Jesus forgives, then cures, a paraplegic.

Mark 2.1-12, Matthew 9.1-8, Luke 5.17-26.

The story of Jesus curing the paraplegic lowered down through the roof, is one of the more famous stories in the gospels. Partly because the paraplegic’s companions were so eager to get him cured, so believed Jesus could cure him, they committed serious property damage. And partly because Jesus’s first act wasn’t to cure him—it was to forgive him.

That second thing is why bible scholars call this story a controversy pericope, which is a fancy way of saying it’s a story which provokes debate about who Jesus really is. Not among us Christians; we already know he’s God. Jn 1.14 But among Pharisees, Jesus’s fellow Galileans, and his new followers—who didn’t know this yet, and it’s because of these stories they figured it out. Jesus isn’t just a guru, just a prophet, just our king; he’s God-become-human.

But because people couldn’t fathom God becoming human (and a lot of people still can’t!), Jesus steps on a lot of toes. Pagans and heretics still try to explain his divinity away by claiming we Christians misunderstand him, and claim he’s God when he’s only a really enlightened human… or saying we’re all kinda God and Jesus is just better at it than average; or saying he’s a lesser god but not the God. Closed-minded folks firmly embrace any interpretation of Jesus which doesn’t offend them any, and we outrage them by showing them where the bible pokes holes in these wrong ideas. (Welcome to my world.)

Well. This story takes place in Mark and Luke right after Jesus cures a “leper,” and in Matthew after Jesus visits the Dekapolis and kicks 2,000 demons out of some guy. Various gospel synopses like to link this story up with a different paraplegic Jesus cured at a pool. But that happens in Jerusalem; this happens in Jesus’s home base of Capharnaum.

The gospels don’t say whose house it is, and a lot of Christians like to speculate it’s Simon Peter’s—for no good reason. Most likely it’s Jesus’s house. Yes, Jesus’s. People assume he had no house, ’cause he elsewhere says the Son of Man “had no place to lay his head,” Lk 9.58 but that’s because he traveled. When he wasn’t traveling, when he stayed in Capharnaum, he lived somewhere. Likely with family. James and John were Jesus’s first cousins, so likely he lived in their family home.

Who, I’m sure, were initially startled to find their home overrun with Jesus’s followers. Then horrified when a bunch of guys decided to bust through the roof and drop a paraplegic on ’em.

Compassion.

The ancients didn’t believe we feel emotions with, and in, our hearts. That’d be the medievals.

The ancients believed thought, logic, and wisdom emanated from the heart. Emotion came from the intestines. Despite the medievals reassigning it to the heart, the idea still managed to trickle down to our culture: People have a “gut reaction” or “visceral reaction” to various things, which means they’re reacting without thinking. It’s pure irrational emotion. And some of ’em have learned to trust their guts, ’cause they said bye-bye to logic long ago. But enough about them.

Some gut reactions are good ones. Even fruitful ones. When we truly love others—love our fellow Christians, love our neighbors, love our enemies—when we see them suffering we’re gonna feel empathy towards them. We’re gonna take pity. We're gonna have compassion.

You know, like Jesus does when he sees the needy. Here’s some examples from Matthew.

Matthew 9.36 KWL

Seeing the crowds, Jesus felt for them, because they were beaten down and thrown out,

like sheep which have no pastor.

 

Matthew 14.14 KWL

Coming out, Jesus saw many crowds, felt for them, and ministered to their sick.

 

Matthew 15.32 KWL

Summoning his students, Jesus told them, “I feel for the crowd,

because they stayed with me three days and have nothing they could eat.

I don’t want to release those who were fasting; they might faint on the road.”

 

Matthew 20.34 KWL

Jesus, feeling for them, grasped their eyes and they quickly received sight. They followed him.

The word I translate “felt for them” is σπλαγχνίζομαι/splanghnídzome, which literally means “gutted.” Not in the sense of having one’s guts pulled out, like that one scene in Braveheart; y’ever feel so bad for someone, it feels like you were punched there? Kinda like that.

