Going down the road feeling bad: Honda’s 1994 Accord was the most frequently stolen car in the U.S. in 2011 for the fourth straight year as the vehicle’s popularity and lack of security features made it a favorite among thieves, Bloomberg reports. Last year, 7,596 Accords from the 1994 model year were stolen, according the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The 1998 Honda Civic was the second most-stolen car. It was the seventh straight year that the top two spots were filled by cars from the Tokyo-based manufacturer. Ford’s “F”-series full size pickups from 2006 ranked No. 3 on the list. See the full story here.
Today’s special: Kinder Morgan Energy Partners says it’s reached a deal to sell some of its assets to Tallgrass Energy Partners for about $1.8 billion in cash, a move necessary for its parent, Kinder Morgan Inc., to get regulatory approval for its $20 billion buyout of El Paso Corp. The Houston company reached a deal with the Federal Trade Commission in March to sell certain assets in the Rockies to get approval for the El Paso transaction. The company completed the El Paso acquisition in May. Read the full story here.
Should five percent appear to small: Told that the New Orleans’ hotel tax revenue for the first half of 2012 was up 26% from the same period in 2011 while general sales tax revenue was up only 5.5%, City Council President Stacy Head thought she saw an explanation for the disparity. After an aggressive campaign last year to make sure hotels are paying all the taxes they are supposed to, Head tells The Times-Picayune that the city has achieved a high rate of compliance from them, while “compliance efforts have not been as robust for regular sales tax.” It is, she adds, only a “supposition”—and one that city officials spent a half hour at a Budget Committee meeting last week trying to demonstrate is wrong. Check out the complete story here.
