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Now, I ain’t one for conjurin’ up wild-eyed conspiracy theories unless they’re funny or involve frogs that sing on cue—but when I heard tell that the United States government has supposedly shelled out twenty-one trillion–that’s trillion, with a T as in “That’s a whole heap of money!”–to dig a cozy little underworld for the gilded swells of society, I dropped my corncob pipe in the Truckee River.

According to Miss Catherine Austin Fitts, who once held a proper and polished title in the Department of Housing and Urban Development,

the folks up top have been busy digging down below. She made her bold claim while jawin’ with Mr. Tucker Carlson, a man who talks like he’s always tryin’ to sell you a rifle or a pair of boots made from moon leather.

Miss Fitts, now 74 years wise and unafraid of rattlesnakes, ridicule, or the Clintons, says our dear government’s been burnin’ through tax dollars like a Nevada brushfire—only the flames are beneath our boots. She reckons, based on research from one Professor Mark Skidmore of Michigan State–which I assume is like the University of Nevada Reno but snowier–that this $21 trillion vanished into an invisible project of diggin’, blastin’, and burrowin’—creating a whole subterranean Shangri-La fit for senators, CEOs, and folks who don’t sweat in summer. The grand mole city supposedly includes hidden bases, fast-as-lightning transportation, and enough underground concrete to build a new Rome in reverse.

Here’s the part that gave me the hiccups–she says there are over 170 of these secret lairs–some tucked under the United States, others slumbering beneath the ocean like Atlantis’s drunken cousin. There’s even talk of secret space programs—’cause having a few thousand satellites in the sky ain’t enough–we gotta launch things from under the sea now, too.

While all that’s buzzin’ in your ears, let me holler something into the national echo chamber–Virginia City, the gem of the Comstock Lode, has been sittin’ on 700 miles of mine tunnels for well over a century. That’s right—seven hundred! Hollowed out by grizzled men with picks, whiskey, and no dental plans.

You could fit ten Washington D.C.s under that town and still have room for a dance hall and a whiskey distillery. And yet not one bureaucrat, billionaire, or bright-eyed futurist has thought to turn that ready-made warren into an underground city.

Not one.

Folks, we already have the infrastructure. So, you want secret bases? Just look beneath the boardwalk of Virginia City, where you might find Mark Twain’s boot print and a ghost who knows where the real treasures are.

But no–while the government might be building palaces beneath the Pentagon and tunnelin’ from sea to shining sea, Virginia City sits up on Sun Mountain, mindin’ its business, waitin’ for someone to say, “Hey, why not build down here?”

In the heart of the Adirondacks, where the pines claw at the sky and the lakes shimmer like liquid obsidian, two fishermen stood on the bank of Blackthorn Lake. Amos Reed and Caleb Holt had been coming here since they were boys, their rods extensions of their arms, their silence a language honed over decades.

The lake was their sanctuary, a place to escape the grind of their lives in the nearby mill town of Harrow’s End. Amos, a widower with a limp from a logging accident, carried the weight of a life unlived.

Caleb, a father of three with a wife who’d grown distant, fished to drown out the noise of his regrets. Bound by routine, the rhythm of casting lines, he hoped for the feel of a tug.

Tonight, under a moonless sky, the air was thick with mist. The lake was unnaturally still, its surface a perfect mirror reflecting the gnarled trees. Amos sipped from a flask, the whiskey burning his throat.

“You ever think about what’s down there?” he asked, his voice low, as if afraid to disturb the water.

Caleb, retying his lure, snorted. “Fish. Mud. Maybe some old boots. What else?”

Amos didn’t answer. He cast his line, the sinker plunking into the depths. The ripples faded quickly–as if the lake swallowed them whole.

They fished in silence, the only sound the creak of their reels and the distant hoot of an owl. Then, Amos’s rod jerked.

“Got one!” he grunted, bracing his boots against the muddy bank.

The line went taut, cutting through the water like a blade. Amos reeled, but the resistance was strange—not the thrashing of a fish, but a steady, deliberate pull.

“Feels like I snagged a damn log.”

Caleb squinted at the water. “Ain’t no log. Look at your line—it’s movin’ sideways.”

