Libertarian: No More Mask Mandates
“Brace yourselves: Mask mandates are coming back,” warns Reason’s Robby Soave. But “if public-health officials are worried about Delta, they should put all their efforts” into promoting the vaccine that reduces risk of death “to almost nothing.” Mask mandates “largely function as a form of signaling” by which vaccinated people can communicate “that they take the pandemic seriously,” and policymakers may associate “themselves with a specific political tribe.” Since officials should be “more concerned with health than with partisan signals,” the mask mandate era must end. Vaccination isn’t simply “one tool among many: It is the tool. The masks are an insult to this life-saving, pandemic-crushing medical innovation.”
From the right: Big Cities’ Vax Problem
“A lot of America’s remaining unvaccinated live in big cities, but most of the news coverage wouldn’t lead you to that conclusion,” notes National Review’s Jim Geraghty. “The people who aren’t getting vaccinated are Trump voters,” the media say, and yes, “data indicate that more Republican-leaning states and areas have lower vaccination rates. But significant percentages of the residents of the deepest-blue cities in America are still unvaccinated, and simple math demonstrates” they can’t all be Republican: For example, 41 percent of New York City residents aren’t vaccinated, but the 45th president only won 22 percent of Gotham’s vote. The vax effort “stalled just as a much-more-contagious variant picked up momentum,” and “people who were heavily invested in” the Biden administration’s “narrative of victory are looking for scapegoats.”
Centrist: UC System Embraces Racism
The University of California system’s decision to drop the SAT in admissions “is not antiracist at all,” John McWhorter explains at his It Bears Mentioning blog. “A study of UC, specifically, showed that the SAT nicely predicts who will graduate and even tracks with GPA.” Yes, black and Hispanic admissions “to the flagship schools Berkeley and UCLA” dropped after voters banned racial preferences in admissions in 1998, but “there were still plenty of brown students — the ‘re-segregation’ so many furiously predicted never happened.” And “the idea that if you don’t get into Berkeley or UCLA you’re doomed to a life selling apples on the street is fantasy.” Notably, at UC San Diego “before the preferences ban, one black student out of 3,268 freshmen made honors. A few years later, after students who once would have gotten into Berkeley or UCLA were now admitted to schools such as UCSD, 1 in 5 black freshmen were making honors, the same proportion as white ones.”
Historian: Truman’s Gross Hustle
In 1958, former President Harry Truman gave a TV interview in which he claimed that he was almost broke, leading to the enactment of a law granting millions of dollars in benefits to former commanders-in-chief — yet, Paul Campos writes at New York magazine, the 33rd president’s “lobbying effort was based on falsehoods.” Recently released dirt on his finances shows Truman left office with an inflation-adjusted private fortune of $6.6 million, much of it misbegotten, we now know, from a congressionally created expense account. He also “made a fortune” from book-writing and speech-giving. And “Truman’s wealth increased by the 2021 equivalent of another $3.7 million when Congress passed the Former Presidents Act five and a half years after he left office.” The FPA, in other words, rests on a tissue of Truman’s financial lies — and “the debunking of that myth should serve as an ideal occasion to stop subsidizing the lifestyles of our rich and famous ex-presidents.
Urban beat: Traffic Is the Basis of Order
In today’s Gotham, “you will see cars running stoplights, speed limits ignored, motor scooters barreling down sidewalks and dodging pedestrians,” laments Warren Kozak in The Wall Street Journal. And no wonder why: State and city leaders have discouraged cops from making traffic stops, lest they lead to publicized shooting incidents. But if cities like New York are to thrive, “the basic rules of safety, courtesy and common sense have to hold.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board