Category: random

Absenteeism, Federal Funds, and a Shrinking Washington

Now, I don’t pretend to understand all the goings-on of this great American experiment, especially when it comes to matters of money and government—which is to say, fraud and folly—but it strikes me as downright peculiar that Nevada, a state with its boots firmly planted in the dusty soil of self-reliance–or so it says–is whistling Dixie to the bank with a sackful of federal coin as the very hand that handed it out is gettin’ sawed off at the wrist.

You see, the Nevada Department of Education just got itself a shiny new federal grant—one of those highfalutin’ projects with a name longer than a preacher’s sermon–the Stronger Connections Technical Assistance and Capacity Building program, which sounds like it came out of a sausage grinder full of bureaucracy and good intentions. The aim? Reduce chronic absenteeism in the schools by 15 to 20 percent over the next three years, which, if successful, would still leave a good many seats cold and empty at roll call.

But here’s the rub, friend. While Nevada schools’re happy to be getting training, mentorship, and “Check & Connect” schemes—where some poor soul has to check in on young truants and connect with them like a telegraph operator in a thunderstorm—the Department of Education over in Washington is undergoing a slimming more severe than a politician’s principles after election day. Staff cuts, program consolidations, cuts so close they’ll raise gooseflesh—and yet the money flows like the Truckee River in springtime.

So what gives?

Well, let me explain in the plainest way I can–just because the federal Department of Education is shrinking like a wool sweater in a washtub doesn’t mean the spigot’s shut—at least not yet. The grant Nevada received was already baked into the budget cake some time ago, back when Congress was still pretending to like each other long enough to pass things.

These programs, you see, have long tails. Like an old mule, they keep working long after common sense says they should be at pasture.

Besides, when Uncle Sam decides to pass around a few gold pieces for something as noble as helping kids show up to school—well, no politician wants to be the fellow who says, “Let them stay home!” even if his other hand is busy dismantling the very agency that sent the check.

And I’ll wager another thing–Nevada, like most states, is glad to take the money while muttering about federal overreach, the way a hungry man gripes about the soup being too hot as he slurps it down. The state gets to wear two hats—one of the poor-country cousins, pleading for help, and the other of the proud pioneer, suspicious of Washington’s meddling.

So, while the boys and girls at the top trim the tree of federal education, the roots are still feeding the ground in places like Nevada—where the statehouse says times are hard, but not so hard they’ll say no to a few million in taxpayer generosity.

That, my friend, is the American way—complain about the barn while milking the cow.

Helmand Provines, Afghanistan, late 2006 with the Marines. My job was to go on mounted patrols with them, riding in MRAPs—big armored trucks meant to withstand blasts.

For a while, they worked. Then, the Taliban figured it out. They made bigger bombs.

IEDs were their weapon of choice, the cornerstone of their arsenal. They had only so many explosives, so they had to choose: one big bomb or many small ones.

If the Marines found the big one, it meant a few days of peace before the Taliban built another.

It was a war of patience, of deception. They studied us.

They knew what we were looking for. They knew how to hide things where we wouldn’t think to look.

But the Marines had the Kid.

The man wasn’t a kid. He was older than most Lance Corporals but younger than most Sergeants.

He was small, and at a distance, you’d think he was a teenager. Up close, you saw the lines on his face, the patchy beard.

He could have been 30. He could have been 50.

He didn’t know. He only knew he was born during Ramadan, sometime after the Soviets left, but he couldn’t say for sure.

We met him in the fields by his family’s compound. He walked up when he heard our convoy. He did his best to stare down the convoy.

The Skipper got out, uneasy about stopping but wanting to make an introduction. Hearts and minds.

He gave him a “salaam alaikum.” He didn’t smile, didn’t speak.

The Skipper put out his right hand, and he offered his left. That was an insult.

Left hand. Wiping hand.

The Skipper didn’t take it personally. Just laughed.

He looked at the Lieutenant, measuring. Maybe impressed or worried.

The Skipper gave him a pack of powdered Gatorade. He took it.