Amos’s brow furrowed. The line wasn’t just taut; it vibrated, a low hum rising from the water. His hands tightened on the rod, knuckles white.

“What the hell is this?”

Across the lake—or perhaps not across–but a place that wasn’t quite here—a man named Elias Kane stood on another bank. In his reality, Blackthorn Lake was called Mirror’s End, and the town was a crumbling settlement abandoned after a mine collapse.

Elias was a loner, a man who’d lost his brother to the lake years ago when their boat capsized in a storm. He fished to feel close to Jonah, to chase the ghost of his guilt.

His lake was different—its waters glowed faintly, a sickly green, and the air carried a metallic tang. But tonight, his rod had snagged something.

“Caught somethin’,” Elias muttered, his voice rough from disuse.

He tugged, expecting a sunken branch or a rusted relic from the old mine. But the line pulled back–hard, nearly yanking the rod from his hands.

“What in God’s name…?”

Back on Amos’s bank, the pull grew stronger. His rod bent nearly double, the reel screaming. “This ain’t no fish!”

Caleb stumbled forward but froze. The water where Amos’s line entered was bubbling, not with the frenzy of a hooked bass, but with a slow, deliberate churn, like something was rising. “Amos cut the line. Now.”

“You crazy? I ain’t losin’ my gear!” Amos snapped, sweat beading on his forehead.

But his bravado faltered as the hum from the line grew louder, a sound like a tuning fork struck deep underwater. Then, impossibly, a voice carried through the mist—not from the bank, but from the lake itself.

“Who’s there?” it demanded, sharp and panicked. “Let go of my line!”

Amos froze. Caleb’s jaw dropped.

“You hear that?” Caleb whispered.

“Who’s this?” Amos shouted, his voice cracking. “You messin’ with us?”

On Elias’s bank, he heard the reply, faint–as if spoken through a wall.

“Messin’? You’re the one yankin’ my rod! Cut your line, damn it!”

Elias’s heart pounded. He’d fished these waters for years–always alone and never heard a voice from the lake.

He tugged harder, and the line jerked back, a tug-of-war across an unseen divide.

The glowing water rippled, and for a moment, he swore he saw a shadow beneath the surface—not a fish, but a shape, human-like, distorted.

“Caleb, I’m seein’ things,” Amos said, his voice trembling.

The water before him was no longer still. It shimmered, not with moonlight, but with an unnatural sheen, an oil slick with starlight. The line pulled harder, and the voice came again.

“Stop pullin’! You’re gonna drag me in!” Elias’s voice was desperate now, and Amos could hear the fear in it—a fear that mirrored his own.

“Drag you in?” Amos yelled. “You’re the one haulin’ me! Who are you?”

“Name’s Elias! I’m fishin’ Mirror’s End. Where the hell are you?”

“Blackthorn Lake!” Amos shot back. “Ain’t no Mirror’s End ‘round here!”

Caleb grabbed Amos’s arm.

“This ain’t right. Somethin’s wrong with the lake. Cut the damn line, Amos!”

But Amos couldn’t. The pull was relentless, and now the water was parting, revealing not the muddy bottom but a glimpse of another shore—Elias’s shore, with its glowing water and skeletal trees. And there, standing on that alien bank, was Elias, his rod bent, his face pale with terror.

Elias also saw a window through the water, showing Amos and Caleb on a bank that shouldn’t exist. The air between them crackled, the hum now a deafening drone. Each line intertwined across the rift where the realities collided.

“What’s happenin’?” Elias shouted, his voice distorted–as if underwater.
“What is this place?”

“I don’t know!” Amos roared, his arms burning from the strain. “But I ain’t lettin’ go!”

The water churned violently now, and both men saw it—the shape beneath, no longer a shadow but a presence, vast and formless, its edges flickering like static. It wasn’t a fish or a man; it was something older, a being that had waited in the depths of both lakes or perhaps in the space between them, fishing lines anchored to it.

“Amos, it’s pullin’ us both!” Caleb screamed, grabbing the rod to help.

But the force was too strong. Amos’s boots slid toward the water, the bank crumbling beneath him.

