Pretty decent story in the Washington Post today which presents us with yet another teaching moment. Today’s Episode: Democrats attack Democrats and another South Carolina Republican cracks up.

This is novel and weird: Democratic political organizations , including the DNC -- nominally chaired by centrist Governor Tim Keane (D-VA) -- are now running negative ads against Democratic office-holders, mostly centrists or semi-conservatives, who are either undecided on ObamaCare or who oppose one or more of its key elements. In charge, besides the scenes, the White House.

Most aggressive tactic deployed by any President in recent memory.

If it works to get the votes inside Congress, then ObamaCare passes narrowly and without moderating its cost or scope. Good luck with that come 2012. If it fails, then what?

Before you rush to answer that, stop. Consider the hotheaded quote in the Post story by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), a real marginal guy inside the Senate with a flare for faking it.

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said yesterday during a conference call with conservative activists. "It will break him."

The quote strikes me as designed to make him appear to in charge of some backroom opposition war room. Worse yet, Jimbo doesn’t comprehend that going public with his imaginary GOP-scheme to bring down Obama — not just the bill -- changes the message from “ObamaCare will be bad for the middle class” to “Republicans are petty and selfish.” Thanks, Jimbo: you just gave your adversary a new spear with which to attack your friends. Go hike the Appalachian Trail. Oh, and STFU.

Contrast that with the smart quote from John Boehner:

The strategy has complicated Republican efforts to cast the bill in starker terms as a job-killing intrusion into the private health sector. The evolving debate has also sparked conflicts within organizations such as the AMA, which faces a rebellion from some state chapters opposed to the group's endorsement of the Democratic House bill.

"These big Washington groups have their feet in both camps," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). "A lot of their members are outraged by what their national associations are doing. The doctors are rising up."

This extends the better political (and more truthful) message that ObamaCare is flawed by his assertion that doctors are “rising up” against ObamaCare despite the AMA endorsement. We’ll see how many doctors really do “rise up” or not, but at least Boehner is encouraging those who do.

Your knowledge on all this outweighs mine a million to one, but do you really read that implication into the DeMint quote? Seems he’s just stating a political-strategic fact, similar to what many Democrats said in 2005 when they signaled their need to crush Social Security reform as a means of knocking Bush off his pedestal.

I’m a million miles from Washington. I’m not attuned to “what works” politically. And I generally love Boehner (although I think he blew it one time that I’m aware of – he’s made a mistake to demonize bank CEO’s and their compensation). But I get all of DeMint’s emails, and I always find his message to be principled and to the point. He may not be effective for one reason or another, but I’m just saying that I think his message is philosophically very well done.

So do you really see this as him “cracking up”? I just am not getting that from this story.

Points well taken and I’m taking a step back.

You are right. DeMint is smart and frequently observant.

I am right. DeMint is ineffective. That quote is not observant; it is misleading.

On top of that, it will be used as a bloody shirt to energize the activist supporters of Obama to attack centrist Democrats as falling for an evil Republican effort to hurt Obama. If successful, it will be a triumph of fear tactics overwhelming the correct and substantive opposition of their own party members.

So, I’m repeating my point but withdrawing my own, overheated rhetoric. This issue is so important that the amateurs ought to step all the way back and STFU.

The recent news of compensation on Wall Street shows that some financial leaders yearn for the stirring return of yesteryear and demonstrates the need to adopt legislation on executive pay...we will consider legislation to empower federal regulators to proscribe inappropriate or imprudent compensation practices as part of solvency regulation of all financial firms. The committee is acting because of a broad consensus of leading national and international finance experts including Paul Volcker and the Group of 30 and Lord Turner of the United Kingdom who believe that compensation structures were a factor in the financial crisis. Both the United Kingdom and the European Union are contemplating similar rules.

Some might say is all part of a comprehensive plan to punish success. I think Barney really believes in hyper-regulatory control.

Just consider the irony that Barney also a guy who tells the story on himself in a witty and entertaining way that he disdained auto insurance regulation while in the Massachusetts legislature because he didn’t what his constituents bugging him about the rates they have to pay.

Now, he wants to set up an elaborate structure to set up controls over all elements of all exec comp at all public companies. GFY.

