The Old Blog in the Desert

We bring you this tale hoping to class up the joint for once

Here’s a turn of events that’ll make your Aunt Bessie drop her knitting needles and sit up straight–Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex himself, is expected to descend upon the shining mirage that is Las Vegas–though this time, by all accounts, he aims to leave his trousers on.

According to a smattering of excited British media reports—who know more about the comings and goings of royalty than a valet with a drinking problem–the wandering prince will be at ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2025 conference on Tuesday, May 6. Yes, you heard right–a tech-and-business shindig held at the Venetian and Wynn Resorts, with twenty-thousand sharp-dressed techies buzzing about like flies at a county pie contest.

The prince, who has traded in royal duties for podcast microphones and Californian sunshine, is now hitching his name to a new youth leadership initiative tied to the Diana Award–a noble endeavor in memory of his mother, the late and much-adored Princess Diana. He’ll join a panel with two Legacy Award winners, fine young folks with enough gumption and forward-thinking to make your average duke blush with admiration.

Notably, and perhaps mercifully for the harried conference planners, the duchess Meghan Markle will not be with Harry. It is just as well, considering that every time she steps off a plane, half the world’s internet catches fire with opinions no one asked for.

It’d be dishonest to mention the Duke’s upcoming visit without recalling his last gallop through Las Vegas in 2012 when a lively game of strip billiards left him as unclothed as the Nevada desert at high noon. This time, however, he’s swapped out the pool cues and paparazzi for microphones and a moral purpose.

For those seeking a more tasteful brush with royalty, Las Vegas did get a touch of class in 2022 with the opening of the Princess Diana & the Royals exhibit at The Shops at Crystals. It’s a quieter, more reverent affair—and nary a billiards table in sight.

So, if you find yourself in Las Vegas next week and hear a charming British accent discussing leadership, legacy, and a better tomorrow, don’t be alarmed–it’s just the Duke of Sussex trying to make good on his mother’s legacy, class up the joint, and–one hopes–keep his britches where they belong.

There is no great appetite in this world for tales about breast pumps and bureaucracy, but if there is a story worth milking, it’s this one.

When Miss Patricia Orellana set out to do one of the most natural and noble things—feed her baby—she got tangled not in swaddling but in the tight and binding red tape of higher education. She worked as a graduate assistant at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), a fine institution best known for denying students a refrigerator for their breast milk but offering plenty of cold shoulders in return.

Patricia, God bless her, had done the hard part already—she grew a whole human, brought it into this world via cesarean section (which I understand is Latin for ouch), and returned to work six weeks later because America has the kind of maternity policy you’d expect from a goat rodeo.

At first, she had a hybrid schedule—some work from home, some at the office. Then her supervisor decided, for reasons known only to Heaven and Human Resources, that hybrid was out and in-person was in, like powdered wigs or the Black Death.

Patricia needed to pump milk for her child, which is not a leisure activity, though you’d think she was asking for time off to attend a gold-digging convention in Reno, the way folks responded. She asked for a place to store her milk. They suggested, “Buy a fridge.” She asked for time to pump. They said, “Fine, but you gotta make it up.” Make it up? What is this, breast milk penance?

As a simple man who once watched a cat chase its tail for thirty minutes, even I know a mother with a breast pump in one hand and a ticking clock in the other is not being “accommodated.” That’s not workplace flexibility—it’s maternal Hunger Games.

When she tried to clean her pump parts, she had to battle automatic sinks, which, as anyone knows, are marvels of modern inconvenience. It’s hard enough to rinse your hands under those jumpy laser spigots, let alone machinery.

At one point, they told her to move to a front office with no electrical outlet. That’s like inviting a man to fish and taking away the lake. Or, in her case, the pump, the privacy, and the plug.

Eventually, like many before her who dared to lactate in public, she quit. The Title IX office poked at the situation with a stick and declared it dead on arrival. There’s no discrimination here, they said–probably while sitting near an outlet with a fridge.