Nowadays people talk about compassion as “having a bleeding heart”—dipping back into the medieval idea. But the bleeding heart idea actually comes from Jesus. Because his heart was pierced for our transgressions Is 53.5 —and when that one Roman stabbed him in the heart, Jn 19.34 the prophecy got fulfilled rather literally. Roman Catholics like to depict Jesus’s sacred, bleeding heart because it represents his love and compassion for us and for the lost. And those who like to mock others for their “bleeding hearts”—well, it just reveals their own fruitlessness. Even if we don’t agree on how to solve the needy’s problems, shouldn’t we have some empathy for those whom Christ Jesus loves?

So yeah, since empathy is an effect of love, empathy like love is a fruit of the Spirit. If you lack empathy you lack love. If you want empathy, ask the Spirit! He’ll help develop it in you.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

We’re commanded to be empathetic. When the LORD ordered the Hebrews to love their neighbors as themselves, Lv 19.18 he meant for them to put themselves in their neighbors’ shoes, to look at things through their neighbors’ eyes.

The context of this verse is the LORD forbidding revenge. May as well quote it:

Leviticus 19.18 KWL

“Don’t avenge. Don’t cling to anger against your people’s children.

Love your fellow Hebrew like yourself. I’m the LORD.”

Revenge is what people do when they lack empathy. They feel someone wronged, insulted, dismissed, slighted, or robbed them. They want satisfaction. Not tit-for-tat; not to simply get back what they feel was taken from them. Revenge wants to hurt someone—and justify itself by calling it “justice.”

But did that other person intentionally wrong us? Half the time, no. Most of the time, it’s nothing personal; they’re not trying to wrong us specifically; they’d wrong anybody, because they’re selfish jerks like that. They don’t love anyone as themselves.

If everyone took revenge for every slight we experience, society would be nothing but duels, feuds, and war. The LORD wants to kill that problem before it grows. Don’t take revenge. Don’t be selfish either. Love your neighbor. Use yourself as a comparison: You’d do this and that for yourself, so do the same for others. You’d appreciate it if people did this and that for you, so do for them. Be generous. Be kind. Don’t be a dick.

When love our neighbors as yourselves, and we see people suffering, it oughta make us feel for them. We should want to help. Not suppress our consciences by inventing good karmic reasons for why they oughta suffer: “They did it to themselves. They shoulda known better. They need to get themselves out of their own mess. They deserve it for being dumb or lesser or unworthy”—and all the other Darwinist justifications for apathy and lovelessness. Is this how Jesus thinks? Absolutely not, and his followers aren’t true followers when we adopt a different attitude towards the needy than our Lord.

For Mammonists, empathy is a struggle because they fear it’ll cost them money. (If not them personally, they fret it’ll cost tax dollars; as if their tax dollars are currently funding anything better.) And y’know, often it will cost. And we need to get over that. We invest our money in what we love most, and if that’s not God’s kingdom we aren’t fit to enter it.

In Jesus’s good Samaritan story, the Samaritan put up his own money to care for an assault victim he just found on the road. That, Jesus said, is loving one’s neighbor—and go and do likewise. He didn’t make this optional: If he’s our Lord, that’s our mandate. Be compassionate. Go out of our way to help the needy. Quit pretending to be Christian, and be Jesus for a lost and hurting world. And it starts by adopting how he feels for others.

Short-staffed for the big harvest.

Matthew 9.35-38, Luke 10.2.

I’ve ranted quite often, and written regularly, about the fact the majority of Christians aren’t religious. We believe in Jesus and expect him to save us, but following him is another deal altogether: We don’t. We figure we don’t have to; that because we’re not saved by good deeds, there’s no point in doing any. Even though there’s so very much for us to do—so very much God wants to include us in—we sit things out, figuring God can do it himself, or even expects to do it himself. Meanwhile he’s waiting for his people to obey, and getting really annoyed at us that we don’t. And so the stuff doesn’t get done.

’Twas ever thus. Jesus knew from experience. When he ministered to the people of the Galilee, that’s what he found. People who needed to be ministered to, but who never had been, because the Pharisees had the bad habit of only taking care of those they deemed worthy, or only tending to their own. Which which meant they didn’t venture outside their narrow communities to help the truly needy. That’s why Jesus kept running into so many people who were demonized: If the Pharisees had done their job, had been compassionate like their LORD, the locals wouldn’t have been turning to witch-doctors to get cured—and the witch-doctors wouldn’t have been able to put all those critters in ’em.

