Centrist: BernieCare = Politics and Voodoo Economics

For years, notes Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post, “Democrats have (rightfully) hammered Republicans for spouting empty slogans and magic math” on issue like tax cuts, health care and a border wall. But the lesson Democrats “seem to have taken from the 2016 electoral trouncing is that they need to become more like Republicans” — i.e., “chant virtue-signaling catchphrases,” and specifically, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care. Because getting there “involves painful political choices, sharp tax hikes and some degree of buy-in from the many stakeholders who are going to get shafted in the transition.” Moreover, “how do you actually pay for this enormous, multi-trillion-dollar overhaul” — Mexico? There’s “no courage in saying everyone should have health care. The courage is in staking out a plan to pay for it.”



Campaign guru: Dems Have Steep Climb To Win Senate

It may look like “storm clouds [are] gathering for Republicans” as next year’s midterms approach,’ says Charles Cook at his Cook Political Report. And, indeed, the battle for the US House may well be decided by a “single-digit-seat majority for either side.” But “Republican odds of hanging onto the Senate majority are pretty good — in fact, amazingly good, given the political environment” of President Trump’s low popularity numbers, when midterms traditionally are a referendum on the White House incumbent. Yet “it is difficult to see how Democrats secure the three-seat net gain necessary to win a majority.” For one thing, 25 of their seats are in play — 10 of them in “enemy territory,” states won by Trump. So “if the Republicans go down, it will require self-inflicted wounds.”



From the right: Wean La Raza off Public Payroll

Mike Gonzalez at The American Interest says you may never have heard of La Raza, “but you and other taxpayers are funding it.” He argues that “ethnic identity groups” that “have for decades lived off the government, only to keep enlarging it,” should “be taken off public support.” La Raza, recently renamed UnidosUS, was set up in 1968 with a grant from the Ford Foundation. “It depends for its survival not on grassroots, but on government contracts and kickbacks, and grants from foundations and the corporations it can shake down.” Indeed, its government subsidies went from $4.1 million a year to $11 million after top La Raza lobbyist Celia Munoz joined the Obama administration. The same administration also settled lawsuits by asking defendants to make large donations to La Raza and similar groups.



Science writer: Cassini Mission Was NASA’s Finest Hour

NASA’s venerable Cassini spacecraft fell “into the clouds of Saturn” Friday, bringing its “incredible 20-year odyssey . . . to an epic end,” says John Wenz at The Week. Arguably, “no NASA mission has revealed so many worlds in such exquisite detail, or opened our minds to so many tantalizing possibilities.” It “dropped a probe into an alien moon for the first time, discovering lakes of ethane on Titan hiding beneath the thick, smoggy clouds” of Saturn’s satellite. On another moon, it found “incredible geysers spewing salty water hundreds of miles into space.” In all, “we got hundreds of gorgeous pictures, valuable in-depth findings about our galactic neighbors and perhaps the most promising candidate for life in our solar system.”



Conservative: Chuck Schumer Is Running on Fumes

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer claims the price of gasoline at the pump is “sticky” and “never goes down,” because big energy companies “are stifling competition to keep prices high,” according to Jeff Dunetz at the Washington Times. Truth is, “our domestic energy boom has resulted in some of the lowest gasoline and electricity prices Americans have seen in decades.” Indeed, “American energy production has surged in recent years thanks to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.” And this “energy dominance isn’t likely to subside anytime soon.” Bottom line: “Thanks to low gasoline and electricity prices, energy expenditures accounted for just 3.9 percent of total household spending last year — a record low.”



— Compiled by Eric Fettmann