Whatever the motivation, the Democrats must think this kind of raid-the-suites crap distracts the 97.999% of the public who are not rich from the simple everyday fact that jobs are dying and these guys are part of the reason. Wonder if they are following the playbook to keep the people poor and stupid in exchange for power. Ya think?

Today, we're spending like we're Paris Hilton, regulating like we're Ralph Nader, nationalizing like we're Hugo Chavez, printing money like we're the Weimar Republic and taxing like we're, well, the Democratic Congress.

Let's start with the price. This thing is going to cost trillions of dollars. And how do you think it's going to get paid for?

Investors are going to get taxed. You are going to get taxed. It's that simple.

And people without health insurance -- the very people whom this is supposed to help -- are going to get taxed too. And millions of them will be left without insurance (even though they have to pay higher taxes).

First, to the investors. According to the bill passed this week by the House of Representatives, any individual who makes more than $280,000 a year -- or any couple that makes more than $350,000 -- is going to pay a surcharge of at least 1% of income above those levels. The more you make, the more you pay. The biggest earners will face a surcharge of 5.4%.

It will kick in for tax year 2011, which is when the 2003 tax cuts "sunset" away and revert to the previous higher levels anyway. Put it together, and you have a serious tax hike for the kind of people who do most of the investing in this country.

According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, the top marginal federal income tax rate will be 45%.  It you take state taxes into account, it's off the charts. According to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, if you include state income taxes, people in 39 out of 50 states will be above the 50% tax rate.

My home state, the People's Democratic Republic of California, will boast a rate of 56.6%. Did you happen to notice that "for sale" sign out in front of my house? With taxes like that, I'm moving somewhere else, and I pretty don't much care where (I hear taxes on the moon are especially low).

Investors pay another way, too. Suppose you own stock in one of the health care companies that gets destroyed when government takes over?

Don't think it won't happen. Since Barack Obama was inaugurated in January on a mandate of "change" -- including so-called health care "reform" -- the S&P 500 has returned 17.4%. But with the threat of "reform" hanging over it, the health care sector has only returned 4.8%. The difference -- 12.6% -- is a loss for investors.

People who can't afford to invest will pay, too. Under the House's bill, every American would be required to have health care insurance, whether he wants it or not. That's the way it is in socialist dictatorships -- anything not forbidden is mandatory. If you choose not to get insurance, you get hit with an "excise tax," which is a fancy way of saying a fine, or a penalty. It's approximately 2.5% of your income.

The government will give you insurance for free if your income is less than four times the poverty line. But suppose you're a middle class working guy or gal -- you're not impoverished, but you need to save every penny. You're young and healthy, so you've decided to do without insurance. Sorry -- you have to pay the excise tax.

So you look around and figure out if you can get health care insurance -- which you don't even want -- for less than the amount of the excise tax. If you can't, then you pay the tax. And you're still not insured.

Or if you decide you might as well buy the insurance anyway, you've still been "taxed" -- because you're spending money on something you don't want or need, in a way that you didn't choose.

There's good research that suggests that there are as many as 8 million Americans who will be in this situation.

Insured or uninsured, well-off enough to pay the surcharge or not, everyone is going to be hurt by this. Because when you raise taxes like this, you suck money out of the economy that could go into spending, saving and investing. Second, you put government in charge of something that ought to a matter of private initiative and personal choice.

And don't tell me that only government can step in and prevent runaway "health care inflation." There's no such thing. The average overall inflation rate has been 3.8% per year over history. For health care, it's been 5.5%. Higher, but not exactly a "runaway" number that justifies the government seizing control of a sector that represents about 17% of gross domestic product.

Why is "health care inflation" higher than overall inflation? For all we know, it could be because health care has so many amazing innovations -- drugs, tests, procedures that couldn't have even been imagined just a decade ago -- that it's impossible to track the "price." Or it could be because health care is already very highly regulated, subsidized and otherwise interfered with by government. If there is inflation there, maybe it's because the private sector hasn't been able to work its capitalist magic.

The banking sector is also heavily , regulated, subsidized and otherwise interfered with by government. And look where that got us (ever hear of the credit crisis?). And it's historical inflation rate is higher than the overall inflation rate, too.

