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.

In addition to the maneuvers aimed at raising taxes on the rich in California, in New York, where the process to raise said taxes isn’t as byzantine, state leaders have agreed in principle on a deal to increase taxes on the wealthy. And this is a reversal from a vow by Andrew Cuomo from earlier in the year to allow increased taxes on the rich to expire.

What Cain has done on taxes and economic policy is similar to what John Edwards did on health care in 2008. He came out of the box first with a comprehensive plan, and it drew his competition entirely to his left. Even though Cain is being savaged for his wealth redistribution scheme, he’s drawing everyone to his right. Rick Perry’s introducing a flat tax. Mitt Romney endorsed a version of the Paul Ryan plan for Medicare vouchers. It’s become follow-the-leader in the Republican Party, and Cain is the leader. Regressive taxes and wealth distribution upward is the order of the day.

Surprise! Herman Cain’s plan is built around a catchy slogan, but the Tax Policy Center put out a distributional analysis of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, and as they show, it would raise taxes for 84% of the population, cost those in the lowest quintile 20% of their income, and save millionaires something close to $300,000 a year.

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.

So much for the idea that there isn’t a specific policy message coming out of the Occupy Wall Street protests. This video, from the Institute for Policy Studies, which has been widely linked on the We Are the 99% Tumblr page, shows how easy it is to convert the frustrations of a generation of poor and disenfranchised people into action.

At today’s LinkedIn town hall meeting with President Obama, a former Google executive asked “Would you please raise my taxes?” The man, identified as Doug Edwards, a former director of communications and marketing at Google, said that he wanted the country to continue to be able to invest in Pell grants and infrastructure and job training programs “that made it possible for me to get where I am.”

This millionaire’s minimum tax also seems like a clever way to eliminate the “carried interest” loophole, where income from money managers is taxed at the capital gains rate of 15% rather than the top marginal income rate of 35%.