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I don’t generally like slippery-slope arguments. The people who can’t tell you why they’re opposed to something — save for some imagined slippery slope — might be the only debaters more irritating than devil’s advocates. 

So normally I’d be skeptical of conservatives — and insurance industry advocates — who argue that a government-run health care plan (which Congress is considering as part of a major reform bill) would be a slippery slope toward single-payer public health care or, as conservatives prefer to call it, “socialized medicine.”

But, in this case, they have a point.

We talked a little about the so-called public option part of the health care reform bill last week. More info is here.

Members of the administration have said that a single payer system — in which everyone is covered under a government plan, as it’s done in much of Europe and in Canada — isn’t on the table. And they also claim that the public option is in no way, you silly dears, a path to single payer. “This is not a trick. This is not single-payer,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told NPR recently.

I suspect that Sebelius is being disingenuous, as are other Democrats who claim the public option isn’t leading toward single payer.

Of course it is. Just look at the basic economics.

The insurance industry knows full well it can’t compete with a public plan.

For one, the private sector has enormous overhead, mostly spent on disqualifying from coverage anyone who will be too expensive to insure. A government plan won’t have to worry about that.

And two, a public plan also needn’t concern itself with making a profit.

Once a public plan enters the market, it’s likely that hordes of individuals and employers will flock to it. Under that scenario, the public plan would keep expanding until we essentially have single payer.

That’s the scenario envisioned by George Will. (His preferred cliche for the public option is “stalking horse.”) And it’s hard to argue.

On the other side, if you want single payer, you shouldn’t feel betrayed, as some lefties clearly do. You should be supporting an unfettered public option.

Meanwhile, the insurance industry is desperate to put constraints on a possible public option — by either limiting how low its prices can go, or by capping its enrollment.

We like to think of the insurance industry as some kind of all-powerful behemoth. And, quite often, it is. But right now insurers should be fearing for their survival — no matter how many assurances they get from public officials. 

Single payer may not be in the administration’s plan right now.

But it’s a slippery slope.

So who’s more anti-Washington: Rick Perry or Kay Bailey Hutchison?

The governor has portrayed Hutchison as a big-spending Washington insider.

But yesterday — in what the state media is hyping as the unofficial start of the 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary — Hutchison countered Perry’s criticism, saying she too is an anti-Washington candidate.

So who’s the true anti-Washington crusader in this race? Well, let’s examine the contenders.

First there’s Texas’ senior senator, who’s served in D.C. for nearly 15 years, and brings home her share of federal pork, which, of course, is her job. She also voted for the first Wall Street bailout, though she later opposed the Obama stimulus package.

That led Perry to say she was for the stimulus before she was against it (eat your heart out, John Kerry.)

The guv, meanwhile, talked for most of the year like he’d rather jump off a bridge than accept stimulus money from the feds. And he did reject federal aid for the state’s unemployment fund, at the behest of the Texas Association of Business.

But he also signed a budget that was balanced with $12 billion in federal stimulus money. Most recently, Perry requested another $4 billion in stimulus funds for education, bringing Texas’ stimulus total to $16 billion.

So Hutchison’s folks could have said that Perry was against the stimulus before he was for it. (They didn’t say that; instead they just called him a hypocrite.)

Behind the rhetoric and posturing, they’re both neck-deep in “Washington,”  and they both know it.

In fact, Hutchison got it right yesterday — albeit unintentionally so — when she said, “I”m just as anti-Washington as [Perry] is.”

Sounds like she nailed it.

Tom Schieffer — the former U.S. ambassador and at this point the only declared Democratic candidate for governor (except for maybe this guy) — announced his fundraising total earlier today.

“It gives me the greatest pleasure to announce that my campaign has raised almost $800,000 in contributions and loans for this reporting period,” Schieffer said in a statement.

At first glance, $800,000 is a piddly sum compared to the many millions raised in the first six months of the year by Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison.

But Schieffer is a Democrat, so we have to grade on a curve.

Compared to some previous Democratic statewide candidates — Chris Bell and Rick Noriega come to mind — the $800,000 raised about 18 months before election day looks pretty good. I mean, $800,000 can buy a lot of stuff (by the way, Mr. Schieffer, if you decide to bag this whole running-for-governor thing and just want to give me the cash, I’d be OK with that.)

But when you examine the donor list released by the campaign, it turns out that more than half ($450,000) of Schieffer’s total came from just three individuals, including $255,000 from his own campaign treasurer (Lyndon Olson).

Schieffer also received $200,000 from Edward and Evelyn Rose of Dallas. Edward Rose runs an investment firm and was a major donor to George W. Bush.

This isn’t the kind of fund-raising total that will scare off other potential Democratic candidates. Kirk Watson, for instance, says he has $1.4 million in the bank.

And, no, I’m not being facetious with that headline.

After reading this story in today’s New York Times, I can’t help but feel bad for the woman.

Forget the rumors about a looming scandal. It now seems that Palin resigned because she was melting down.