Fact is, the people didn’t know God cared. They didn’t know God loved them, and wanted to make them his people. They were lost, scared, confused, looking for hope, and didn’t know where to find it. Same as people today.

Jesus went out and found them, and found them everywhere. And even though he’s Jesus, empowered by the unlimited resources of the Holy Spirit, it’s still too big a job for only one man. He said as much to his students.

Matthew 9.35-38 KWL

35 Jesus went round all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues,

proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, curing every disease and illness.

36 Seeing the crowds, Jesus had compassion for them:

They were mistreated and thrown away, like sheep which had no pastor.

37 Jesus told his students, “The harvest is truly great—and so few workers!

38 So beg the Master of the harvest, so he can send workers into his harvest.”

Jesus later repeated this when he sent out his 72 apostles to do some of this work:

Luke 10.2 KWL

Jesus told them, “The harvest is truly great—and so few workers!

So beg the Master of the harvest, so he can send workers into his harvest.”

Because if people aren’t gonna get off their butts on their own and do their part, the Holy Spirit is gonna have to light a fire under us and get us off our butts. So we have to pray: “God, bring us more workers!” We always need more, because there’s no shortage of lost and needy people.

Curing a bleeder.

Mark 5.25-34, Matthew 9.20-22, Luke 8.43-48.

Smack in the middle of the story of curing Jair’s daughter, where Jesus was on the way to Jair’s house, a woman snuck up behind him, touched him, and the Holy Spirit cured her of an ailment.

I know; you thought Jesus cured her, right? But if you know the story already, you recall Jesus didn’t do a thing. Wasn’t his idea to cure her—and yet she got cured. People naïvely presume this is because Jesus was so charged with special healing power, anyone who touched him would get zapped. But that’s not how miracles work at all. Jesus did things by the power of the Holy Spirit, Ac 10.38 same as everybody. She was cured because somebody chose to cure her—and that’d be the Holy Spirit.

Traditionally the woman’s been known as St. Veronica, even though her name never comes up in the bible. Doesn’t matter. Art and movies tend to depict her as an old woman; after all she had been suffering more than a decade. But Jesus called her thygátir/“daughter,” which means he was older than she. Possibly she’d suffered this illness all her life. Certainly all the life of the 12-year-old girl Jesus was planning to heal. But as a gyní/“woman” in Jesus’s culture, she was at least 13, she hadn’t suffered it all her life anyway.

We also don’t know what Veronica’s ailment was. Here’s the entirety of what the gospels say about it:

Mark 5.25-26 KWL 25 For 12 years, a woman had a bloodflow, 26 and had suffered greatly under many witch-doctors, spending everything she had, and never improving. Instead she was much worse.

Matthew 9.20 KWL Look: A woman suffering a 12-year bloodflow, coming up behind them, grabbed the tassel of Jesus’s robe,

Luke 8.43 KWL For 12 years, a woman who had a bloodflow, who all her life spent lavishly on witch-doctors, wasn’t better, with no one to cure her.

Commentators speculate it might’ve been related to her menstrual cycle, though you notice they’ve no basis at all for saying so. But if it did begin at puberty, she would’ve been in her twenties when the Spirit cured her.

In any event her treatments had bled her dry as well. People in the United States are pretty familiar with the idea of healthcare emptying your bank account, so we can kinda relate. (Well, unless we’re rich.)

Other than asking God to cure her, Veronica’s only resort was yatrón, a word the KJV (and many current translations still) translate “physicians.” But remember: Nobody practiced the scientific method back then. These guys didn’t know jack squat about medicine. They practiced folk remedies, some of which were downright silly. Sometimes they assumed evil spirits were the problem (’cause hey, sometimes they were), and tried to take ’em out of you. Sometimes a gentile yatrós might even try to put one of those spirits in you, on the grounds it might cure you—and that was why so many unwell people also needed Jesus to perform an exorcism. But basically these guys were witch doctors, not physicians.

So all these quacks could do was take her money, promise they had a method which provided relief, but she’d get no usable results. Like Luke said, there was no one to cure her. So, same as most people of that day, she had no other recourse but God. And sometimes our doctors can’t treat us, or we don’t like how they treat us, so in desperation we try non-western medicine… which means we’ve resorted to the very same “physicians” Veronica tried out, who took her money but had nothing to show for it. Again, we can relate.