Meanwhile, in Carson City, Assemblywoman Cecelia González, herself a new mother, introduced AB266 to protect breastfeeding mothers. It is the part where Hope waddles in, wearing diapers and a sash that says Better Late Than Never.

The bill, among other sensible things, suggests mothers shouldn’t have to play hide-and-seek with their dignity to feed a baby. It proposes lawsuits for violators and education for the confused. It even encourages public awareness campaigns because nothing helps the cause like a billboard that says, “Breast Milk: It’s Not a Crime.”

Miss González herself once found American hospitals so skittish about breastfeeding that she was nearly scared into using baby formula by a doctor threatening her with a feeding tube. “Want your baby to eat or not?” is not the soft touch of maternal counsel.

Now, in the kindest of endings, one noble dean at UNLV gave Patricia a job as a research assistant working from home, studying the very problems she lived through. That’s poetic justice—if poetry came with a benefits package. Unfortunately, the job runs out of money this summer because the milk of human kindness has a budget cap.

Still, Patricia marches on. She’s earning not one but two master’s degrees, making her one of the most educated, underpaid milkmaids the country’s ever seen.

And that, dear reader, is the tale. It’s about a woman trying to nourish a baby and getting met with a wall of bureaucracy so dense it could block sunlight. But she didn’t stop. She just picked up her pump and kept going. That’s the kind of gumption I like to see—especially in a world so determined to squeeze the life out of anyone trying to do something decent.

So here’s to Patricia. And here’s to any mother who’s fought for the right to be what nature already made her. And if this story don’t inspire change, at least let it inspire a laugh—because if we don’t laugh at the absurdity of it all, we might cry into our formula.

Out here, where the sun scorches straight through your hat–and rattlesnakes outnumber Republicans by a whisper, there’s been a curious development in the affairs of our gallant Nevada State Police.

Col. Patrick Conmay, with half a century of chasing scoundrels under his belt, and Lt. Col. Martin Mleczko, no greenhorn himself—have hung up their badges. The former, likely tired of dust, danger, and being underpaid, may be ready to find a place where his boots won’t need resoling every other week.

Governor Joe Lombardo—who has all the confidence in the world in the tooth fairy, too—assures us the leadership is as sound as a silver dollar. And I believe him. It’s not the captain that’s sunk the ship, but the wages that won’t float a canoe.

The Nevada State Police, formerly known as the Nevada Highway Patrol, or as some still call it, “those fellas with the lights and the ticket books,” are trying to keep the peace with a workforce about as brimming as a dry well in July. They’ve got 218 troopers standing post when the budget allows for 392. That’s nearly half a force missing in action—and not for lack of leadership, but for lack of something that makes men rise early and risk their hides: decent pay and benefits.

Recruitment, they say, is improving. That’s good. But what use is a fresh recruit if they see the salary and choose parole and probation instead—less roadkill, fewer speeding bullets, and maybe even a coffee break? Ask a trooper to ride shot-gun across hundreds of desert miles for the same coin a casino security guard pockets, and you’ll hear the answer on the wind: “Not today.”

Legislators fiddled with raises last session—Senate Bill 440 gave the boys and girls a bit of a bump. But this time around, with the budget tighter than a rusted mule gate and federal dollars drying up faster than a sagebrush puddle, the Governor says more raises are unlikely. That’s a curious way of rewarding the few who still show up to patrol our lawless interstates and desolate towns.

Let’s speak plain, as any man who’s stared down both the barrel of a gun and the barrel of a legislative budget, this ain’t a crisis of command. It’s in the pockets of the men, which are empty. And no amount of titles, rebrands, or political speeches will fill them.

Want more troopers? Pay them as if they matter. Otherwise, the only thing patrolling our roads will be tumbleweeds and free-range horses.

