Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) today released her “American Jobs, Right Now” Blueprint for Economic Prosperity and Job Creation, ahead of yet another GOP presidential primary debate tonight. The one-page plan, of course, contains many of the same tired ideas Bachmann has been promoting on the campaign trail. Here are the highlights:

– CORPORATE TAX GIVEAWAYS: Bachmann has consistently called for a corporate tax repatriation holiday which would cost billions but, if history is any indication, result in few job gains. The last time Congress approved such a holiday — which Bachmann calls “true stimulus” — the companies that benefited the most cut hundreds of thousands of jobs.

– REPEALING WALL STREET REFORM: Bachmann has loudly and proudly been calling for the repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which she says is “killing the banking industry” (even as banks haul in record profits). The recession caused by Wall Street malfeasance has cost the country 14 million jobs, but Bachmann believes going back to that regulatory structure would lead to job growth.

– DRILL, BABY, DRILL: Bachmann plans to create more than 1 million jobs via more drilling for oil, using an oft-repeated statistic that “exaggerate[s] the effect that looser drilling policies would have on employment,” never mind ignoring the environmental destruction that could occur.

– REPEALING FANTASY REGULATIONS: Bachmann claims that “business owners have lost economic liberty under the weight of $1.8 billion annually in compliance costs with government regulations.” This number is pure fantasy, cooked up by right-wing business groups intent on allowing corporations to pollute at will and treat their workers however they see fit.

– CUTTING TAXES FOR THE RICH: Bachmann pays lip service to reforming both the corporate and personal income taxes, but the only concrete tax cut that she lays out is eliminating the estate tax, which would aid only the richest households in the country, while creating no jobs.

The rest of Bachmann’s plan consists of nothing but platitudes (like the bullet entitled PAVE A PATHWAY FOR INNOVATION that, quite literally, has no proposal in it). It almost would have been better if Bachmann had simply signed her name to the Romney campaign’s caricature of Rick Perry’s jobs plan.

As we’ve been reporting, GOP 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain’s “999″ tax plan — which would eliminate all taxes in favor of a 9 percent income tax, 9 percent corporate income tax, and 9 percent national sales tax — would wallop low-income Americans (all of the candidate’s protestations notwithstanding). On average, the lowest-income Americans would see their tax rate multiplies nine times, from about 2 percent to about 18 percent, under Cain’s plan.

But according to Rich Lowrie, the Wells Fargo wealth manager who helped Cain craft the plan, it’s just “Washington thinking” to try and deduce how hard Cain’s plan will hammer those who can least afford it:

Lowrie says it’s just “Washington thinking” to look at whether modest-income Americans will wind up shouldering much more of the tax burden. He repeatedly refused to say how much more of the tax burden would be borne by the poor and middle class than under the current system. But he implicitly acknowledged the problem by saying that the campaign would “fix this” with a new empowerment-zone plan that would be laid on top of the 9-9-9 plan and would presumably lower taxes in inner cities.

Cain’s sales tax would be levied on just about everything, including food and housing (which have traditionally been exempted from sales taxes), pounding low-income Americans, who spend nearly all of what they earn in a given year on necessities. At the same time, Cain would eliminate investment taxes which, along with lowering the income tax rate all the way down to nine percent, would result in a massive tax windfall for the wealthy.

As Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger put it, the plan “would be the biggest tax shift from the wealthy to the middle-class in the history of taxation, ever, anywhere, and it would bankrupt the country.” But Lowrie “acknowledged that Cain didn’t care about progressivity,” which perhaps explains why he is so nonchalant about a plan that would unabashedly give poor Americans the short end of the stick.

2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has no love for the Obama administration’s proposed “Buffett rule,” which seeks to ensure that the wealthy can’t pay lower taxes than the middle-class. “Class warfare like some members of the administration want to do is simply the wrong way to go,” Romney said on Fox News.

