How to prevent some scandals, elite schools defying Supremes? and other commentary

Eye on NYC: How To Prevent Some Scandals

Emerging “details” of the investigations into City Hall and top agencies “hint at how to prevent such scandals,” observes City Journal’s Nicole Gelinas. The probes are looking into alleged bribes for expediting building inspections and “secure leniency” from the NYPD on noise and other quality-of-life complaints. Such scandals could be “avoided with two old-fashioned tricks: consistency and transparency.” E.g., an automated schedule for public inspections could make bribing human schedulers useless. And noise meters can “automatically record and publicly report” data. “Such semi-automation, coupled with consistency, would over time reduce pleas for special favors” and give “corruptible” officials a “ready answer” for bribers: I have no control over it. That “might even save some people” from prison.

From the right: Elite Schools Defying Supremes?

“The Supreme Court ended racial preferences in college admissions in a pair of landmark cases in 2023, but one fear is that schools will find ways to duck the ruling and use race by other means,” warn The Wall Street Journal’s editors. “Colleges aren’t permitted to use overt race categories or ‘application essays or other means’ to circumvent the ban on preferences.” But Yale, Princeton and Duke just “admitted fewer Asian-Americans than in the previous year,” despite supposedly no longer discriminating against them, whereas Harvard, Columbia and MIT saw Asian admissions rise. That suggests Yale & Co. ignored Chief Justice John Roberts’ warning that “what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly.”

Health-care beat: Beware Britain’s Bad Example

The UK National Health Service is “broke, but it is also broken,” as “an incredible 14,000 people died just last year while waiting for care in England’s emergency rooms,” and the United States is similarly “heading in the wrong direction,” worries Marc Siegel at The Hill. A survey last year found that 26% of US patients wait “more than two months for care.” “While 60 percent of those under 65 still get their health coverage from their employer, 40 percent delay their health care because of cost.” “Technology itself,” including telemedicine and AI, “will provide us with the ability to decentralize health care.” “The type of medical marketplace we need to administer the healthcare solutions of the future will not fit with one-size-fits-all health insurance or empty governmental assurances.”

Conservative: Teamsters Boss Betrays Trump

“From the write-up in the Washington Post, the Teamsters’ decision not to endorse a presidential candidate sounds like a defeat for the Kamala Harris campaign,” snarks National Review’s Jim Geraghty. Yet the non-endorsement comes after a Teamster survey showed members “preferred Trump to Harris, 59.6 percent to 34 percent,” while ones surveyed by phone favored him 58% to 31%. That suggests “the Teamsters must rank among the most pro-Trump demographics in America.” Though “Teamsters president Sean O’Brien gave the closing address on the first night of the Republican National Convention,” it seems Trump “earned the Teamsters endorsement, and the leadership of the union wouldn’t give it to him.” The “non-endorsement is a tie that really should have been a Trump win.”

Science desk: The Dead Black Babies Hoax

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has published a study showing that “black newborns aren’t dying at higher rates when they’re treated by white doctors,” reports Unherd’s John Marawski. An earlier study purporting to show higher death rates ignored the fact that “severely underweight babies, who have very high mortality rates to start with, tend to be treated by white doctors.” “This level of scholarly error raises serious questions” about how the alleged “prevalence of systemic racism in the medical profession” has been used to justify racial preferences in med-school admissions and beyond as part of a “racial reckoning” while “governmental bodies and private institutions” call racism a “healthcare crisis.” Now “the medical profession may be in for a reckoning of its own.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board