A new round of campaign finance disclosures by the Republican campaigns for President showed once again how SuperPAC spending has driven the race almost entirely this year. At most, a few dozen extremely rich people are paying for most of the GOP campaigns, and they’re making no apologies for essentially buying the nominating process.

The full 30-minute attack ad called “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” is out, and it is really hardcore. Dolloped with a hint of xenophobia (Romney speaks French in the film twice), the film features the roadkill from the freight train of vulture capitalism, the workers who had the misfortune of getting caught up in a Bain Capital leveraged buyout. Romney is portrayed as such an unyielding greedhead that Gordon Gekko would blanch.

We’ve been talking about income inequality lately, and tied into that is the idea of upward mobility. The United States, in the myths of cock-eyed optimists everywhere, remains the land of opportunity, where everyone can get a fair shot at greatness. But that America hasn’t existed for a while. In fact, as Jason DeParle reports, upward mobility doesn’t really exist in this country anymore.

The LA Times writes about a shifting message for the 2012 election campaign: The President and Democrats will position their party as the defenders of the middle class. Meanwhile, there is a huge income gap between the increasingly wealthy Congress and the voters they presume to represent.

You do have to marvel at the way in which the 1% tries to pull off the trick of evoking sympathy for how hard it is to be them, as if a commentary on income inequality above where it was during the Roman empire is actually just an attack on their character. But that hasn’t stopped the whining.

Nobody had any interest in actually scoring Gingrich’s plan until he surged in the polls. But now, the Tax Policy Center has taken a look. And they found that his plan would give the top 1% a $428,000 annual tax cut, and the top 0.1% a tax cut of $2.3 million. Millionaires get an average $760,000 cut.

When Ohioans soundly turned back an assault on worker’s rights, defeating Issue 2 and SB 5 with 61% of the vote, they did it with a broad coalition that points to a total reversal of the voting bloc that brought Governor John Kasich to power in 2010. It could have long-lasting implications for 2012 and beyond.

Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan is a flat tax dressed up in fluffier clothing. Every GOP Presidential nomination campaign since Reagan has had at least one flat-taxer: Jack Kemp in 1988, Steve Forbes in 2000, Mike Huckabee in 2008, and now Herman Cain. The plans have a simplistic logic to them until people realize it’s basically another scheme to redistribute wealth upward.

The proposed 5.6% surtax on millionaires, essentially the creation of a new tax bracket at the $1,000,000 income level, would raise enough money to pay for the American Jobs Act, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That pay-for will be used when the Senate attempts to pass a cloture vote this week on the bill.

Taxes need to be completely re-thought through the lens of what it takes to pay for the things society demands. What’s a priority (the social safety net) and what isn’t (imperial adventures). Who can pay and who can’t. If Democrats guard the rich, or near-rich if your prefer, because $250,000 a year “does not get you a big home or lots of vacations or anything else that is associated with wealth,” you’re just not going to close to a level of revenue that allows for the national priorities.