Month: February 2015

Pray for your enemies, advises Jesus in today’s Sermon on Mount selection . . .

Be ye perfect, he also advises. This bothers Fr. Adjuster, who prefers “compassionate,” being nervous about good-better-best thinking, likes to be mushy.

But we are advised to be big boys and girls who can have a goal and work for it, without going all to pieces, when (not if) we fail to achieve it.

Specifically we are to pray for our enemies and persecutors, like Jesus on the cross, “Forgive them, Father,” etc., which is asking a lot.

So pray for the beheaders and crucifiers, Islamic fanatics in Middle East and N. Africa. Pray for their conversion, why not? As we prayed for the conversion of Russia in the ’30s and ’40s. Impossible, you say. Do it anyway, I say.

This says nothing about protecting the innocent by militarily thwarting the fanatics with bullets and bombs, of course, in a just war.

Pretty basic stuff, all this, I agree.

Mainstreamers endorse Scott Walker — in their peculiar manner

Wall St. Journal’s James Taranto, reporting on Scott Walker’s very good early polls-showing, is properly cautious about his prospects, but adds this:

On the other hand, some conservatives and Republicans interpret the liberal media’s recent hazing of Walker as a sign that he is the candidate they fear. Lending support to this hypothesis is John Cassidy of the New Yorker, who weighed in yesterday with an essay titled “The Dangerous Candidacy of Scott Walker.”

Yes, yes, yes. Those bozos smell a threat and jump to it. Not incompetent but meaner than junk-yard dogs. That’s what a palace guard is for. (H/T Instapundit for useful term for media lemmings)

(As for Taranto and his Best of the Web, a longtime Internet denizen, the link is a tease of sorts if you are not a WSJ subscriber, but you can sign up for a good chunk of his columns by way of email.)

Costs more to hire people, fewer are hired . . .

Donald J. Boudreaux, economics prof at George Mason U., answering letter writer who objected to his holding that raising minimum wage hurts low-wage people:

. . . let me test your instincts with a question posed by the economist Mark Perry: Do you believe that imposing a tax on employers for every low-skilled worker that they hire would not reduce the number of low-skilled workers hired?

Do you believe that requiring employers to pay a tax of $2.85 per hour for every low-skilled worker on their payrolls would not prompt employers over time to employ fewer such workers?

Do you suppose that firms are so inattentive to their bottom lines or so unable to figure out how to operate profitably with fewer worker that such a tax – which would be about $5,700 annually for each and every low-skilled worker employed full-time – would not reduce low-skilled workers’ employment options?

If you do believe all this, it explains your support for a mandated minimum wage, he says, as do I.

Bribery at the Buildings Dept. — Again

Inspectors not letting crisis go to waste:

The New York Times reports:

More than a dozen New York City buildings inspectors and clerks have been charged with exploiting their positions as gateways to the city’s booming real estate industry to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, law enforcement officials announced on Tuesday.

This seems to be a recurring problem, and is a wonderful (or horrible, depending on how you look at it) example of the rule that it is the regulation that creates the opportunity for the corruption.

One reason to be for smaller government is that it would be more honest, because there would be fewer opportunities for shakedowns.

Look. You got something the other guys want and are willing to pay for it. So they pay. What’s the matter with that?

I mean, what’s a regulation for, anyway?