Part of Romney’s problem in opposing the Buffett rule is that it likely applies to him. An analysis of publicly available data by Citizens for Tax Justice found that Romney’s tax rate is likely 14 percent, far below the statutory rate for someone who earns as much as he does. Seeing Romney’s full tax return could provide a more complete picture of his tax situation, but so far, he hasn’t committed to releasing it:

The financial disclosure forms Romney filed during his 2008 presidential run showed the former Massachusetts governor was worth as much $250 million at the time. But Romney has never released any tax returns — neither during his campaigns for president and Senate nor during his time as governor — and would not commit to doing so this time around.

But in 1994, Romney vigorously called for then Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to release his tax returns, in order to prove that he had “nothing to hide”:

With the tax-filing deadline looming, Republican Senate candidate Mitt Romney yesterday challenged Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to disclose his state and federal taxes to prove he has ‘nothing to hide,’ but another GOP rival, John R. Lakian, called Romney’s move ‘bush league’ ‘It’s time the biggest-taxing senator in Washington shows the people of Massachusetts how much he pays in taxes,” said Romney, a business consultant from Belmont. Romney said he would disclose his own state and federal taxes for the last three years ‘on the very day that Kennedy turns over his taxes for public scrutiny.’ [Boston Globe, 4/19/94]

Eight years later, during his successful gubernatorial campaign, Romney played the same game, calling for his Democratic opponent to release her husband’s tax returns, even when he hadn’t released his own:

At the moment, however, Mr. Romney is trying to have it both ways. On April 16, he lambasted his most likely Democratic foe, Shannon O’Brien who discloses her tax return for filing separately from her husband who does not. The husband is Emmett Hayes, a former state representative and until recently a Beacon Hill lobbyist. One of Mr. Hayes’s clients was Enron. Mr. Romney is in high dudgeon that Ms. O’Brien hasn’t released Mr. Hayes’s tax forms with her own. ‘Her hands aren’t clean!’ he says…If Romney & Healey, who are candidates, won’t release their tax forms, they have no business demanding that Mr. Hayes, who isn’t a candidate, do so. [Editorial, Providence Journal Bulletin, 5/9/02]

Romney’s overall net worth is roughly $190-$250 million.

This fall, Ohio’s voters will go to the polls to decide the fate of Senate Bill 5 (SB 5), the infamous anti-labor law that decimated the rights of many public employees in the state to collectively bargain. Ballot Issue 2 will allow voters to vote “yes” to maintain the law or “no” if they want it to be struck down.

As Ohio blog Plunderbund reports, the group Building a Better Ohio (which supports the anti-labor law) is airing a commercial which splices the words of a grandmother featured in a We Are Ohio ad (which is against the law) in order to make it seem like the grandmother supports SB5.

We Are Ohio’s ad features a Cincinnati grandmother Marlene Quinn explaining how her great-granddaughter Zoey was saved by Ohio firefighters and how this demonstrates why Ohioans need to protect firefighters’ rights and fund their operations properly. Watch the ad:

The pro-SB 5 Building a Better Ohio then took the footage from We Are Ohio’s ad of Quinn talking about the fire and cut her off right after she explained that, without firefighters, she wouldn’t have Zoey today. It then cut in by explaining that “she’s right” and claimed that voters should vote to maintain SB 5 because it would protect firefighters from being laid off. Watch it:

We Are Ohio put out a statement earlier today blasting Building a Better Ohio for using Quinn’s footage and warned that it may face legal liability for its actions. “Let me make this clear. Building a Better Ohio does not have permission, either from The New Media Firm who owns the footage, nor, and more importantly, Marlene Quinn, to use this footage,” said Michele Certo of Mundy Katowitz Media, which is assisting We Are Ohio.

Unfortunately, Building a Better Ohio’s splicing of Quinn’s words isn’t the only deceptive tactic being used to try to convince voters to support Issue 2. Local unions have pointed out that Building a Better Ohio is running billboards claiming that “Issue two asks government employees to help by paying 10 percent for their guaranteed pension and at least 15 percent for their health care insurance,” yet “94 percent of the public employees in the state of Ohio” already “meet or exceed those thresholds.”