On Elias’s side, the same was happening. His boots sank into the mud, the glowing water lapping at his ankles.

“Jonah?” he whispered, half-believing his brother’s ghost was behind this.

But the thing in the water wasn’t Jonah. It was hungry.

“Cut the line!” Caleb begged again, but Amos’s hands were locked, his eyes fixed on Elias through the rift. Elias, too, couldn’t let go, his guilt and grief binding him to the rod as much as the line itself.

The presence surged, and the rift widened. Amos saw Elias’s world fully now—its decayed trees, its toxic glow—and Elias saw Amos’s, with its dark pines and mist. But both saw the thing rising, its form coalescing into something neither could comprehend, a mass of writhing shadows and eyes that burned like dying stars.

“God help us,” Amos whispered.

“Jonah, I’m sorry,” Elias sobbed.

The lines snapped simultaneously, but it was too late. The rift collapsed, and the thing broke free.

Yanked into Blackthorn Lake, Amos and Caleb’s screams were swallowed by the water. Elias vanished into Mirror’s End, his cry echoing across a reality that wasn’t his.

The coming morning, Blackthorn Lake was still again, its surface unbroken. Two rods lay abandoned on the bank, their lines severed.

In Harrow’s End, folks whispered that Amos and Caleb had drowned, but they found no bodies. In Elias’s world, the settlement stayed empty, his rod gone from the shore.

But those who fish Blackthorn Lake at night, or Mirror’s End in that other place, say the water hums sometimes, a low, mournful sound. And if you cast your line too deep, you might feel a tug—not from a fish, but from something waiting, something that pulls across worlds, hungry for the ones who dare snag it.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when a budget could be called “skinny” and still punch like a Virginia City mule, but here we are.

President Donald Trump—God bless his bulldog tenacity—has sent Congress what his people call the “skinny budget” for 2026. It’s a lean, mean, Constitution-cleaning machine aimed squarely at the deep state and any other barnacles clinging to the good ship America.

Now, don’t let the word “skinny” fool you. This budget’s got iron in its spine and brass in its knuckles. It trims the fat from the bloated hindquarters of non-defense discretionary spending—by 23 percent and shovels that money toward something Washington’s forgotten about– defending the country and securing its borders.

Imagine that!

The White House says defense gets a 13 percent boost and Homeland Security nearly 65 percent, which tells me we finally got a commander-in-chief who knows the difference between national defense and national theater. It ain’t about polishing park benches or hosting international tea parties—it’s about boots on the ground and walls on the border.

Bless her dark-hearted soul, but Senator Patty Murray calls this budget dangerous and harmful to working folks. Well, if cutting the IRS, the Department of Education, and foreign cocktail circuits at Foggy Bottom is “harmful,” then I reckon I’ve been harming myself all my life by minding my own business and paying my way.

Meanwhile, Congress is cobbling together what President Trump calls “one big, beautiful bill,” a reconciliation package to extend the beloved 2017 tax cuts, raise the debt ceiling, and give federal spending a diet it ain’t seen since the Hoover administration. Some folks like Miss Romina Boccia from the Cato Institute call this timing “curious,” but I call it courageous. While Congress dithers with its third straight stopgap like an old drunk trying to walk a straight line, Trump’s over here swinging the axe with both hands.

Of course, there’s the usual gnashing of teeth about how this doesn’t solve everything, especially the so-called “entitlement” crisis. But don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the possible.

Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security–the three sacred cows of Washington, no man’s ever gonna get praised for bringing a butcher’s blade to them. Still, even Boccia admits there’s room to corral Medicaid growth in the reconciliation bill, and by the sound of it, Trump’s crowd wouldn’t mind roping in more if Congress finds its guts.

Now, critics say the budget ain’t got a prayer without some Democrat votes in the Senate. Well, maybe not. But revolutions don’t start in comfort, and reform never did depend on cocktail consensus. What matters is that this administration is saying aloud what the rest of Washington’s been whispering in private: the federal government has wandered far from its rightful corral, and it’s time to drive it back.

As for the national debt—$36 trillion and counting—we didn’t get into that mess with one big, beautiful bill, and we won’t get out with one either. But I’ll tell you this–it’s a far-sight better to see a president swinging for the fences than one building bureaucracies like sandcastles on a floodplain.

