This piece by Jane Claymore first ran on the op-ed page of the Charleston Gazette on June 29, 2006. Blogged here, comments are invited below

West Virginians are being kicked off the home assistance roles in record numbers, but the governor needs marble bathtubs.

Elevators don’t work in two high-rise office buildings in the Capitol Complex, but the governor needs marble bathtubs.

Big Pharma has seduced state government regarding drug prices and advertising, but the governor needs marble bathtubs.

Children in poverty don’t receive dental care, but the governor needs marble bathtubs.

Women are being killed in record numbers due to domestic violence in West Virginia, but the governor needs marble bathtubs.

The state museum at the Cultural Center is still an incomplete mess, but the governor needs marble bathtubs.

The state’s natural beauty is under assault on all fronts: watersheds, viewsheds and lightsheds, but the governor needs marble bathtubs.

ATV deaths look to pass last year’s record, but the governor needs marble bathtubs.

Better miner safety laws have been defanged on the federal level, but the governor needs marble bathtubs.

I reckon you get the picture. What I want to know is, where’d he come from that he learned the people of the state owe him a life of luxury in office? This governor of ours, whose wife has been so voluble about how ashamed she is about living in the Governor’s Mansion, as ragged as she allegedly found it, has a habit of living beyond the taste and means of the state: the biggest boat on the river, request for a bigger airplane than anything in the current fleet (which cannot be maintained adequately as it is.) He says he’s parked his big SUV since gas prices shot up.

Call me a snob. (I’ve been called worse and those epithets weren’t true, either.) This outfit in the mansion is tacky, vulgar, ostentatious and outrageous beyond belief - $29,000 in plasma TVs was, I thought, the worst it could get. Proves I’m an optimist. Busting contracts to elude purchasing rules to a local draper (Wallpapers in Stock) who also supplies booze for parties, and has been held up and fined in front of the attorney general, shows that Manchin gets lousy advice. Tell me: Is the pseudo-bankrupt who did not declare her interest in the governor’s yacht still crashing at the mansion? The Gov declared: “This poor girl has nothing.” Reckon he forgot about the yacht she forgot in her bankruptcy filing. He took her in. How much is that bit of charity costing taxpayers?

Myself, I’ll be darned if I want to pay $1.8 million more than the $1.5 million declared necessary to fix up the mansion. Nor do I want to pay for a banquet hall on the mansion’s back 40, since it’ll wind up costing 150 percent more than he says. And his wife, the first lady, should be terribly ashamed now about bath requirements. What’s next, 40 gallons of ass’ milk, like Cleopatra?

— By Jane Claymore