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

Eye on NYC: How To Prevent Some ScandalsEmerging “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 ExampleThe 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 Siege...