education and Medicaid? (You know, in addition to turning down that free Medicaid from the feds, because federal money has syphilis?) Well, that's just because Texas has priorities. Priorities like "screw things what are good for citizens; Rick Perry's mansion's too old!" Well not anymore it ain't, now there is a spanking new $25 million renovation to the Governor's Mansion with all the "old-growth" and "longleaf pine" Rick Perry's simple heart could desire!

For their $21.5 million, plus $3.5 million in public donations, taxpayers got inch-thick longleaf pine floors, an added wing and a geothermal heating-and-cooling system that required digging 40 350-foot (107-meter) wells. The cost of restoring the 25-room house would be enough to pay for almost 11 million student lunches at Austin’s high schools. [...]

The cost also covered tracking down and buying old-growth Bastrop pine to restore the six 29-foot columns adorning the front of the Greek Revival-style house, said Dealey Herndon, the project manager. Workers stripped layers of lead paint from the white brick exterior and replaced the burned roof.

“I had to question every day whether this was a good use of the money,” Herndon said. “The cost of this is very high. Everything that wasn’t original architecture had to go out -- the kitchen equipment, the cabinets, the bathroom tile.”

Hey man, you don't want Rick Perry to have to live on the cheap, do you? Just think what that would do to Texas's reputation.

[Bloomberg, via HuffPo]