But look at food. Other than basic safety inspection, food production and distribution is hardly regulated at all. And it's not that it's not essential to life -- it's more essential than health care. The private sector handles it all. And its historical inflation rate is lower than the overall rate, not higher.

To me, all this is so simple, so obvious, I just can't believe a nation of intelligent people will destroy itself this way. So I think it's worth a bet that we'll pull back from the brink and reject this particular bit of madness. I think it's possible that stocks have rallied this week precisely because this call for ruinous taxes is sure to be rejected, and when it is, it will put the high-tax genii back in his bottle for a long while.

So watch this one carefully. It's a test case. If this nearly criminal tax-and-don't-insure scheme is enacted into law, the nascent bull market is over. But if I'm right, and it gets rejected, then stocks could move a lot higher once they see that it's still possible for the government of this country to do the right thing every once in a while.

Update... "Mick Danger" adds some good thoughts:

Clever, smart and convincing. One boo-boo: the House “three-committee” bill has not “passed;” it has merely been introduced. It was “reported out” by the Ways & Means Committee but it faces a much tougher environment over inside Henry Waxman’s Energy & Commerce Committee where seven of the 52 Blue Dogs sit.

It’s not too soon to analyze the impacts but it is far too soon to predict either it’s passage or demise.

One group of Americans who ought to be up in arms instead of surrendering are doctors, the vast majority of whom are dedicated, over-worked, essential and about-to-be slaughtered. The actual doctors are busy with actual life and death issues and do not have the time to manage their own regulatory fate nor mess with the burdens of being political. Evidently, there’s no adult supervision of the AMA.

Earlier this week, the AMA team endorsed Obama Care out of the bizarre illogic that Team Obama will pay more for primary care docs (who comprise most of the AMA membership) than for specialists (who join different and far more effective professional associations). The AMA strikes me as raising the standard now held by Neville Chamberlain.

Listen up. Team Obama will not pay more for primary care docs. They won’t because they can’t but also ‘cause they don’t wanna. All they wanna do is trick you silly trade associations into going along to get along. After which, they will fuck you.

Why do you think Obama wants to take full control of Medicare reimbursement rates away from Congress? So you can’t get your annual “doc fix” bill to keep Medicare rates from automatically being cut. Please, AMA, just go die.

Meanwhile, back in the Congress, the Democrats have a very steep hill to climb: if they trim the price tag to get a neutral CBO score, they anger their base because it will limit how many of “uninsured” they can claim to cover. In my judgment, many politicians are far more motivated by fear than ambition when it comes to managing reactions from their core constituencies. They fear them. Democrats fear the unions, the Move.orgers and their own masses of the poor and stupid.

Alternatively, if they buy off half of the blue Dogs with higher rural spending (as is now being discussed) they may expose those particular Blue Dogs to greater, not lesser, bad reactions in their home districts because of the highly negative small business hit of the overall bill they will then be obliged to vote for. (Allow me once again to grasp the obvious: Ain’t nothing in rural America but small businesses.

Wal-Mart Thursday will tell suppliers they must calculate and disclose the full environmental costs of making their products, then allow Wal-Mart to distill the information into a rating system that shoppers will see alongside prices for everything from T-shirts to televisions...

The most immediate impact of Wal-Mart's latest drive will be felt by its 100,000 suppliers, which will bear the costs of the company's environmental mandates, at a time in which many are struggling economically.

People familiar with the company's plans said that Wal-Mart is angling to get ahead of potential U.S. environmental labeling regulations -- they've already begun appearing in Britain and Japan -- and to set a standard on its own terms that the retail industry can adopt to communicate the green hue of goods it sells.

Wal-Mart disputed that it was seeking to preempt regulations. Mr. Fleming, who is helping lead the effort, said he wanted to improve the quality of the products sold by the discounter, which had $401.2 billion in sales last year.

Heather Murren, a retired Managing Director for Global Securities Research and Economics at Merrill Lynch. ...In 2004, she was recognized by Las Vegas magazine of the Las Vegas Review-Journal as one of the Influential Businesswomen of the year...