A week later, he came to the outpost with a sick toddler. The Corpsman mixed Gatorade with crushed Motrin.

The youngster got better. The Kid took note.

After that–he waited as we rumbled by. He heard the engines.

He ran out to meet us and said something simple, “Wazir Kalei busy today.”

It was understood–busy meant Taliban, meant bombs, meant death. The Marines listened.

For thirty-six days, there were no IEDs. Thirty-six days of the Taliban going mad, trying to figure out how they knew.

Command listened to their radio chatter. They thought the Americans had drones watching them.

They got desperate. Switched to ambushes.

The Marines were ready for those. They hit the Taliban hard.

They lost men. The Marines didn’t.

Then, one day, the convoy turned onto the familiar road and saw something small. Dark and out of place.

The point vehicle called it in. The Lieutenant asked for a better look.

The Lance Corporal in the lead gave the reply. “It’s the Kid.”

“Clarify,” directed the Skipper.

“It’s a kid,” he said again. “His head.”

The Taliban had figured it out. I don’t know how–none of us knew.

It could have been anyone giving them that intel. The villagers talked to the Marines.

The elders. The farmers.

But somehow, they knew. They knew it was the Kid.

Sometimes, I think about it, and I feel guilty, but not over the Kid’s death because I know that without him, we would be dead. And in some twisted, ugly way, that makes the Kid’s death acceptable collateral damage.

Now, if only what’s left of my humanity could believe that.

By Yours Truly, a Humble Observer of the Human Comedy

The great gears of federal injustice ground on for months, gnashing and hissing like a brokedown steam engine hunting to crush Michele Fiore, a woman of brass spine and no shortage of colorful flair. But when the gavel got raised to flatten her completely, along comes President Donald Trump with a pardon in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other — and wouldn’t you know, he lit the fuse on the crooked business.

For those not keeping score, Fiore had the misfortune of entering public life with a sharp tongue, a set of cowgirl ethics, and a habit of saying precisely what she meant–qualities that do not endear one to the fork-tongued serpents of federal power. While serving on the Las Vegas City Council, she made some enemies–and not the polite kind you debate over tea.

In October of last year, a jury–handpicked under the watchful eye of the federal star chamber–found her guilty of wire fraud. Six counts, plus one of conspiracy, a word that always sounds suspiciously vague when wielded by bureaucrats with a thirst for scalps.

The case, in short, claimed she’d dipped into political pots and poured the contents into her garden. Never mind that the very foundation of modern campaigning is a web of winks, nods, and financial gymnastics; the difference is Fiore didn’t bow when Washington came knocking.

Despite her pleas of innocence, her call for a new trial was laughed out of court just last week–no surprise there. When you stand accused by the federal government, you might as well be arguing with a train–it won’t hear you, and it’s determined to run you down anyway.

Fiore’s downfall was less about dollars and cents and more about whom she backed and what she believed. She stood with Trump, stood with Bundy, and stood too tall for the folks who like their women quiet and their rebels dead.

The FBI–that proud institution that once surveilled Martin Luther King Jr. and now fritters away its credibility like a drunk gambler–decided Fiore needed humbling. So they stormed in with charges and press releases, leaking and spinning until they had enough smoke to suggest fire. But smoke ain’t fire, and today, the woman they tried to bury has been pulled from the dirt and dusted off by a presidential pardon.

She called it a vindication–and who’s to say it ain’t? She says her faith held firm, her truth was unshaken, and now her name’s been restored.

The Department of Justice should hang its head –but it won’t. The FBI will keep scribbling in its little notebooks, hoping the next target won’t bite back. And the press, who once fawned over Fiore when she made good headlines but turned on her like starved jackals when the script flipped, will now mumble about “accountability” while choking on the fact that the woman they called a crook walks free.

Mark this moment–it was not justice that saved Michele Fiore–it was prayer and the fact that the system’s broken, and Trump knows it all too well.