So let the critics howl. Let the swamp creatures wail as their feeding troughs run dry. This “skinny budget” ain’t about pleasing Washington—it’s about putting the government on a leash, handing the soldier a rifle, the taxpayer a break, and the country a fighting chance.

And I reckon that’s something worth writing home about.

The sun was a mean ol’ cuss, hangin’ high over Spanish Springs, burnin’ the back of my neck like a brandin’ iron. The Kiley Ranch sprawled out around me, a dusty patch of sagebrush and hardpan, with the Pah Rah Range squattin’ blue and hazy in the distance. It was cattle country, tough as rawhide, and I’d landed here as a hand under Jasper Tuttle, a boss with a stare that could stop a stampede and a sense of humor drier than the playa in July.

We were in the bunkhouse when I let my fool mouth run. Jasper was goin’ on about needin’ hands for some big jobs, and I, bein’ greener than a spring colt piped up.

“Boss,” I said, leanin’ back with a grin, “I’m lookin’ for a spot where I can start at the top. Ain’t cut out for grunt work.”

The other hands choked on their coffee, but Jasper fixed me with his flinty eyes. “Top, huh?” he said slowly like he was sizin’ up a steer. “Well, Tom, I got just the job. West side of the ranch needs a fence. You’re gonna dig pole holes, set posts, and string barbed wire. By yourself. Get movin’.”

My grin slipped like sand through a sieve. “Pole holes?”

“You wanted the top,” Jasper said, a wicked glint in his eye. “Top of them posts is where you’ll start. Now git.”

So here I was, out on the west side of the Kiley, a shovel in my blistered hands, cursin’ my big mouth. The ground was hard as a banker’s heart, baked solid by the Nevada sun, and every hole I dug felt like a personal grudge.

My back ached, my palms were raw, and my only company was the wind whinin’ through the sage and the occasional buzzard circlin’ overhead, bettin’ on when I’d keel over.

By the third day, I was leanin’ on my shovel, sweatin’ buckets, when I spotted a rider comin’ my way. It was Nate Skinner, an old hand with a face like a beat-up saddlebag and a laugh that’d make a mule jump.

“Sierra Tom,” Nate hollered, pullin’ up his gray gelding, “you look like you’re diggin’ to China.”

“China’d be easier,” I growled, spittin’ dust. “Jasper’s got me out here ‘cause I said I wanted to start at the top–am I was jus’ jokin’.”

Nate let out a cackle that echoed across the flats. “Boy, your tongue’s gonna get you hung one day. Jasper’s teachin’ you a lesson, and it ain’t about fences.”

“What’s it about, then?” I asked, drivin’ the shovel into the dirt with a thud.

“Knowin’ your place,” Nate said, leanin’ forward in the saddle. “You wanna be a top hand, you gotta eat some dirt first. Jasper’s been runnin’ the Kiley since afore you was born. He knows how to break a man in.”

“Break’s about right,” I muttered. “This is pure misery.”

“Misery’s what you make it,” Nate said, turnin’ his horse. “Keep diggin’, pard. You’ll come out stronger.”

He rode off, leavin’ me to my shovel and my thoughts. By the seventh day, I was a wreck—hands bleedin’, temper short as a fuse.

But I’d sunk nearly fifty holes, each a little deeper. The posts stood tall, waitin’ for the barbed wire I’d string come mornin’. That night, I sat by a small fire, the stars sharp as spurs over Spanish Springs, when I heard boots crunchin’ on the gravel.

Jasper stepped into the firelight, his shadow stretchin’ long across the dirt. “Still kickin’’?”

“Jus’ barely,” I said, tossin’ a twig into the flames. “You tryin’ to kill me out there, or just make me wish I was dead?”

Jasper chuckled, a low, gritty sound. “You wanted the top, boy. Out here, the top’s earned with sweat and cussin’. You learnin’ that?”

I glanced at the line of posts, their shapes dark against the dusk. “Reckon I am,” I said. “Coulda just told me, though.”