Well now, on the first day of May in the Year of Our Lord 2025, while most honest folks were worrying over spring plantings or checking their kin for sunburn, the high-and-mighty Nevada Economic Forum stepped forth and declared—without so much as a cough to soften the blow—that the state’s treasure chest would be $191 million lighter than expected. That’s what the old-timers call a “financial comeuppance,” and what the young folks call “uh-oh.”

It ain’t just a minor miscount of pennies. Nope, it’s the first time since that scoundrel of a year, 2009—when the Great Recession had us all trading gold for turnips—that the bean counters in Carson City have dared to revise their revenue guesses downward. It don’t take a Harvard economist to know that when money men start erasing, we best start tightening our belts.

Nevada’s mighty engines—tourism, real estate, restaurants, and roulette wheels—have all taken to sputtering. The great machine that is Sin City is huffing and puffing, but the power’s runnin’ low. Folks ain’t spending like they used to, and the state’s tax man, who once danced in revenue like a pig in mud, now finds himself picking nickels out of the gutter.

The hardest hit? The State Education Fund, poor soul. She’s now short a whopping $160 million on top of what was already missing—a $350 million hole so deep it’d give a prospector vertigo. That means the legislature’s in a bind–do they ax programs, stiff the teachers, or turn to that most loathsome of shovels—the tax hike?

When times were fat and the treasury bloated like a bullfrog in spring, the wise thing would’ve been to stash a little more in the barn. But, instead, the powers-that-be danced and spent, patted themselves on the back, and talked of “investments” like a drunkard talking about savings bonds.

Well, the music stopped. And now it’s time to pay the fiddler.

The common soul might rightly say–this ain’t a revenue problem—it’s a spending problem. If a man can’t balance his books when the cupboard’s stocked, he’ll be drowning in debt when it’s bare. The same goes for the government. Nevada families have long known how to stretch a dollar. Seems like it’s high time the folks in Carson City learned the same.

And sure, there’s a Rainy Day Fund on the shelf, fat and warm like a pie cooling in the window. But don’t go grabbing it just yet. That pie was baked for a storm—not for a drizzle. And if we spend it now, what’ll we do when the thunder rolls?

So here’s the rub–the sky’s dimming, the coffers shrinking, and lawmakers must choose. Cut the fluff, keep the lights on in the schoolhouse, and let every bureaucrat prove their worth—or turn to taxes and dig the hole deeper.

Let this moment be a lesson carved in granite–you can’t build a government on wishful thinking and tourist tips. You need prudence, grit, and the good sense God gave a mule. Cut the waste, mind the purse, and for heaven’s sake—stop punishing the working man for the sins of his legislators.

In short, Nevada needs less showboating and more shoe leather. And that, dear reader, is the long and short of it.

It appears while the great gambling halls of the Silver State tried to keep Lady Luck in a headlock, she slipped free, kicked the Strip in the shins, and skipped off toward the high desert hills of Carson City—where fortunes may be modest, but at least they’re headed in the right direction.

While the big boys down on Las Vegas Boulevard lit cigars with December’s record winnings and talked Super Bowls and F1 races like they were prophets of prosperity, March came around and said–“Not so fast.” Statewide, gaming revenue tumbled 1.11 percent like a drunk tourist off a barstool, and the Strip—poor thing—lost nearly five percent. You could hear the sobbing of baccarat tables from Primm to Mesquite.

But in Carson City, where casinos wear less flash but more grit, revenue crept up 2.61 percent like a cat who knows where the cream’s hidden. Eleven and a half million dollars ain’t a mountain of gold, but it sure beats tumbling into the red. Gardnerville, Minden, and the untroubled corners of Douglas County, excluding South Shore Lake Tahoe, which slipped a whopping 7.16 percent, all joined the parade of modest success.

They’re whooping and hollering in Reno with a near 11 percent increase. Sparks saw a gentle 1.94 percent lift, and Washoe County grew nearly seven percent. It’s enough to make someone wonder if the future of Nevada gaming lies not in pyramids and volcanoes but in the old-fashioned gaming halls of real Nevadans.