She’s losing weight. Her hair is falling out. Her administration is in demolition derby mode.

John McCain did her — not to mention the rest of us — a real disservice when he asked her to join the ticket last year. She was in way, way over her head, even more so than most people thought, which is really saying something.

Consider this anecdote from the Times:

[A] disconnect emerged between Ms. Palin’s political and official operations, resulting in embarrassing blunders.After the Conservative Political Action Conference, a meeting of the Republican Party’s evangelical base, announced that the governor would have a coveted speaking role at its annual gathering in February, she canceled, citing scheduling conflicts. Then, organizers of one of the most important Republican Congressional fund-raisers of the year said they had been assured by a political aide to Ms. Palin that she would be their headliner, only to have her Anchorage office announce that she knew nothing about it.

Yikes. Given all that, Rick Perry might want to get confirmation from Palin in writing.

Kay Bailey Hutchison wrapped up a press conference with reporters in Dallas a few minutes ago in which she announced that she would soon announce that she’s running for governor.

That wasn’t a major shocker.

After all, I watched streaming video of the event on a web site emblazoned with the slogan “Kay for Governor.”

(By the way, if you’re curious, she said she’ll make a formal announcement in August.)

Hutchison also announced that she had raised $6.7 million for her campaign in the first six months of 2009. That will be the day’s headline news. Her total eclipses Rick Perry’s $4.2 million haul.

The senator said she has more than $12 million in her campaign account, which would give her a $3 million edge over Perry.

Both candidates claim widespread support. Hutchison said she received donations from 231 of Texas’ 254 counties and that 98 percent of her contributions came from Texas.

The campaign finance reports won’t be posted for another few days — the filing deadline is July 15. So, at this point, we have to take the candidate’s word for it.

When the reports are made public, we’ll have a more detailed examination of who’s backing these two GOP heavies.

Hutchison disputed the results of recent polls showing Perry with a double-digit lead. She claimed her campaign’s internal polling had her out front. “I know I’m ahead,” she said.

So just to be clear: She’s not in the race yet, but she’s winning.

So the governor pulled a bit of a surprise this morning when he named Gail Lowe chair of the State Board of Education.

There had been rumors that Perry would name the controversial Cynthia Dunbar as chair. I contended earlier this week that Dunbar would be a less-dangerous choice for opponents of the Christian Right than someone like Barbara Cargill.

Lowe publishes the community newspaper in Lampasas, and once served as a trustee of the Lampasas school board. She’s a reliable social conservative, but has been far less visible during her tenure on the State Board than most of her right-wing colleagues (read: Dunbar, McLeroy, Leo, Mercer, Bradley). You can find Lowe’s bio here.

Perry’s passing over of Dunbar might indicate he wants a little less controversy out of the State Board next year (as he’s running for reelection).

My impression of Lowe — from watching hours of State Board proceedings last year (an experience from which I’m still recovering) — is that she’s not the savviest operator in the group. She’ll likely be a quieter public presence as chair than McLeroy.

The open question is whether she’ll be more effective at passing a socially conservative agenda.

This afternoon a press release popped into my inbox from John Cornyn entitled, “Health Care Reform Alert.”

The email from the junior U.S. senator reads like a lucid, well-informed critique of the current Democratic health care reform bill being considered in Washington. Cornyn doesn’t resort to claiming that your doctor will soon be a government bureaucrat transferred from the DMV.

He’s being much subtler in his rhetoric. Still, it contains some serous distortions.

Cornyn writes that “The health care reform proposals currently being offered by Congressional Democrats will not substantially lower costs or fix the problems in our health care system. Instead, their plan would shift costs to the taxpayers.”

That sentence contains two big myths.

1. Cornyn is referring to the so-called “public option” currently in the health care reform bill. It would create a government-run health care plan to compete with the private sector. The public option would likely  lower costs. That’s the whole point. The insurance industry is desperate to defeat the public option– or severely water it down — because the plan is so low cost that insurers know they can’t compete with it.

2. Cornyn also dredges up the myth that a public option would shift health care costs to taxpayers.

Well, who does Cornyn think is paying for health care now?

It’s true that, under the current reform bill, the government would pay for a lot more of the health care in this country. And taxpayers fund the government. So, in the simplest analysis, taxpayers would pay more.

But taxpayers don’t exist in a vacuum. Taxpayers are Americans, and Americans are paying, on average, the highest per capita costs for health care in the Western world.

We pay  for current government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Many taxpayers also have to pay for their own health care plans. Underinsured taxpayers end up shelling out for high co-pays or paying for procedures out of their own pocket. And when one of the 40 million Americans without health insurance becomes ill and ends up in an emergency room at a public hospital, you know who pays for that in the end? The taxpayers. 

It’s possible that some taxpayers (read: rich folks) whose insurance is paid for by their employers would have to pay a little more under a public option — at least at the outset.