Byron Georgiou, who is a Las Vegas-based businessman and attorney.

This op-ed is better than most and worth holding onto. It's a few days old, but it's likely to increase in relevance as the summer wears on. Bear with me; you'll see what I mean.

Overall, this op-ed is full of true, helpful and instructive facts. Until, that is, our Mr. Burd of Safeway gets to the last few paragraphs when his pen was captured (no dobut) by the corporate PR/lobbyist minions who fear retribution and banishment. Note, especially, the last paragraph: a crash landing accompanied by twisted, whimpering suck-up language as if to say that the Dems shouldn't want to hurt people like me who try so hard...

"There is a very real possibility that we will see positive transformational health-care reform in the near future. I am encouraged by the effort I see on Capitol Hill, particularly the bipartisan effort in the Senate. While some tough issues remain, if we continue to work in a bipartisan manner I believe we will resolve these issues successfully and find agreement on meaningful reform."

Hey, dude, snap out of it. The only productive bipartisan effort is getting hosed off the tarmac by the Pelosi-Reid-Waxman-Dodd forces. Scram.

Oh, but thanks for pointing out that Safeway's management employees are serious about their health and your costs for insuring their health. We like to take advantage of guys like you. We see that you gingerly point out that you are working with the union to try to convince them that they should consider the getting-healthy approach. We tune back into your phraseology:

"The Healthy Measures program currently applies only to our nonunion work force. While we have numerous health and wellness provisions in our union contracts, we are working with union leaders like Joe Hansen of the United Food and Commercial Workers to incorporate healthy measures provisions in our union work force as well."

I'm sure the response to date has been a carefully reasoned one, either "Maybe if You Pay Us More" or perhaps the more spontaneous "Go Fuck Yourself." Mr.Burd, the Dems are going to set up a Public Plan with cheap rates accepting all pre-existing conditions. Why should anyone get healthy when it's someone's else's dime to pay for medical treatment of those on the Big Gulp/Fat Burger/Three Pack/Ten Beer Diet? Oh, and why the shout-out to Mr. Joe Hansen? Think that softens him up?

In any event, Don, let us follow Mr. Safeway over the next three months as Congress pushes ObamaCare towards the ObamaDesk. From my carefully hidden birdsnest, I will keep my glasses on our Mr. Burd to see whether he continues to tiptoe and babble through the minefield lost in the beauty of the stars or whether he drops the pretense and BS and fights for his company and shareholders like a man.

Edmund Burke once said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

I’d say the second worst and more contemporary rubric is “It ain’t smart to feed the crocodiles in the hope to be eaten last.” Timidity is always a bad tactic.

After two decades of cajoling and coaching and counseling CEOs on tough policy issues, I've not only seen this movie too many times, I've produced it. I do offer my sincere compliments to Team Safeway. You got the guy into the ring.

Now, put up or shut up.

The idea that this will be a tipping point is anecdotally supported by a posting on the left-leaning Tax Vox blog, by Howard Gleckman. In my years of reading this blog, there's rarely anything but sympathy for raising taxes on anybody and everybody, especially "the rich." But here Gleckman offers a long list of everything that's wrong with Rangel's proposal. But I especially like the gratuitous but wonderful editorial comment that he throws in at the end. Remember, this is a very left-leaning blog:

Why is asking just a few million people to pay for health reform a good thing?

CIT executives were worried that customers would be rattled by reports over the weekend that it hired a prominent law firm to prepare for a possible bankruptcy filing after so far failing to get additional government assistance.

Bank of America Corp. is trying to avoid paying billions of dollars in fees to U.S. taxpayers for guarantees against losses at Merrill Lynch & Co., saying the rescue agreement was never signed and the funding never used.

Regulators contend Bank of America owes at least part of a $4 billion fee it agreed to pay in January -- even without a completed legal document -- because the company benefited from implied U.S. backing on about $118 billion of Merrill Lynch assets, such as mortgage-backed bonds……

“It’s the fault of the government for never getting it signed...”

The Obama administration is developing an initiative to take money from the $700 billion rescue program for the banking system and make it available to millions of small businesses, which officials say are essential to any economic recovery because they employ so many people…