Meanwhile, downtown Las Vegas had a banner month, up more than 11 percent. The Boulder Strip held its own, too. But make no mistake–with visitor numbers down nearly eight percent, baccarat losses down over 34 percent, and room counts disappearing faster than poker chips in a backroom game, the Big Show is starting to look like a tired magician—out of tricks and long on stories.

You see, the high-rolling hayride of December can only carry a state so far. The Tropicana is now rubble, The Mirage is snoozing, and the tourists are staying home or headed to Oklahoma. When a $1.27 billion gaming win gets shrugged off as “meh,” we’ve reached a point where winning ain’t enough—it must be historic, or it might as well be a loss.

So I ask you, Nevada–do you feel lucky, punk? Because the dice are still rolling, the baccarat shoes are still dealing, and the slots never sleep—but the bloom might be off the rose, and she ain’t coming back without a fight.

While I don’t claim to know all the goings-on in Carson City, it seems to me Nevada’s a Secretary of State who’s got one foot in the Silver State and the other already boarding a train for Washington. Cisco Aguila has been named the new chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, or DASS, a club of like-minded office-holders intent on shaping how the nation votes, one battleground at a time.

You might say, “Well, that sounds mighty important,” and you’d be right.

But when a man’s chimney’s belching smoke and the roof’s leaking, you don’t expect him to spend his days patching other folks’ houses. Aguilar’s office, mind you, has more than a few creaks and rattles.

But, now he’s taken on the responsibility of steering national strategy for a party-funded group that spent millions getting folks like him elected. One might wonder–is gratitude, ambition, or obligation calling the tune? Whatever it is, it’s loud enough to carry beyond the Nevada line.

Mr. Aguilar took office in January of 2023 after besting Republican Jim Marchant by a whisker—just 2.4 percent of the vote. The little margin, however thin, was greased with heavy money and airwaves blanketed by an $11 million ad blitz thanks to DASS and its stable of left-leaning partners.

With his term not even halfway done, Aguilar’s taken up the national reins while his own stable’s got some broken boards.

Politics, like poker, is judged not by the tale you tell but by the hand you play. And the hands being dealt in Nevada’s election office lately haven’t inspired confidence. There’s been a lawsuit over neglected voter rolls, claims that the Secretary has failed to properly clean the list of names clogging up the books—a charge he’s shrugged off as meritless.

Then came the website glitch in 2024, showing mail-in ballots submitted by voters who swore they’d done no such thing. Add to that a molasses-slow ballot count in Clark County, with 54,000 mail ballots dropped off on Election Day but not reported until two days later, and you’ve got a stew thick with questions.

As if that weren’t enough to gum up the gears, Mr. Aguilar and his team are now pushing to expand a federal military voting law (UOCAVA) for civilians to email in ballots without a doctor’s note or a boarding pass to back their absence. Experts—folks who know a thing or two about cybersecurity—have been waving red flags about the dangers of internet voting since the idea first came down the pike, but Aguilar says the system’s secure enough. That sounds like the final words before a stagecoach robbery.

Now, let’s gander at what’s going on in the legislature. One bill after another seems aimed at expanding the Secretary’s reach like a man digging his well into the neighbor’s pasture. Proposals would allow Aguilar to fire elected County Clerks, demand near-instant reports, and create slush funds without oversight. There’s even talk of narrowing the rules on voter challenges so tightly that if a ghost voted in your name, you’d still need an affidavit from the grave to stop it.

Nevada law is clear. County Clerks get elected by the people and don’t report to the Secretary of State. But you wouldn’t know it by reading the latest crop of bills. It’s as if the legislature’s building a castle for Aguilar brick by brick while the townsfolk below wonder why their voices echo so faintly.

Meanwhile, the same Secretary now chairs DASS—a national group opposed to Voter ID–despite Nevadans passing it handily in 2024– throws its weight against the SAVE Act requiring proof of citizenship to vote and paints any federal move to clean up elections as a “blatant attack.” Aguilar echoed that sentiment, lambasting President Trump’s executive order on elections with more heat than light.