But those costs could eventually come down. If the number of uninsured Americans drops, the costs to the system will drop as well.  The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that in 2004, uninsured Americans cost the U.S. health care system $41 billion. Local governments paid 85 percent of that cost.

That’s $35 billion paid for by — wait for it — the taxpayers.

There are certainly valid reasons to oppose the public option, particularly if you believe — as Cornyn does — in limited government. But the argument that a public plan won’t lower costs and would fleece taxpayers is misleading.

Quorum Report has posted the first interview with Gail Lowe, the new chair of the State Board of Education.

QR asked Lowe about her appointment of Christian Right activist David Barton to a panel of experts reviewing social studies curriculum.

Barton questions the inclusion of Cesar Chavez in the “Heroes of History” section of the social studies curriculum.

That caused a stir this week.

For her part, Lowe told QR the whole thing was taken out of context. “I have not read the (expert panel) recommendations exhaustively yet, but I’m sure he had made some excellent suggestions that we can use to formulate good social studies standards,” she said.

Maybe she should read Barton’s submission a little closer.

We’ll even help her out, so there’s no confusion about what Barton wrote.

Here’s the entire section from Barton’s social studies critique in which he discusses the “Heroes of History” and who should be included. You know, so everyone can see the context:

Heroes of HistoryIt often appears that the names included in individual TEKS do not necessarily represent what is described in a particular TEKS; instead it seems that a list of names to be covered in a history text was compiled and then those names were scattered throughout the document without specific regard to the specific content of that TEK. In other cases, the selection made was not a particularly strong representative.For example:In Grade 5 (b)(1)(B), Anne Hutchinson, although an historic figure was not “a significant colonial leader.”In Grade 5 (b)(5)(B), Colin Powell is a weak choice for a group representing those “who have made contributions to society in the areas of civil rights, women’s rights, military actions, and politics,” but Harry Truman desegregate the military and called for civil rights planks in the Democrat Platform, end WW II, and serve as an effective president, thus including him in three of the categories off that TEKS rather than just the one category for Powell.In Grade 5 (b)(19)(C), Cesar Chavez may be a choice representing diversity but he certainly lacks the stature, impact, and overall contributions of so many others; and his open affiliation with Saul Alinsky’s movements certainly makes dubious that he is a praiseworthy to be heralded to students as someone “who modeled active participation in the democratic process.”In Grade 5 (b)(24)(A), there are certainly many more notable scientists than Carl Sagan – such as Wernher von Braun, Matthew Maury, Joseph Henry, Maria Mitchell, David Rittenhouse, etc.

For most of this decade, Kay Bailey Hutchison has been the most popular politician in Texas. The conventional wisdom in Austin posited that if and when she ever challenged Rick Perry in a GOP primary, she would wipe the floor with him.

Now? Not so much.

Another poll is out today showing Perry with a double-digit lead on the senior U.S. Senator from Texas — the second such finding this month. This time it’s a 12-point edge.

Harvey has some details. Burka, who until recently was promoting Hutchison as the favorite, seems despondent. He writes that Kay is running the “worst campaign imaginable.”

I’ve always doubted that Hutchison would trounce Perry. And for one simple reason: When was the last time she won a competitive election?

Campaigning is different than governing. The ability to create, manage and maintain a well-organized and lean campaign operation in the middle of a tough election is a rare, practiced skill. Many politicians, even the most popular and experienced, will falter in their first hotly contested race. The examples are numerous, from the national level (Bob Dole and Hillary Clinton) to the state level (Rick Noriega).

Hutchison’s recent reelection efforts have been relaxing affairs. In 2006, she barely had to campaign to double-up her Democratic opponent, Barbara Ann Radnofsky, who was so lacking in funds that she took to creating Web-only ads that featured the candidate conversing with a sock puppet. (BTW, I’ve been trying to track down those sock-puppet ads. If anyone has a link where I can find them, please, please send it to me.)

We know Perry will run a lean, mean race. He knows who his voters are and how to excite them. It’s his best skill.

Can Hutchison do that? The early returns don’t look promising for her.

For his part, Burka clings to Kay’s still-stratospheric favorability ratings (65 percent favorable; 17 percent unfavorable). But that seems like fool’s gold to me. Hutchison’s favorability numbers will come crashing down once Perry’s campaign gets rolling and the race gets nastier.

Hutchison will have to improve as a campaigner as she goes. There’s still time to turn herself from a comfortably sitting senator into a disciplined candidate with a well-run organization that can turn out her type of voters. It’s a tough transition to make — and one that Hillary Clinton couldn’t pull off, at least not in time to save her campaign. If Hutchison can do it, she has a chance.

But right now she appears cautious and disorganized, and Perry is taking her to school.

“I’m certainly not a quitter. I’m a fighter and that’s why I’m doing this, to go out there and fight for what’s right.”

That’s Sarah Palin talking to CNN yesterday about her decision to, ahem, quit as governor of Alaska. (The video of the entire nine-minute interview is here.)

If Sarah Palin vanishes from public life, my days will be far less entertaining.