“Ain’t no lesson like the one you dig yourself,” Jasper said, a sly grin tuggin’ at his lips. “Finish the wire tomorrow. Then we’ll see what’s next. Might even let you ride somethin’ besides that shovel.”

He walked off into the dark, leavin’ me to ponder his words. It took me ten days to finish that fence—ten days of blisters, dust, and hard-won wisdom.

When I drove the last staple into the final post, the barbed wire singin’ taut, I stepped back and looked at my work. It wasn’t the top, not by a long shot, but it was somethin’.

A start.

It was May the Fourth, and feeling particularly Jedi-like, I strutted through the galaxy–okay, my local coffee shop–with my lightsaber-shaped straw and a “May the Fourth Be With You” T-shirt.

I’d practiced my best Yoda impression all morning, muttering, “Mmm, coffee, I must have.”

The barista, unimpressed, just raised an eyebrow.

Stepping up to order, I channeled my inner Obi-Wan. “A coffee, you will make me,” I said, waving my hand dramatically, hoping for a laugh.

But then—whoosh—something weird happened. The barista’s eyes widened, and the young woman clutched her throat and started gasping.

My hand was still outstretched, and I froze. Had I caused the barista to choke with my mind?

The other customers stared, wondering if Darth Vader had taken over my body. The barista, thankfully, coughed and waved it off, muttering about allergies.

Quietly, I slunk to a corner booth, vowing never to pretend to do a Jedi mind trick again, and as I sipped my coffee, I heard a kid nearby whisper, “Mom, is that guy a Sith?”

I sank low in my seat.

May the Fourth, ha! More like may the force save me from further embarrassment.

I ain’t pretendin’ to know all the highfalutin’ principles of taxation, depreciation, amortization, or bureaucratic incantation. But I know this–when a man tells you taxes are theft with one side of his mouth and says folks ought to pay to use the roads with the other, you’d best keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your common sense.

Such a man is Ed Lawson, the current mayor of Sparks–a town not known for sparking much but budget shortfalls these days. Mayor Lawson, who’s been piloting the good ship Rail City since 2020, is now bemoanin’ what he calls “the most regressive property tax system in America.”

That’s a bold claim coming from a fellow who thinks taxes are a crime, but toll booths are a civic duty. I’m guessin’ should you slap a price tag on freedom and call it a “user fee,” it don’t feel so larcenous.

According to His Honor, Sparks is about $12 million short of making ends meet, and over in Reno, they’re projecting a $24 million hole in their britches. So what’s the plan? Fire a mess of staffers, skip some fire and police calls, and keep tellin’ folks their quality of life is taking a temporary vacation—destination unknown.

“We don’t get to print money,” Lawson says. No–but you get to vote on how much to take from the folks who earned it.

Now, let me explain the situation as best I can without falling asleep– Nevada’s got this peculiar way of taxing property. The tax rate don’t reset when the house changes hands, and instead of appreciating with the value, it depreciates 1.5 percent each year for 50 years–like a horse that gets slower every mile but keeps fetching a higher price.

So a fancy $2.5 million mansion might get taxed less than a modest new home if it’s older than sin and twice as dusty. Naturally, some legislators want to fix this.

Assemblymember Natha Anderson, for one, is championing a constitutional amendment–Assembly Joint Resolution 1—which would hit the reset button on property tax rates at the time of sale. You sell your house–the buyer pays full freight.

You stay put–you keep your sweet little tax break. The plan is to pump millions back into public coffers, hire more police, and maybe even patch up a pothole.

But wouldn’t you know it, the plan’s got more opposition than a cat in a dog parade. The Nevada Realtors don’t like it. Conservative groups don’t like it. And they all seem to agree on one thing–government should cut their fat before it comes after skinny wallets.

Here’s the kicker–while Lawson scolds the property tax system for being regressive, he’s fond of something called “tolls,” which is a tax you pay to use a road you already bought once with your gas tax, and again with your registration, and maybe thrice with your soul. In the old days, we called that highway robbery.

Nowadays, we call it “infrastructure funding.” So there you have it.

A mayor who says taxation is theft–unless you’re stealing from travelers one car at a time. A legislature wantin’ to fix a broken system by breaking it differently. And a citizenry that ain’t sure they’re bein’ protected or pickpocketed.

