Month: April 2011

Rumbles of discontent about Oak Park referendum

Heard in YMCA locker room Monday morning: Even in Oak Park people are sick of irresponsible spending. If the referendum wins? “On with the irresponsible spending!” said one.

Two guys in early 30s talking, I suspect teachers because of reference to coming off spring break but also because talk was of reading and writing, as the book that one said would help his own writing.

One pool-rat conversation doth not a referendum defeat, of course, but the argument is there: the national unease with taxes and spending is a truism by now, in which respect one cannot imagine a worse time for this District 97 vote tomorrow.

Give those Republicans credit

Good econ news has White House happy, says Larry Kudlow.  But “sublime irony” in that:

The wake-up in job creation is a function of Republican policy. After all, for two years the Obama Democrats spent themselves into oblivion, with over $1 trillion of so-called big-government stimulus. Didn’t work. By the end of last year, that failed stimulus wore off, and it was replaced by Republican tax cuts.

Remember that in mid-December, after his election shellacking, President Obama signed a deal that extended the Bush tax rates across the board. The top marginal rate stayed at 35 percent. Investment tax rates for cap-gains and dividends held at 15 percent.

Most business people I know — folks who work in both large and small companies — welcomed the tax-rate freeze as a sign that maybe the war against growth, capital formation, and small business was either coming to an end or at least a two-year truce.

So, presto, the jobs numbers start jumping in the new low-tax year.

War against growth, yes.