I Love You, Texas.
I know sometime in the past I’ve written about Loving County. It’s way out in West Texas and has a current population of 57. Most of them hate each other.
The county is run by one family or the other one depending on the outcome of some of Texas’s most outrageous elections. Back when the Democrats were in control I used to tell people that I had voted Democratic all my life and when I die I want to be buried in Loving County so I can continue to vote Democratic.
I was pretty much serious about that.
And then, bygawd, along came fracking and Loving county got rich.
The tax base hovers around $7 billion to $9 billion. And the county’s budget has grown from about $2 million in 2008 to more than $28 million.
The salaries for many of the top officials in town — the judge, auditor, treasurer, clerk, justice of the peace, county attorney, constable and sheriff — are $100,000 or higher.
The current County Judge is Skeet Jones and pretty much every other county official is related to Ole Skeet.
Now I’m just kinda skipping over the background here but suffice it to say that Skeet is just a tad too big for his britches. And it appears he just popped a button.
Lawmen came to remote Loving County, Texas, on Friday to arrest the county judge, a former sheriff’s deputy and two ranch hands on one of Texas’ oldest crimes — cattle theft.
Judge Skeet Jones, 71, the top elected official since 2007 in the least populated county in the continental United States, is facing three felony counts of livestock theft and one count of engaging in criminal activity, accused of gathering up and selling stray cattle, authorities said.
They are cattle rustlers. I’ll be damn. As if there wasn’t enough graft going on to sustained 4 cowboys in the middle of damn nowhere.
I hate to see someone named Skeet – and that’s his legal name – suffer a tragic end, but Skeet made his bed, you know.
You can read more about it right here. It’s worth your time.