Couldn’t Help But Notice (100807)

Following up on this post about how two of the three credit bureaus are allowing consumers to freeze their credit files: Make that all three, as Experian has joined in. A description of what credit freezes are and what they involve is at the second half of this post.

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The Toledo Blade has finally met a tax it doesn’t like: the mileage tax, or forcing drivers to pay a for each mile they drive as a replacement for the gasoline tax. It figures that Oregon would “in the lead” with this tax, which combines heavyhanded governmnet compensation with the worst of Big Brotherism (using global positioning systems to track a car’s mileage — and of course whereabouts — 24-7). I also suspect that this wouldn’t be a substitute tax, but just another new one.

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The fact that E-Mail Free Fridays are springing up says a lot about how office employees, even in the same room, who could, like, really, actually talk to each other on the phone or (imagine that!) face to face aren’t doing so enough.

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Marc Dann had a bad Thursday and Friday of last week:

• Thursday, Dann learned that when you make an agreement with someone, you can’t just renege on it, even if you’re the attorney general, who is supposed to, uh, understand contract law. Specifically (HT State of the Union), “The state cannot back out of an agreement it reached in May with one skill-game manufacturer to allow it to legally operate the Match ‘Um Up game in Ohio, Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge David W. Fais ruled today.” The Dispatch article “conveniently” fails to report that Dann attempted this gambit only after having received contributions to defray inauguration-related costs from device manufacturers.
• Friday, the Associated Press reported (HT RAB) that Dann appears to have done the pay-to-play thing in giving work to a Sandusky lawyer. We were told all of this would end by Dann during the 2006 campaign, weren’t we? Why yes, we were: “Dann, a Youngstown Democrat, campaigned on a promise to combat the influence of campaign money in the awarding of state work….”

Inquiring minds would like to know where these stories appeared in the print editions of the Dispatch and Blade, respectively.

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Hong Kong cuts taxes again (WSJ link requires paid subscription) — and so should we (bolds are mine):

Chief Executive Donald Tsang delivers the first policy speech of his new term on Wednesday and it promises to make instructive reading for lawmakers elsewhere in the world who want to make their economies competitive.

Mr. Tsang’s move was mooted earlier this year, when he promised to cut taxes on both salaries and corporate profits to 15% during his next term. The salaries tax currently stands at 16% and the profits tax at 17.5%. On Friday, the South China Morning Post reported he’ll start the ball rolling this week, sooner in his term rather than later.

Singapore, Hong Kong’s big competitor in the region, has been steadily cutting corporate taxes over the past few years. Its rate now stands at 18%. Hong Kong is firing a shot across its rival’s bow, and so far it seems to be working. The mere mention of an impending tax cut helped boost Hong Kong’s market 3.18% Friday.

….. Big spenders elsewhere in the world — Democrats in the U.S. Congress, take note — might argue that Hong Kong’s big budget surplus ($7.1 billion last year) means it can “afford” a tax cut, while America’s deficit means the U.S. can’t. But the boost the Hong Kong market got from the mere report of an impending tax cut is one sign that America — and other world financial centers — can’t afford not to cut levies. In the race to attract new business, New York and London are competing against a territory that thinks a 17.5% corporate tax is too high.