By One that Ought to Know

If you ever find yourself in Carson City on a Friday—heaven help you—you might think the State Legislature had packed up its wigs and gavels, boarded a stagecoach, and vanished into the sagebrush. The hearing rooms sit as empty as a church pew in a gambling house, the corridors echo with the distant hum of disinterest, and the only thing getting passed is time.

Now, let us not be hasty. There are laws to make, budgets to get balanced, and speeches to bloviate, but not on Fridays. At least not in the first two months of the legislative session when, by all accounts, the halls of government resemble a ghost town more than a capitol.

Senator Ira Hansen, a fellow from Sparks–with eight sessions under his belt and a disposition like a buckboard over a gravel road, was asked how much work gets done on a Friday. He didn’t mince words, “None. Almost none,” he said, with the candor of a man who’s seen a thing or two and has grown tired of seeing it again.

According to the good Senator, if the citizenry were the bosses and the lawmakers the help, there’d be a heap of pink slips fluttering through the air like autumn leaves. “You would fire us,” he said, “because we’re only working four out of the five days that you’re paying us for.”

And that’s before he warmed up.

And the records, alas, bear him out. Of 84 scheduled Friday committee meetings, 40 got canceled. That’s nearly half—a batting average that would have even the most hopeless baseball team blushing.

Now, lest you think this is all one-sided, we did hear from Senator Angie Taylor, a Democratic chairwoman of the Education Committee and, by her own account, no deserter of duty. She explained that sometimes meetings are scratched because legislators are still sweet-talking the stakeholders or waiting for the bills to roll like reluctant tumbleweeds.

“But when the bills are there, we’re there,” she insisted.

It’s a fine enough defense—provided the bills don’t know it’s Friday, too.

As for the pay, it’s $130 a day—a sum that might buy you a decent supper and a room above the livery stable–but which adds up when you multiply it by 120 days, especially if spending twenty percent of that time catching up on your correspondence from a fishing dock.

Senator Hansen invites one and all to visit on a Friday and witness the quietude firsthand. “Sit here for an hour,” he said, “and watch how much work is being done.”

The man should charge admission.

Senator Taylor, when asked point-blank if she ever took a three-day weekend. She said no.

She didn’t speak for the others, and who can blame her? In politics, it’s everyone for themself once voting’s done and the weekend’s nigh.

So whether this early exodus is a symptom of legislative inefficiency or simply the calm before the late-session storm, I leave it to you, dear reader. But if you plan to visit the legislature on a Friday, don’t forget to pack a book—and maybe a blanket.

The Silver State—grand, shimmering Nevada—is wearin’ a crown of tarnished tin, not gold, for she’s got herself the worst unemployment rate in all these United States. The number stands at 5.7 percent, accordin’ to some solemn scribblers over at DETR–that’s the Department of Employment, Training, and Reassurance, I reckon.

But before you go celebratin’–it’s a whole tenth of a percent lower than last month. That’s right—so slight you’d need a microscope and a prayer to see it.

Now, Nevada ain’t entirely alone in this plight. It got outpaced by the District of Columbia—our nation’s capital and a mighty fine place to misplace a dollar or two—where the unemployment rate is 5.6 percent.

So, at least Nevada can point east and say, “We may be broke, but at least we ain’t politicians!”

Reno, that jewel of the desert with more casinos than sense, came in at 4.7 percent. Carson City, ever the steady hand, is sittin’ at 4.5 percent, perhaps from all the legislative loafers finally countin’ for something. Elko County, bless its rural little heart, has the lowest number at 4.3 percent—proof that when there’re fewer folks to count, you can’t count many as unemployed.

But saddle up and ride down to Mineral County if you want a tale of woe–9.6 percent unemployment. That’s nearly one in ten folks kickin’ dust and cursin’ the sky. I don’t know what kind of minerals they’re diggin’ for there, but it sure ain’t jobs.

And then there’s Las Vegas, our city of sin and sequins, clockin’ in at 5.6 percent, where folks can lose their shirts in the casino or the job market—dealer’s choice.

So there you have it. Nevada’s got the worst jobless rate in the land, but don’t fret too hard—we’re inchin’ in the right direction.