Jesus raises a dead girl. (Or was she only asleep?)

Mark 5.21-24, 35-43, Matthew 9.18-19, 23-26, Luke 8.40-42, 49-56.

There’s a story in the middle of this story, about a woman with a bloodflow. I’ll get to it later.

Mark and Luke tell this story after Jesus’s side trip to the Dekapolis, and Matthew puts it after Jesus taught on fasting.

Mark 5.21-43 KWL

21 After crossing back over the lake in the boat,

a great crowd again gathered around Jesus. He was on the shore.

22 One of the synagogue presidents, named Jaïr, saw him, fell at his feet,

23 and urged him to come with him, saying this: “My daughter is at the point of death.

If you come lay your hands on her, you can save her; she can live.”

24 Jesus went with him. The great crowd followed—and was crushing him.

 

Matthew 9.18-19 KWL

18 While Jesus said these things, look: A ruler came and knelt before him,

saying this: “My daughter died just now, but come lay hands on her and she’ll live.”

19 Getting up, Jesus followed him, as did his students.

 

Luke 8.40-42 KWL

40 Upon Jesus’s return, the crowd greeted him, for they were all expecting him.

41 Look: A man named Jair came. This man had become president of the synagogue.

He fell at Jesus’s feet and prayed that he come to his house,

42 for he had an only-begotten 12-year-old daughter, and she was dying.

As Jesus was going away with Jair, the crowd was choking him.

Maybe you caught the discrepancy; most Christians totally miss it. In Mark and Luke the girl’s at the point of death. In Matthew she’s already died.

Changes the story a little; there’s no longer any sense of urgency in getting to the house before death takes her. Not that curing illness, or curing death, makes any difference to Jesus. Does to doctors—and to us, because we have a bad habit of projecting our limitations upon God. We gotta not do that. Jesus can cure anything. Death too.

But the girl being dead already is why Matthew doesn’t include this bit in mid-story about people running up to tell them she’s died. Didn’t need to.

Mark 5.35-36 KWL 35 While they were speaking, some came against the synagogue president, saying this: “Your daughter died. Why keep bothering the teacher?” 36 Jesus refused to listen to their message, and told the synagogue president, “No fear. Just trust me.”   Luke 8.49-50 KWL 49 While Jesus was still speaking, someone from the synagogue president’s house came, saying this: “Your daughter has died. You needn’t bother the teacher.” 50 Jesus, hearing this, told Jair, “No fear. Just trust me: She’ll be saved.” So was the girl already dead or not? Obviously most Christians vote not—because it’s a more dramatic story that way. But that’s not enough of a reason to pick one gospel over the other. I lean towards the idea she wasn’t dead yet, mainly because there’s no good reason to make it up. “Don’t be afraid; just trust me” is a common theme in the gospels regardless.

Exorcisms by Satan’s power? Hardly.

Mark 3.22-27, Matthew 9.32-34, 12.22-30, Luke 11.14-23.

In between Jesus’s family fearing he was overworked, Mark inserts this story about the Jerusalem scribes (or Pharisees, in Matthew) accusing him of performing his exorcisms through the power of the devil.

Matthew and Luke tell the story in the context of an exorcism Jesus had just performed. Matthew even tells it twice. Likely this accusation took place more than once.

Mark 3.22 KWL

Scribes who came down from Jerusalem

were saying Jesus has Baal Zevúl—

that he throws out demons by the chief demon.

 

Matthew 9.32-34 KWL

32 As they leave, look:

People bring Jesus a mute person, a demoniac.

33 Once Jesus throws out the demon,

the mute man speaks.

The crowd is amazed, saying, “This never appears in Israel like this!”

34 Yet Pharisees are saying,

“Jesus throws out demons by the chief demon.”

 

Matthew 12.22-24 KWL

22 Then they bring Jesus a blind and deaf demoniac.

Jesus cures him,

so the deaf man is speaking and seeing.

23 The whole crowd is overwhelmed and is saying,

“Isn’t this the Son of David?”

24 Yet Pharisees who hear of it say,

“This man doesn’t throw out demons—

unless by Baal Zevúl, the chief demon.”