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC

Former pizza magnate Herman Cain has surged into the top tier of Republican presidential candidates, firing up crowds with news of his “999″ tax plan that would lower income and corporate tax rates to 9 percent while levying a 9 percent sales tax on all purchased goods. At the Values Voters Summit in Washington this weekend, attendees were so excited about Cain’s plan that he didn’t even have time to finish saying its name before a raucous audience finished it for him.

But perhaps the crowds would not be so enthusiastic if they knew Cain’s plan would explode the federal deficit to levels unseen since World War II, or if they knew it contained a massive tax increase on the poor. Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden detailed both of those results in a study of Cain’s plan, and ThinkProgress asked Cain about that study after his speech at VVS. Claims that “999″ would raise taxes on the poor, Cain said, were “erroneous,” and those who make the claims don’t have evidence to back them up:

WALDRON: Could you explain [the CAP study] that says your plan would increase taxes on the poorest Americans?

CAIN: That’s not true. This is what I’m saying. People make these claims. Did they give you any examples? No. I can give you examples that show it doesn’t. So the next time you hear these erroneous attacks, ask for numbers, and I bet they can’t, they can’t present them.

Watch it:

Linden’s study, however, does provide numbers. The poor currently pay roughly 2 percent of their income in taxes and are largely exempt from income taxes because they don’t make enough to qualify for even the lowest tax bracket. But under Cain’s plan, the average low-income American would pay 18 percent of his or her income in taxes — 9 percent on every dollar earned, and 9 percent on every dollar spent. A national sales tax rate like Cain’s primarily affects the poor, who spend all or nearly all of their yearly income.

Sunday, Cain himself provided a specific example of what this increase would look like, telling CNN’s Candy Crowley that food would not be tax-exempt under the plan. Only two states — Mississippi and Alabama — charge full sales taxes on food, and the resulting tax hike on the poor is so obvious that even Tea Party groups assumed Cain’s plan would exempt food from its 9 percent sales tax. But Cain dismissed that yesterday, all but proving that he stood pat with the Republican Party’s desire to force the poor to shoulder the cost of massive tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

Republicans have had little but contempt for the ongoing protests on Wall Street and around the nation. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) called the protesters a “mob,” Herman Cain said they’re “un-American,” and Rep. Spencer “serve the banks” Bachus (R-AL) believes that the protests are “misdirected” and instead should be aimed at “job-killing regulations.” The conservative media have also done their part to dismiss the protesters as “freaks” who are “aligned with Lenin.”

However, some Republicans are a tad more wishy-washy. 2012 presidential hopeful Rick Santorum called the protesters a “fringe group” when he appeared on CNBC, but later said, “I understand the motivation behind the protests.” GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, meanwhile, at first said that the protests are “dangerous.” But during a town hall in New Hampshire yesterday, he seized upon the protesters call for an economy that works for everybody, saying, “I worry about the 99 percent,” and added, “I understand how those people feel”:

I don’t worry about the top one percent. I don’t stay up nights worrying about ‘gee we need to help them.’ I don’t worry about that. They’re doing just fine by themselves. I worry about the 99 percent in America. I want America, once again, to be the best place in the world to be middle-class. I want to have a strong and vibrant and prosperous middle-class. And so I look at what’s happening on Wall Street and my own view is, boy I understand how those people feel…The people in this country are upset.

Watch it:

Earlier that very day, Romney criticized the protesters, saying, “all the streets are connected — Wall Street’s connected to Main Street — and so finding a scapegoat, finding someone to blame, in my opinion, isn’t the right way to go.” Romney didn’t explain how the protesters went so quickly from a “dangerous” group to such sympathetic figures. He also delivered both sets of remarks while joined by former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who is now working as an adviser for mega-bank Goldman Sachs.