Volume 1 of Simak's Short Stories

I did not even need to check publication dates to figure them out. They are the sort of cliched and now scientifically antique stories of the 1930s filled the native inhabitants of Mars and the Moon; Mars as a dying planet with a small remnant population. Communication by radio and sometimes by what today would seem like Zoom. Reflecting that Simak was still a newspaper reporter in the 1930s in Wisconsin, too many involve newspapers right out of The Front Page (1928) with hard-bitten, hard-drinking, stogie smoking editors and reporters and young copy boys pulling first sheets off the presses for the editor. (Hell, maybe The Front Page was not so far off reality.) Even when the newspaper is the New Chicago [Moon] Rocket. Some of this stuff does not age well.

Why We Run Deficits

 9/25/26 Department of Justice:

A federal jury in Fort Worth convicted a Texas licensed professional counselor yesterday for his role in a $26 million health care fraud, kickbacks, and money laundering scheme.

Yeah, I know, it is only $26 million  To paraphrase Sen. Dickson, "$26 million here, $26 million there, after a while it adds up to a $40 trillion national debt." 

9/27/26 Houston Chronicle reports:

The DOJ said Curry laundered some of the $17 million he received from TRICARE, putting it toward hotel stays, "a lavish casino-themed party" and what it's calling "a gold-plated Tesla Cybertruck."

I am skeptical that it was gold plated.

9/23/26 NPR:

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance and other Trump administration officials said Tuesday they plan to remove 760,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees from public healthcare exchanges, alleging that the individuals were fraudulently enrolled in the program, or simply do not exist.

Vance said the discovery and canceled subsidy payments for hundreds of thousands of people from the exchanges, part of an administration-wide crackdown on fraud, would result in $2.2 billion in cost savings.

Of course, this being NPR, they have to cast doubt by the usual suspects but even NPR admits:

 The Government Accountability Office suggests fraud risks in the advance premium tax credit do exist - however it's unclear at what scale. The GAO conducted covert testing using fictitious ACA applicants enrolled in 2024 and 2025. A report released in December showed that the federal marketplace approved subsidized coverage for almost all of the GAO's 24 fake enrollees.

 

Fortunately, South Africa's Gun Laws Are Much Tougher Now

 9/27/26 NPR:

Johannesburg — A spate of mass shootings in three major South African cities killed nearly 40 people this week, with such incidents increasingly common in a country already known for its high crime rates.

On Saturday night, South African police said at least 10 people were killed at a shisanyama — a common kind of local restaurant selling barbecued meat — near Cape Town, while eleven others were injured.

Why the Oil Crisis Is Lessening

 9/24/26 Reuters:

SINGAPORE, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Crude oil flows out of the Strait of Hormuz reached 33.7 ​million barrels so far in the week starting September ‌20, preliminary ship-tracking data from Kpler showed on Friday, putting exports roughly on track with the previous week's levels.

The traffic comprised 19 tankers, of which ​17 are very large crude carriers (VLCCs) that can carry 2 ​million barrels of oil, the data showed. Most of ⁠the tankers are laden with crude from Saudi Arabia, followed ​by Iraq.

And that does not include ships transitting with transponders turned off. Still not at prewar levels but not at 0 either. 

How Did I Miss This?

ANJRPC v. Attorney-General New Jersey (3rd Cir. 2026) struck down New Jersey's ban on large capacity magazines and AR15s.

I worked on this case.

Flying First Class

We flew first class on American to Dallas. The only time thst I flown first class before was in the 1990s when NRA needed me at the last minute to testify at a Michigan legislative hearing. I think there were no mooing class seats available at short notice. My wife was skeptical of spending a few hundred dollars extra but so much leg room and elbow room! Being literally the first row on and off was also very luxurious. While waiting to take off, the flight attendants got us something to drink. 

Clifford Simak Mastodonia

The Beatles' Taxman was a response to the their encounter with British tax law once they started making real money. 

Mastodonia is a time travel story where an important subplot is that the money they Stef going to make from time travel will be exempt from the IRS because they will set up operations in 150,000 BC North America where the U.S. lacks jurisdiction. Did Simak suddenly start making as the saying goes, "real money"?

It is, even ignoring the cynical question about tax avoidance, an intriguing story of an archeologist who goes looking for a crashed spacecraft and runs into an ancient stranded astronaut who is immortal and can construct "time roads" into Earth's past. Pleistocene, Miocene, Jurassic.

Subplot involve giving poor ghetto dwellers a frontier with no resource limits, safaris to hunt dinosaurs, Hollywood goes to make movies, religious fanatics attempting to get a monopoly on travels to Crucifixion time. Lots of interesting ideas and a love story.