As for me, I prefer the old system–if a man builds himself a house, he oughtn’t be taxed half to death for the privilege of keeping it. And if the government can’t afford to mind the roads, maybe they should walk a few miles in our boots.

It appears that Mr. Elon Musk—part-time moonshotter, full-time futurist, and the only man alive who might sell you a spaceship over the internet–has started hiring bodies to build that long-awaited electric behemoth he calls the Tesla Semi.

In the yesteryear of 2017, the thunder-chariot got first trotted out like a prize bull at a county fair. Mr. Musk promised it would revolutionize the roads, turn diesel to dust, and have us all sipping lemonade while electric trucks carried our groceries cross-country without a puff of smoke. Trouble is, that ol’ promise got itself caught in a tumbleweed and blown clear into the next decade.

Fast-forward through a heap of delays, enough hiccups to shame a whiskey still, and just a single truck dropped into the hands of PepsiCo in 2022, who’d placed their order so long ago, they probably forgot they did. Until recently, Tesla had less than a hundred folks hammering away on this project–hardly enough to fix a stagecoach wheel, let alone build a convoy of mechanical giants.

But lo and behold, change is afoot in Storey County. Reports say that more than a thousand new hands are gettin’ wrangled into Tesla’s Gigafactory–a place that’s shaping up to be less factory and more frontier boomtown. They’ll start churning out the elusive electric haulers before the end of 2025 and plan to make up to 50,000 a year if the winds are fair.

Tesla’s now listing job openings like a gold rush saloon listing poker tables–engineers, testers, grease monkeys, and folks to keep things from catchin’ fire. And so the Semi may finally roll out of the mythic realm and into the mud-splattered, pothole-ridden Middle Earth.

In short, Mr. Musk’s dream might be late, but it’s showing up with reinforcements. And if that ain’t progress, then I’m a Methodist.

Here’s a tale that’d make a Gold Hill mule shake its head and roll its eyes back into its skull. It seems we’ve got a stretch of Nevada that’s gone from wide open to wide inviting—if you happen to be a foreign scoundrel with a knack for eluding borders, bullets, and basic decency.

Let us first tip our hats to Audencio Vazquez-Calletano, aged thirty-one, a man of rare persistence and questionable planning. Mr. Calletano, a Mexican national, has been booted from the U.S. three times—May of 2011, February of 2012, and just last June of 2024.

But like a bad penny or a persistent uncle, he keeps turning up. On April 14, the U.S. Border Patrol found him again, living near the dusty outpost of Searchlight, where presumably the air is thin and the patience of federal officers thinner still.

Now, Audencio ain’t just an overachiever in the illegal entry department–he’s got hisself a little California credential too–a felony for taking a vehicle without asking nice. If convicted this time around, he might be trading desert for the cozy confines of a federal cell for up to ten years, with a bonus $250,000 bill and three years of supervised contemplation.

But Mr. Calletano ain’t the whole show.

Step up for the next act in our traveling cavalcade of calamity–Jose Luis Castillo-Alvarez and Kevin Omar Cruz-Lima–two gents whose country of origin remains unsolved, like how Congress still draws a paycheck. From September 2024 to March of this year, these two industrious businessmen were allegedly busy as badgers, shuffling enough heroin, meth, fentanyl, and cocaine around Nevada to start a pharmaceutical empire.

And they weren’t exactly shy about security, either. When apprehended on March 27, they had on hand an AR15 rifle and a homebrew pistol because nothing says customer service like firepower and fentanyl. The law says they were also unlawfully present in the U.S.—fancy that! Alvarez, it seems, got deported back in 2020 but couldn’t resist the siren song of Nevada soil. Their trial kicks off June 30, and if the jury’s got their spectacles polished, these two could be enjoying the view from inside a penitentiary wall for life.

And finally, in what might be called a grim encore, the fine folks at Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Reno recently collared Luis Gomez, another Mexican national who, according to ICE, has a resume that includes sexual assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping. That ain’t a good neighbor policy. Mr. Gomez has an administrative order of removal, and ICE says he’ll be shipped off “as soon as possible”—which in federal terms could mean anywhere from next week to the next geological epoch.

