Conservative: Hong Kong — Sanctions-Buster

“The U.S. can’t stop the illegal flow of oil solely by chasing tankers at sea,” warns The Wall Street Journal’s Jillian Kay Melchior; it must also “target part of the financial and corporate infrastructure” — much of it in Hong Kong — that enables commerce in sanctioned goods. Sanctions regimes “resemble a quarantine” that halts the passage of goods and services, but Hong Kong corporate law permits domiciled firms to “have no business operations” and “exist as shell companies,” facilitating the disguise of ownership under layers of fronts. By weaponizing Hong Kong’s business-friendly heritage into “lawless capitalism,” Beijing has turned the once-free city into “a hub for illicit business” that can “undermine U.S. interests.”

Eye on education: Grade Inflation Tricks Parents

“Actual proficiency rates among eighth graders” in reading and math are now below one-third, and the “problem has gotten worse over the past 15 years or so as grade inflation has increased,” thunder Ariel Kalil & Derek Rury at The New York Times. Meanwhile, “standardized testing . . . is being undermined,” as “several states have recently lowered” the bar for proficiency. So parents can “be paying close attention” to their children’s performance without realizing how little they’re learning, and so seeing “no reason to act — even when test scores are low.” Reversing “grade inflation is the most direct fix for helping parents understand how their children are doing in school,” but parents should “ask their children’s teachers directly whether they are performing at grade level.”

Libertarian: Wealth Tax Puts Everyone at Risk

“Californians will face two competing tax measures this November,” cautions Reason’s Veronique de Rugy. One is the Billionaire Tax Act, which (contrary to its advocates’ claims) will mean “a $25 billion loss for California” once the “taxes that will no longer be collected from departing billionaires” are factored in. To replace those revenues, “the state will look for the next available pool of assets”— “nonbillionaires” and “their retirement savings.” Hence the urgent need for the other measure, the “Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act,” which would ban “new levies on retirement accounts, personal savings, and individually owned assets” as well as “retroactive taxation.”

Crime beat: How Baltimore Stopped Murders

Baltimore’s historically high murder rates “started plummeting” in late 2022, notes Charles Fain Lehman at The Free Press; “after three years of steady decline,” it’s now seeing “the fewest murders” since 1965. This “was supposed to be impossible,” and the fault of the “drug war” or “systemic racism,” but a focus on “deterring the small fraction of offenders in Baltimore who commit the large majority of violent crimes,” aided by “a new tough-on-crime prosecutor,” Ivan Bates, has proved the nightmare was “just the result of its past leaders’ failure to take violence seriously enough.” Known criminals get a “clear message” that “Baltimore is watching them — and will come after them.” Deterrence “can’t work if the threat of incarceration isn’t credible,” which is why “a good prosecutor is the linchpin to a successful deterrent strategy.”

From the right: Holding the Feds to Account

President Trump “walked away from potentially billions” in legal damages so the federal government would instead “set up a process to compensate Americans” abused by Biden-era lawfare, cheers Tom Fitton at The Hill. His critics oppose this fund not because it’s “corrupt, but because it exposes misconduct inside government that was long downplayed or ignored.” Indeed, for years, “Americans watched federal agencies turn their power against citizens on the wrong side” of the political aisle. “Trump has made clear that this pattern must end,” and those “who were harmed” should have an “avenue for redress.” Governments that abuse their own citizens “must be answerable to them,” and “the anti-weaponization fund is one piece of that effort.” And since Trump “gave up compensation” to ensure that, “he should be praised, not attacked.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board