And therein lies the rub. While Nevada voters wrestle with delayed ballots, database errors, and legislative overreach, their top election official is now steering the ship for Democrats nationwide. He’ll be shaping policy far and wide while being shaped by the same national party that helped lift him into office. It’s a fine line between leading and being led—and Nevadans have every right to wonder which side of that line he stands on.

As one federal official rightly said, “Americans deserve to have confidence in their elections.” And that confidence comes not from TV ads or slick messaging but from transparency, accountability, and a firm handshake with the truth.

Time will tell if Cisco Aguilar can wear both hats—the one he doffs in Nevada and the one he accepted in Washington. But for now, some folks are left scratching their heads, watching the man ride off to fix other state’s elections while their horse stands lame in the livery.

If you wandered past the Reno Federal Building on May Day with no particular aim, you might’ve thought the world was ending. Folks were red in the face, shouting into bullhorns like salvation depended on the volume and waving signs so fresh off the printer they still smelled like ink. Orchestrated by Indivisible Northern Nevada, which takes its name quite seriously— judging by the chatter, they’d sooner divide the nation six ways from Sunday if it meant a few more government programs and one less deportation officer.

It wasn’t the biggest crowd you ever saw—not unless you count the pigeons—but what they lacked in numbers, they made in theatrical outrage. If you’d taken a drink every time someone hollered “authoritarian,” you’d have been carried home in a wheelbarrow before noon. According to the speakers, Trump was the second coming of Mussolini, capitalism was the devil’s playground, and the weather would probably clear up if we just taxed the rich a little more.

A few sensible voices tried to speak on behalf of legal immigrant workers—folks who fill out forms, stand in lines, and try to follow the rules—but their message was like a flute solo at a brass band parade. Drowned out, that is, by demands that sounded like they’d fallen out of a Bernie Sanders diary during a fever dream. Amnesty for all, free health care, rent control, green jobs for everyone, and abolishing ICE—because clearly, nothing says national security like tearing down the fences and telling the guards to go home.

In Vegas, the spectacle had more sparkle but no less nonsense. The Culinary Union linked arms with the Nevada Immigrant Coalition and a buffet of other organizations so loaded with acronyms you’d need a glossary to keep up. They called it a “Day of Action,” which is protest-speak for “shut down the busiest streets in town and make life miserable for tourists.”

Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road, two arteries of commerce and chaos, were clogged tighter than a Nevada buffet line on lobster night. Megaphones barked, cabs honked, and above rang the refrain, “Immigrants are essential!” It’s a sentiment as vague as it was loud. Never mind that legal immigrants were likely the only ones present who had filled out the paperwork these very groups now insisted we should throw out.

Of course, the headliner was President Trump—blamed for mass deportations that, historically speaking, weren’t quite as “mass” as Obama’s—but again, facts at these things are as unwelcome as a cold caller at dinnertime. One union rep held up a sign declaring “No One Is Illegal,” conveniently ignoring that the legal immigration process hinges on the concept of legality.

To their credit, some attendees earnestly believed in what they were marching for. They want fairness, opportunity, and a better life for people who come here with good intentions and an honest work ethic. But like a well-meaning preacher at a poker table, they were drowned out by louder voices demanding free everything and accountability from no one.

See, the trouble with these May Day rallies isn’t just the disruption, the slogans, or the traffic snarls. It’s that they pretend to speak for the working man while ignoring the one place you could find him that day–at work. The folks flipping burgers, fixing roofs, or trying to make rent by the skin of their teeth—weren’t waving signs. They were paying the taxes to fund all the handouts demanded in their name.

We have a deep appreciation for liberty and a healthy suspicion of anyone who wants to run your life “for your own good,” in Nevada. We believe in a fair shot, not a fixed game. We want secure borders, honest government, and schools that teach more arithmetic than activism.