So, here we are–three stories, one common thread–men who cannot take a hint. One could get forgiven for thinking the border is less of a line and more of a revolving door, oiled by red tape and blessed with a concierge, asleep on the job.

Whilst I ain’t one to sound the alarm every time a tumbleweed rolls ‘cross the road or a stranger tips his hat too slowly, what happened Tuesday afternoon in the good scrublands of Lyon County has folks sharpening their glances and oiling the hinges on their screen doors.

At just about 4:27 in the post meridian–when most honest folks are either boiling beans or wondering if the sun’s gonna fry their garden again–the sheriff’s deputies were summoned to a home out yonder on Grassland Road. The call was about some goings-on that didn’t sit right with a young lady who had been out mindin’ her business and puttin’ shoe to the sidewalk.

Around 4:09 p.m., a white four-door carriage of the modern kind–one of them that look like a boiled egg with wheels–crept up on her. Inside were two grown white fellows, reckon thirty to forty in age, which is just about old enough to know better. One of ‘em sported a goatee, which is facial hair worn by men who either read too much poetry or not near enough, and the other wore a red shirt — a color known to inspire revolution and bulls.

Here’s where things tilt toward the peculiar. One of these fellas leaned out the window and asked the girl to pluck them a flower–a strange request for strangers to make and one that likely set off every common-sense bell in that girl’s head. To her credit, and I believe she deserves some, she did not tarry with flower-picking nor conversation–but lit out of there like a deer who’d heard a rifle’s bolt snap back.

The car rolled eastward toward whatever mischief or misunderstanding awaited it down Grassland Road. The Sheriff’s office says they’re sniffing around for video contraptions that might’ve caught sight of the odd scene and are encouraging any soul with a flicker of information–be it first-hand, second-hand, or off a porch camera — to ring them up at (775) 463-6620.

Now, I ain’t sayin’ the red-shirted gent and his goateed accomplice was up to villainy outright–maybe they’re just awkward suitors from a bygone century–but if you ask a child for a flower from a moving vehicle, don’t be surprised when you find the whole county lookin’ at you sideways.

Now, I ain’t sayin’ the good folks over at DOGE NEVADA are chasin’ windmills, but they are pokin’ their noses into the sort of affairs that make bureaucrats squirm like a cat in a rain barrel. Though they got no tether to Uncle Sam’s Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE NEVADA’s mission is about the same–sniffin’ waste out, fraud, and those curious little financial figments that somehow pass for public service.

The man with the magnifying glass is one Brandon Davis, who’s been keepin’ a keen eye on Nevada’s pocketbook from his perch in Las Vegas for over ten years. He reckons folks didn’t much care what the state was spendin’ on so long as the potholes weren’t eatin’ tires—but now, he says, it’s a “kitchen table issue.”

Reckon it must be, especially if that table’s missin’ a leg from budget cuts.

DOGE NEVADA has dug up some gold nuggets of foolishness–$12 million went to buildin’ a pickleball palace because nothin’ says “fiscal discipline” like subsidized paddle-whackin’ and $9.1 million for high-speed internet in Lovelock that never quite showed up—like a ghost train on a map that leads nowhere.

Davis, who don’t speak like a politician, which is to say, he makes sense, figures that kinda cash could be better used gettin’ folks off the sidewalks and into homes—or givin’ teachers enough of a wage that they don’t have to moonlight as Uber drivers.

Can’t say I disagree.

The DOGE team comes from tech and communication backgrounds, meaning they ain’t diggin’ with shovels but siftin’ through numbers with artificial intelligence and what-have-you. They’ve even got an anonymous tip line where the honest or fed-up can holler about shenanigans in government ledgers. Davis says some folks have been booted right outta their government chairs just for speakin’ truth to power, which is nothin’ new under the sun—but still a scandal.

Now, lest you suspect this all smells of politics, Davis says DOGE NEVADA has no party hat on—just individual donors, no strings. They’re non-partisan, which means they fire at foolishness wherever it sprouts, left, right, or sideways.

In a land built by gamblers and dreamers, it’s nice to see someone bettin’ on accountability, even if the odds ain’t great.