Welcome to Texas, where Republican leadership hasn’t lowered our electric bill, our insurance rates, our college tuition, or our taxes, but they have done one helluva job lowering our standard of living.

Citing a funding shortfall and the impact of a historic oil drilling boom, Texas Department of Transportation officials on Thursday announced plans to move forward with converting some roads in West and South Texas to gravel.

Approximately 83 miles of asphalt roads will be torn up and converted to “unpaved” roads, TxDOT Deputy Executive Director John Barton said. The speed limits on those roads will probably be reduced to 30 mph.

I guess going back to cobblestone is out of the question  so once we can’t afford gravel, we got dirt.  Dirt is still pretty damn cheap in Texas and if it was good enough for Davy Crockett, it’s good enough for south Texas.

Now I want you to hear the damnest reasoning I have ever heard.

Commissioner Fred Underwood wanted to make sure the public understood the reasoning behind the decisions.

“This is a safety issue,” Underwood said. “It’s not ‘our roads are bad and we’re not going to keep them up.’ It’s ‘our roads are bad and we’re trying to protect the driving public.’”

What the hell is the difference?  Our roads are bad.  We can’t fix them. Ain’t that kinda like saying, “We can’t afford to fix our broken fire trucks but so we’re going to fix that by not letting people live in wood houses.”

Thank you Rick Perry and the Republican leadership.

Thanks to Jason for the heads up.