Just don’t blink, or you might miss the progress.

Here’s a tale that’ll turn your coffee cold and make you swear off sightseeing by air. The federal folks—those good people at the FAA, who always seem to show up late with a mop after the milk’s already spilled—have poked their heads out from behind their desks and taken a hard look at our nation’s whirlybirds.

A January dust-up in Washington, D.C., between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter turned tragic—snuffed out 67 souls and painted a grim reminder that the sky, unlike a Sunday picnic, ain’t a place for sloppy manners and poor directions. The FAA prodded at the incident like one does with an old mule using a stick, decided to let artificial intelligence root through its mountains of neglected paperwork and figure out where else folks might be dancing too close for comfort in the sky.

Wouldn’t you know, Las Vegas—a town known for gamblers and showgirls, not safety records—popped up on the radar. The FAA discovered that the helicopter operators and air traffic controllers were playing “Guess where I am” with no rules about who flies where or when.

Picture a barn dance where half the folks are blindfolded, and the other half are drunk—that’s about the airspace over Harry Reid International.

Acting FAA head Chris Rocheleau, someone who just remembered where he left his car keys, said they jumped in quickly. They started telling pilots where the other flying machines were, which you’d think would be standard procedure, not divine inspiration.

Lo and behold, the near-smack-ups dropped by thirty percent in three weeks. Miraculous, what a little common sense can do.

Now, there’s talk of expanding the watchdogging to places like Boston, New York, and Dallas—anywhere folks go up in the air hoping to come back down in the same shape. It seems Las Vegas was just the tip of the iceberg, or maybe the first hole in the block of Swiss cheese that safety folks like to yammer about.

Former NTSB boss Jim Hall said the helicopter tour business is an airborne circus—less about safety and more about thrilling Aunt Edna from Omaha. And while the FAA deserves a slow clap for finally doing something, it’s a sorry thing when it takes a pile of bodies to stir the regulators from their slumber.

Jeff Guzzetti, who’s seen his fair share of crash sites, said, “This was a real hazard.”

Now the FAA’s eyes are on places like Van Nuys and Hollywood Burbank, where the runways are so close you could pass a sandwich between departing planes.

In the end, Rocheleau summed it up like a man trying to plug a hundred leaks with one cork–flying is still the safest way to get around, but don’t go betting your luck. They’re trying to get smarter, use the data better, and do something when they find a problem.

Revolutionary, I know.

Aviation lawyer Robert Clifford, usually the FAA’s loudest critic, even tipped his hat. Said the feds might finally be doing what needed doing before that January tragedy made headlines.

So there you have it, folks. The sky’s still blue, the helicopters are still buzzing, and the FAA is, at long last, trying to herd those airborne cats with rules instead of prayers. And about time, too.

Now, I ain’t one to meddle in the affairs of courtrooms and city halls—except when they hand down justice the way a goose lays eggs– unpredictable, unceremonious, and sometimes a little soft in the shell.

News out of Washoe County has it that Mr. Christopher McDougal, the gentleman that ran down U.S. District Court Judge Larry Hicks in the bustling core of Reno last May, has now begun his penance. For taking the life of a man who had himself spent decades measuring out justice with a firm but even hand, McDougal got sentenced to spend thirty days in the county jail—a sentence shorter than some marriages and far less painful than a toothache.

Along with the jail stint, McDougal’s gotta perform 200 hours of community service, suffer through eight hours of traffic safety school–which is a punishment in its own right–and sit solemnly through a victim impact panel—likely full of tearful reckonings and the kind of heavy silences you can’t wriggle out of. Add to that a suspended driver’s license and a fine of $1,153, and you’ve got the full weight of justice resting on him like a featherbed on a sleeping cat.

Should Mr. McDougal, by mischief or misstep, fail to honor these conditions, he will face 180 days behind bars. Though I reckon, for now, he’s gettin’ the sort of second chance a fellow prays for when a mistake too great for comfort and tragic for remedy gets made.

The family of Judge Hicks offered thanks to the officers and attorneys who worked the case, calling the outcome a step toward healing. And perhaps it is.

