Caterpillar Leaves Illinois Over Tax Spat?

Caterpillar chief executive officer Doug Oberhelman said officials in at least four other states have approached the company about relocating since Illinois raised its income tax in January. They are:  Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas, Indiana, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.  Surprised Ohio isn't getting into the fray, likely they will in time.

"I want to stay here. But as the leader of this business, I have to do what's right for Caterpillar when making decisions about where to invest," Oberhelman wrote in the letter obtained Friday by the Lee Enterprises Springfield bureau. "The direction that this state is headed in is not favorable to business and I'd like to work with you to change that."

"These are the kinds of letters we fear," said Patty Schuh, spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont. "Even more worrisome are the hundreds of businesses being wooed that we don't know about."

California has been bleeding business for a decade for the same reasons; taxes, fees, regulations - in general, hostility toward business.  California, and Illinois, both blue boys, are poster kids for how Democrats in power destroy economies, and spend themselves into drunken stupors.  Both are burning their candles at both ends, reducing revenues as business exits, and swaggering uncontrolled spending with massive entitlement, and union-fertile give-aways.