So go ahead, protest all you like. Print your signs, chant your chants, block your boulevards. But don’t be surprised when the silent majority—who skipped the megaphones for an honest day’s work—answers you the old-fashioned way. At the ballot box. Where the slogans stop, and the citizens start making the rules.

The sun hung low over the Wyoming plains, painting the sagebrush gold and casting long shadows from the Tetons. Jake Callahan rode easy in the saddle–weathered Stetson tipped back, Marine discipline in the set of his shoulders.

He’d left the Corps after Korea, trading snow and mud and M1 Garand for open range and a roan gelding named Smoky. The cowboy life suited him—quiet, honest, and hard work.

But the world was ever-changing, and Jake, like the wind, never stayed put long.

He’d been punching cattle for the Lazy J outfit when the foreman, a grizzled cuss named Rawlins, took him aside one evening. “Jake, you got a voice like a campfire storyteller. Ever thought of radio?”

Jake laughed it off, but Rawlins wasn’t joking. The local station, K-Bar, needed a disc jockey to spin country records and talk up the weather, so curious, he figured he’d give it a whirl.

The first time he sat at the mic, a hulking Marine-turned-cowboy in a booth smelling of stale coffee and cigarette smoke, he froze. The red “ON AIR” light glared like an enemy sniper.

Then he thought of the boys in Korea, how he’d kept their spirits up with stories around the fire. He leaned in, voice low and steady, “This is Jake Callahan, your saddle tramp with the tunes. Let’s ride through the night with some Hank Williams.”

The words flowed, smooth as a mountain stream.

K-Bar’s listeners took to him like calves to milk. Ranchers tuning in from their pickups, lonely widows in clapboard houses, even truckers hauling freight through the pass—they all found something in Jake’s voice. He played Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, and the occasional yodeler, but what hooked’em was his storytelling.

Between tracks, he’d weave tales of trail drives, barroom brawls, or the time he outran a blizzard with nothing but a slicker and grit. Half were true, half were dreams, but they all felt real.

Trouble, though, always sniffed out a man like Jake. It came in the form of Cal Dempsey, a big-shot rancher who owned half the county and wanted K-Bar to push his political cronies.

Jake wasn’t one for games, and when Dempsey leaned on the station manager to fire him, Jake got wind of it and aired a story about a “certain greedy coyote” trying to fence off free range. The town buzzed, and Dempsey’s face turned redder than a branding iron.

One night, as Jake locked up the station, two of Dempsey’s hired toughs waited in the alley. They figured a beating would shut him up.

But Jake hadn’t forgotten Parris Island or the Chosin Reservoir. The first swing missed; Jake’s didn’t.

He laid one man out with a right cross and sent the other running with a boot to the backside. The next evening, he was back on air, voice steady as ever, spinning Merle Haggard and saying nothing about the scuffle.

The town knew, though. Word spreads fast in open country.

Dempsey backed off, but Jake felt the itch to move on. The mic was a tether, and he was a man born to drift.

One frosty dawn, he saddled Smoky, left a note for the station manager, and rode west. K-Bar hired a new voice, but it wasn’t the same. Folks still talked about the Marine-turned-cowboy who’d spun records and stood tall.

Years later, a trucker passing through Nevada swore he heard Jake’s voice on a late-night station, telling a story about a drifter who outsmarted a storm. No one could prove it was him.

Jake Callahan was like the wind—gone before you could pin him down, leaving only echoes in the air.

Should you pass a newsstand this past week or chanced upon some solemn-faced anchor with a quiver in their voice, you’d have thought we were shipping students off in cattle cars and replacing them with scarecrows. Such was the hue and cry over the revoked student visas at UNLV, where seven poor souls—no more, no less—found themselves caught in the gears of government bureaucracy.

Then late Monday afternoon, in a move as quiet as a mouse tiptoeing past a sleeping cat, the federal record keepers flipped the switch back to “active.” One might expect a cheer, but the University complains it learned about the good news–not from Homeland Security but “as part of its regular monitoring of the federal SEVIS database.”