 

Luke 11.14-16 KWL

14 Jesus is throwing out a mute demon,

and it happens when the demon comes out,

the mute man speaks.

The crowd is amazed.

15 Yet some of them say,

“By Baal Zevúl the chief demon, he throws out demons.”

16 Others, to test Jesus,

are seeking a heavenly sign from him.

Baalism is what we tend to call all the pagan religions which cropped up in ancient Canaan, or Palestine. They’re not all the same god, but they were all called בַּעַל/bahál, “master,” so they were generally lumped together as the “baals.” The Baal in this story is Baal Zevúl, the god of Ekron, Philistia. You might remember him as the god whom Ahaziah ben Ahab tried to contact when he wanted to know if he’d recover from his injuries.

2 Kings 1.2 KJV

2 And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said unto them, Go, enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron whether I shall recover of this disease. 3 But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say unto them, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron? 4 Now therefore thus saith the LORD, Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. And Elijah departed.

I think more people remember when Ahaziah sent soldiers to arrest Elijah, and the LORD set the soldiers on fire. 2Ki 1.9-15 Not so much the god Ahaziah worshiped.

זְבוּל/Zevúl means “dwelling,” probably referring to the heavenly dwelling which the god supposedly lived in. But just for fun, the Hebrews started swapping zevúl for the similar זְבוּב/zevúv, “gnat” or “fly.” And it stuck. In the Septuagint, Baal Zevúl is translated Βααλ μυῖαν θεὸν/Vaäl myían theón, “Baal [the] fly god.” But by Jesus’s day, they were back to calling it Baal Zevúl… ’cause in Aramaic, zevúl had come to mean “feces.” Hence the New Testament calls the god Βεελζεβούλ/Veëlzevúl (KJV “Beelzebub,” NIV “Beelzebul”). Y’might notice Pharisees were using the term as a euphemism for Satan.

Christian mythology, particularly John Milton’s Paradise Lost, imagines Beelzebub as a whole other devil than Satan. Sometimes it’s Satan’s vice-devil. Sometimes it’s a devil who rebelled against Satan and went its own way. Sometimes it’s the devil who supervises idolatry; sometimes the devil who tempts humans with gluttony; sometimes the devil who specializes in demonizing people. Meh; a devil’s a devil.

The Galilean Pharisees didn’t know what to make of Jesus. They hated that he violated their customs, especially the ones about Sabbath. But they couldn’t deny he actually performed miracles and exorcisms—and they correctly understood you simply can’t do such things unless the Holy Spirit empowers you. But they didn’t wanna acknowledge this; they wanted some way to condemn Jesus. Likely they sent for Jerusalem scribes in order to help ’em sort this out, and provide an expert position. Remember, the custom in Pharisaism isn’t to declare what the bible means on your own authority, like Jesus does; it’s to defer to experts. (Whereas Evangelicals like me tend to figure we have enough horse sense to interpret the bible ourselves, and don’t need experts… although sometimes we really do, which is why I still look stuff up in commentaries. But yeah, not every Evangelical does likewise. They just judge someone as heretic immediately, simply because they don’t care for their teachings, or their person, or their politics. But I digress.)

Jesus wouldn’t look for bible verses, biblical loopholes, and rulings from biased elders; he’d say look for the fruit. As he does in this very story.

So why weren’t Jesus’s students fasting?

Mark 2.18-22, Matthew 9.14-17, Luke 5.33-39.

In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus taught on fasting, it was namely to say it’s to be private; we’re not to do it to seek attention. Mt 6.16-17 Certain Christians claim it also means we’re not to do it at all, and the basis for this claim is this passage, wherein some Jews complain Jesus’s kids don’t fast.

Mark 2.18 KWL

John’s students and the Pharisees were fasting. They came and told Jesus,

“For what reason do John and the Pharisees’ students fast, and your students don’t fast?”

 

Matthew 9.14 KWL

John’s students visited Jesus, saying,

“For what reason do we and the Pharisees fast so often, and your students don’t fast?

 

Luke 5.33 KWL

They told Jesus, “John’s students fast frequently and hold vigils.

Same with the Pharisees—and yours eat and drink.”

