Canadians are not feeling very loved by the United States. The latest spat comes after the U.S. announced that any Canadian traveling to the country by air or boat will be charged a $5.50 tax.

The tax had been discussed and discarded before, but a new free-trade deal signed with Colombia prohibits tariff exemptions for travelers from Canada.

The sentiment in Canada is perhaps best captured by the headline in today's National Post:

Rick Perry doesn't have a catchy marketing slogan for his tax plan. But he's hoping the idea of a flat, 20 percent income tax rate will do for his campaign what "9-9-9" did for Herman Cain's.

"We need a tax code that unleashes growth instead of preventing it; that promotes fairness, not class warfare," Perry said during a speech at the ISO Poly Films factory Tuesday in Gray Court, S.C.

From the shaky, grainy video, we have an idea of what the last moments were like for Col. Moammar Gadhafi. But over the past few days, his top security official, who was captured along with Gadhafi, has been talking about the final weeks of one of the most notorious despots in modern history.

As Mansour Dao, who says he is also Gadhafi's cousin, puts it, Gadhafi left Tripoli on Aug. 18 or 19, before the rebels made a push for the capital city. He left to Sirte, what was a stronghold, and his son Saif al-Islam left for Bani Wald.

Despite claims to the contrary, a insightful economic analysis suggests that it wouldn't be in most employers' business interests to stop providing health insurance when the main coverage provisions of the federal health overhaul kick in.

In recent weeks, at least 80 business owners have fled Wenzhou in eastern China and gone into hiding because they can't pay crushing debts to the city's empire of underground lending firms and loan sharks.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao became so concerned that he flew to Wenzhou earlier in October to try to keep the problem from spreading.

The city's credit crisis highlights some of the flaws — and potential risks — of the banking system in the world's second-largest economy.

Business Owners Trapped By Debt

An Oregon school district has rejected more than $2.5 million in federal funds. Oregon City — just south of Portland — turned down money that would have given performance-based pay bonuses to teachers, a controversial part of the Obama administration's education policy.

It's called the Teacher Incentive Fund, and it's meant to reward results. Oregon City actually applied for the money it's now turned down.

Home prices rose slightly in August, according to the latest data from the S&P/Case-Shiller index. They're still down compared to August 2010, and way down from their pre-recession peak in 2006. But it's good-ish news, reports the AP:

Because you can apparently never have enough flat-tax plans in a race for the Republican presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday officially introduced his own version.

That gives us two flat tax proposals in the GOP race, Perry's and Herman Cain's (all together now) 9-9-9 plan.

Actually, Perry's plan is not so much a flat tax as a flatter tax since he maintains some deductions and exemptions and even the current tax code for those who would prefer to use it.

Beware Massachusetts fish fans: If you're buying or ordering red snapper, white tuna, local cod or haddock, there's a pretty good chance that's not what you're going to get.

The debate over regulation has been in the news lately, because it's been a point of conversation among the 2012 presidential candidates. The Republicans have said that over-regulation has kept businesses from expanding and creating jobs. But a new report from the World Bank that measures business regulation is throwing some cold water on the side that thinks the U.S. is a hostile place for business.