Because apparently, 268,000 square miles of tumbleweeds and orange traffic cones isn’t enough to satisfy the Texas ego, our very own Lubbock-based State Representatives, Dustin Burrows and Carl Tepper, have decided to play a high-stakes game of Risk. They’ve launched a formal “study” to see if Texas can annex Lea, Roosevelt, and Eddy counties from New Mexico. It’s the first time we’ve tried to move the border since 1850, because if there’s one thing West Texas is missing, it’s even more flat, brown landscape to stare at while we’re driving to the mountains we actually like.
According to Representative Tepper, this isn’t a hostile takeover—it’s a rescue mission. He claims these counties are “frustrated” with the big, bad regulators in Santa Fe who keep trying to do things like “protect the environment” and “limit oil production.” Apparently, these folks want to join the Lone Star State so they can enjoy our unique brand of “freedom,” which primarily consists of sky-high property taxes and a power grid that starts sweating the moment the thermostat hits 85 degrees. It’s all about “shared values,” which is political shorthand for “we both think oil money smells better than Febreze.”
Of course, there’s a slight “sinful” snag in this glorious expansion. New Mexico currently enjoys things like legal weed dispensaries and casinos—the kind of “devil’s work” that makes Austin lawmakers break out in hives. Residents in Lea County are rightfully asking why they’d trade their pot shops and slot machines for the privilege of being governed by people who think a 7-Eleven selling wine on a Sunday morning is a sign of the literal apocalypse. It’s a tough sell: “Come to Texas! We have fewer rights, but hey, at least our politicians are louder about it.”
Even if we ignore the “morality” issue, this plan still has to get past the New Mexico legislature (who surely won’t mind losing their top oil revenue), the Texas legislature, and the U.S. Congress. It’s a bureaucratic pipe dream that could take years and might actually end up costing Texas taxpayers a fortune to “purchase” the land. But hey, if it means Carl Tepper can claim he’s the architect of the “New West Texas,” who cares if we’re just buying more dirt we don’t have the water to support anyway?
Because if there’s one thing Texas definitely needs, it’s a few more counties where the most exciting thing to do on a Saturday night is watch a pumpjack go up and down in a cloud of caliche dust.
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