That’s a way of saying, “We did our jobs.”

No official word, mind you, from the Department of Homeland Security, whose silence on the matter would shame a tombstone. While their records got resurrected like Lazarus should their visas remain revoked, they’re still out of luck for reentry. Like a man who finds his keys after the house has burned, some might not find it all that comforting.

The students—seven at UNLV, part of a much-touted thousand–got swept up in a visa revocation spree. And with its usual thunder and lightning, the media turned the matter into a four-alarm fire while the rest of us wondered what exactly had burned. Many of these “national security threats,” had little more than a parking ticket’s worth of infractions.

Now, don’t mistake me–I hold no grudge against fair warning, but a feller can only hear “The sky is falling!” so many times before he starts bringing an umbrella to bed.

The press should remember the old fable about the boy and the wolf. Because when there’s real danger—and surely there will be—it’d be nice if folks hadn’t already tuned out.

So here we are–the records are fixed, crisis cooled, and the wolf, as usual, was more shadow than substance. But don’t worry–someone in the newsroom is already warming up for the next cry.

Heaven help us when there’s a real wolf at the door.

Now, gather ‘round friends, and allow me to tell you of a curious show held recently in that fine circus tent of solemnity known as the Nevada State Legislature. The Secretary of State, a sprightly fellow named Cisco Aguilar, hosted what he calls Election Demonstration Day—a harmless soundin’ name–though it’s always wise to be suspicious when politicians start “demonstratin’” things.

It’s usually when the real trickery begins.

Lawmakers and various specimens of the elected sort got invited to ogle at blinking lights, humming gadgets and technical gobbledygook stretched across two floors of the building as if they were children in a candy store—only these candies cost millions and come wrapped in legalese. On the first floor were poll pads, sleek devices that look like they might check your vitals but are used to check voters in. On the second floor was what one might call the “Wizard’s Den,” a technicolor dream of election machinery and vendors laid out like a mechanical buffet.

There, legislators got the rare treat of pretending to be just folks, asking questions like, “How does this thing work?” and being answered with a precision that only exists when no votes are at stake.

“This is about education,” Aguilar chirped, “because once the actual election comes, things get chaotic.”

It’s reckoned he’s not wrong. Elections get chaotic, and chaos, as any old gambler knows, is the best time to palm a card or slip a ballot.

Aguilar’s idea, you see, is that transparency breeds trust—which is mighty fine in theory until you realize you’re gettin’ shown only what they want you to see. It’s like a magician doing card tricks with transparent sleeves and hoping you’ll forget to ask what’s up his other hand.

Two election-related bills—Assembly Bill 306 and Senate Bill 102—were getting their second round of gussying up in committee during all this “transparency.” It’s convenient timing, and nothing in politics ever happens by accident.

As the Secretary claimed, “This is an opportunity for legislators and state leaders to understand the systems we are using.”

Indeed. That’s how one learns which parts to break, which gears to grease, and which levers to pull come next November.

He even brought in vendors—the folks who build the machines—to let legislators talk to them directly–no filters, no meddling. Now I ask you– when was the last time you got to sit down with the fellow who made your toaster and ask him how it might one day burn your house down? But in this circus, the clowns sit at the judge’s bench, and vendors perform like trained seals, promising faster counting, better processing, and more “capacity,” all noble goals if you assume nobility is still in fashion.

Aguilar promises improvements are coming, especially for rural and tribal communities, though I reckon they’ll see about as much real benefit as a cat sees from a bath. But no matter—it’s the gesture that counts, and gestures are what politicians do best.

So take heed, dear reader. When the state puts on a show in the name of clarity, it’s often to distract from the sleight of hand. And when lawmakers “learn the system,” they’re learnin’ how it works—and how to work it.

After all, democracy may be the will of the people–but elections–that’s show business.