Whilst I don’t aim to write tragedies—as life already writes enough of those without any help from me—some tales fall so hard and sharp upon the public ear and private heart that they demand telling–and this is one. It is a story soaked in blood and sorrow, tangled in madness and mystery–and its telling is not to sensationalize but to record the truth as plainly and honestly as possible.

The accused in this tale is one Carson Gonzales, a youth of but twenty years, now sitting in the Washoe County jail under a no-bail hold, his soul heavier than the stone walls surrounding him. On a Saturday evening in the high desert, in a quiet home on Powder Drive in northwest Reno, a horror unfolded that folks in Sparks and beyond won’t soon forget.

The dead is his mother, Miss Carla Gonzales, aged 52, a schoolteacher of art and photography at Sparks High—a woman I had the pleasure of sharing a few words with from time to time in Virginia City, usually over an Old Fashioned and a discussion about lighting or composition. Whether we were friends or acquaintances, that is water under the bridge now.

For my part, I call her a friend because it hurts more that way.

When officers arrived, summoned by a flurry of 9-1-1 calls, they found her friend—Miss Angela Clay, age 46—bleeding in a neighbor’s driveway, her face torn open, neck gashed, body broken like a child’s toy after a tantrum. That she survived at all is a testament to the fortitude of the human frame and, more importantly, to a neighbor who pressed his hands to her wound and held her to this world by sheer grit and the mercy of Providence.

Inside, the scene was too dreadful to set fully to paper. Miss Gonzales lay on her side, her neck so savaged that her spine got exposed to open air.

Death came quickly–but not cleanly. Carson was found in the garage, stripped near to nothing, soaked in blood, muttering of madness, of Trump and queens, and other things that spoke more to a fractured mind than a wicked heart.

He told the police he got attacked. He said he acted in defense.

He said he could bring his mother back. And then he asked his half-brother how many years he might get for “this stupid sh–,” which seems to be the only moment of clarity in the whole ghastly affair.

The court has ordered a competency evaluation—which is fitting, for it is no small thing to ask whether a man is guilty if he no longer grasps the shape of right and wrong. Whether this is a tale of murder, madness–or both tangled together like fishing lines is yet unknown.

What is known is that Miss Angela Clay, described by her family as light-hearted and close as kin to Carla Gonzales, is slowly recovering, though she has many miles to go. Her brother-in-law, a plainspoken man named Chris Battenberg, said the family is pulling together, catching each other when they fall, which is what families are for in times like these.

He also gave thanks—tearful and true—to the man who saved her life in that driveway. Of Carla Gonzales, he said, “She was like the family mom.”

I reckon there’s no better epitaph for a woman.

It wasn’t a story I wished to write. But now that it’s finished, I hope you’ll remember the victims before the headlines fade and hold tight to those you love. Because the night is long, friends, and sometimes the devil don’t knock—it comes through the door wearing a face you already know.

It was 108 degrees in July 2006 in the Diyala Province, northwest of Muqdadiyah. We sat, baking in our MRAP, waiting, feeling like sitting ducks, while the lieutenant decided what to do.

There were a few shots in the distance–small arms fire, scattered and thin. The Skipper thought it was worth a look.

The platoon was light—two squads instead of three or four. We had two Iraqi Army trucks and two Iraqi Police vehicles, all RVing toward the noise.

A bad decision, but no one knew that yet.

They came to a small village, not much more than a handful of buildings strung along a dirt road. A canal ran to the right, a ditch to the left.

There was only one way in and one way out.

The lieutenant didn’t wait for the drone he had called in. He didn’t think about the blocked alternate route, didn’t think when the Iraqi Police left them, warning of an al-Qaeda stronghold ahead.

The lieutenant ordered the convoy forward anyway.

The Iraqi Army took point, our truck next. The others followed.
Halfway in, the lead truck stopped.

No radio call. No warning.

The driver pulled up behind them, where he saw the ditch across the road. The squad leader jumped out, spoke with the Iraqis, and then jumped back in.