Ísan nistévontes/“were fasting” Mk 2.18 can also be interpreted “were [the sort of people who practiced] fasting.” The Pharisees were known to fast twice a week, Lk 18.12 probably on Monday and Thursday. Didache 8.1 Since the context of this story is Levi’s dinner party, some folks speculate Levi was throwing it on one of the Pharisees’ fast days. So part of what irritated Pharisees about the dinner wasn’t just the eating and drinking with taxmen and sinners; it was how Jesus was supposed to be fasting along with them, and instead he was enjoying a gourmet lunch, with better wine than they could afford. You know, jealousy.

Of course it’s just as likely this wasn’t a fast day. But they’d been keeping track: They’d never seen Jesus nor his students fast. (They didn’t know about his stint in the desert.) So this was as good a time as any to broach the subject: Why didn’t Jesus do they did?

And lest we blow this off as Pharisees whining about Jesus violating their customs again, all three gospels point out it wasn’t just Pharisees. The students of John the baptist—and we like John, right?—also fasted. Notice Matthew even had John’s students ask the question. Too often we Christians ignore the Pharisees’ considerations, ’cause we presume they were nothing but self-justifying hypocrites only looking to bash Jesus. And partly because we wanna ignore the Law, wrongly figure Jesus taught we can, and wanna bash Pharisees as legalists.

But most Pharisees were good Jews, earnestly trying to follow God, figuring their rabbis knew best… and unaware their rabbis were too often looking for loopholes in the Law. The reason Jesus wound up critiquing the Pharisees so often, was because he chose to be around them all the time. He taught in their synagogues. He ate in their homes. These were, for the most part, his people—who rejected him, Jn 1.11 but still. They followed him around because they wondered whether he was Messiah.

So they asked questions like this, not necessarily to accuse, but understand. Don’t assume they were trying to entrap him till the authors of the gospels, or Jesus, say so. “Why don’t you fast when we do?” is a perfectly valid question.

Jesus calls Levi. Or Matthew. Whoever.

Mark 2.13-17, Matthew 9.9-13, Luke 5.27-32.

I don’t expect anyone’s ever liked taxmen—except of course the kings for whom they were collecting. In first-century Israel, the Judeans and Galileans particularly disliked the taxmen, and to understand why, you gotta understand their history.

In 67BC, Queen Alexandra Salomé of Jerusalem died. Her sons Hyrcanus (whom she made head priest) and Aristobulus fought over who’d be the next king. Antipater bar Antipas, the governor of Idumea (formerly Edom) backed Hyrcanus, and talked him into getting military help from Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, whom we know as Pompey. The Romans intervened in the fight, overthrew Jerusalem (and out of curiosity, Pompey took a peek in the Holiest Place of the temple), and imprisoned Aristobulus. But Pompey screwed Hyrcanus over, keeping him head priest, but making Antipater governor of Judea.

Antipater’s son Herod: You might’ve heard of him. He married Hyrcanus’s granddaughter, and despite not being Jewish, used his Roman connections to become king of Jerusalem. After Herod’s death, his sons likewise fought over who’d be the next king—and again the Romans intervened, with Augustus dividing Israel into fourths. Two sons, Antipas and Philip, were made tetrarch/“ruler of a fourth” over the Galilee and Perea (today’s Golan Heights), and a Roman procurator was put over the other half, namely Jerusalem.

The procurators appointed whoever they pleased as head priest. Usually the Levite who bribed them the most. And this was the state of things when Jesus began his ministry: Half-Jewish “kings” over northern Israel, Romans over southern Israel, and a family of corrupt Sadducees—who don’t even believe in miracles!—running the temple. Plus Roman soldiers everywhere, keeping the scum in power, and crucifying anyone who rebelled.

You already don’t like the taxman, but these taxmen were collecting money for the Romans—forcing the people to pay to be oppressed. As a result they were seen as traitors. Most Jews simply hated them. For the most part they refused to let them into their synagogues or temple. Since the taxmen sided with the pagans, they were considered no different from pagans.

Romans didn’t pay their taxmen, but simply let ’em overcharge on taxes, and take their income from the overcharge. So taxmen regularly overcharged. And why shouldn’t they?—the people hated ’em anyway. May as well hate ’em back… and get rich off them.