That’s when the shooting started. I had no time to write, no time to take photographs.

Three men in the grass, fifty meters away to our left, with AKs.

Then we saw a bongo truck roll into the village, mounted with a DShK M1938, a Soviet heavy machine gun. The kind that tears through steel.

Stuck in an L-shaped ambush. No way forward. No way back. Just lead in the air and the sound of the big gun hammering.

The turret gunner fired back. The M240 barked beside him.

Our driver sat, hands on the wheel. Nothing to do but wait for the next bullet to find us.

Then, the explosion. A bang. Fire. Smoke. I thought it was an IED.

My ears rang from the blast. Knock out of my seat, I checked myself for wounds; nothing. Then, our driver felt something sharp on his cheek.

Touched his face. Blood on the glove.

Red. Wet.

“I’m bleeding,” he said calmly.

Then, the cab filled up with thick gas from the fire suppression system. Everyone’s voices dropped, low and strange, because of the gas, the opposite of sucking on a helium-filled balloon.

Time moved differently. It always did in moments like these.

He threw it into reverse. Hit the truck behind him.

No room. No give.

He hit it again. And again.

Finally, the convoy started backing out. It was slow, ugly work.

He had one mirror, no rear camera, and could barely see, blood filling his eyes. Then the Corpsman came, running under fire, climbing into the truck, hands on him, stopping the blood.

The squad leader took the wheel as the Corpsman and the driver got out to meet the Medivac. Air Force Black Hawk to Balad Medical, where we learned the truth.

It was not an IED. A DShK 12.7×108mm round.

It had punched through the armor, hit the roll bar near his head, shattered, and sent shrapnel across his face. A few inches closer, and perhaps none of us would be there to know any of it because of internal vehicular bounce around.

The Cherubini Brother’s Reunited

If this don’t warm the heart and sting the eyes, then you may be made of stone or servin’ as a bureaucrat. After eighty-one revolvin’ orbits of the sun, a soldier long thought lost to the green jungles of Burma has found his way home, carried not by the footsore march of war but by a Southwest Airlines flight touchin’ down in Reno.

U.S. Army Private Roman Cherubini, one-half of a pair of twins born in the fair town of Bridgeton, New Jersey, in the Year of Our Lord 1923, went to war and never returned–at least not in the usual way. Twenty-two, when he perished in the thick and sweltering wilds of Southeast Asia, he was part of a fierce and wiry crew known as Merrill’s Marauders.

These weren’t your average parade-ground soldiers. These men hiked, sweated, and bled their way through the dense green wrath of Burma, outnumbered, outgunned, and altogether unafraid.

The Marauders were the kind of fellows who’d spit on the Devil’s boots and keep marching. Pvt. Cherubini was among ‘em, making his stand on June 16, 1944, when the War Department says he fell in the service of a cause greater than any one man.

His mortal remains were buried once in a temporary grave, then again in a military cemetery in India, and later still transferred to the green slopes of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu–until science and diligence exhumed his story from the soil. It took the quiet work of men and women in white coats with sharp eyes and steady hands to set the record straight. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, bless‘em, got the job done, and now Roman’s back to the land of his birth, borne on the wings of an airliner.

When his casket came off that plane in Reno, it wasn’t just a box wrapped in a flag. It was eighty years of prayers, grief, and hope.

Passengers on the flight remained seated in a respectful hush, airport firefighters and police lined up in solemn salute as the Cherubini family, quiet and resolute, bore witness to it all.

Come Saturday at noon, down at Big Pine Cemetery south of Bishop, Calif., Pvt. Roman Cherubini will get laid to rest beside his twin brother Raymond–who wore the badge of a military policeman in the same world war and went to his rest in 2005. Two boys, born the same day, joined again in the long sleep, side by side beneath the California sun.

They say Pvt. Cherubini will receive the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and likely a handful of other medals. But I reckon the real honor is that after eighty-plus years of silence and searching, one soldier came home, and the other was there to meet him.

God rest the Cherubini twins–and bless all who never stopped waiting.