GPS + IRS = SOL

Privacy issues are quaint but this makes a little more sense:

In two largely ineffective strikes this fall, taxi drivers said the GPS devices and credit card payment systems amounted to an invasion of their privacy, as well as an added nuisance and cost. Many drivers are now complaining that the city’s ability to track their miles, fares, and hours worked would create an explicit money trail in what has long operated as a cash-based profession.

With paper trip sheets, drivers are not required to itemize every fare on their tax returns. The GPS records of fares, however, could be obtained from the Taxi & Limousine Commission and used in an audit, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Finance said.

“Nobody wants to pay taxes,” a taxi driver, Coicou Emmanuel, said. “Some drivers never tell all of what they’re making — a lot of people lie. The GPS will tell everything you’re making.”

Mr. Emmanuel, a Haitian immigrant who has been driving a taxi for 22 years, said many drivers are worried that after installing the tracking devices and credit card machines, they could have to report earnings of up to $5,000 more this year than last year.

. . .

Because they are considered freelance workers, taxi drivers also cover their own health insurance, and many depend on Medicaid or state-sponsored health insurance.

The average taxi driver makes between $25,000 and $30,000 a year driving five days a week, a spokesman for the Taxi Workers Alliance estimated. Reporting higher salaries could push some drivers to levels where they would no longer be able to qualify for state health insurance plans. To qualify for Medicaid in New York, a four-person family can have a monthly net income of $1,109, and resources of up to $6,650 a month.

It Was You, Charlie

Two things — one, isn’t it “easy” to allow smuggled goods into the country if you set up a sting to do it? And two, when you think about it, the fact that an undercover customs agent can pose as a bribe-taking longshoremen’s union official and stay undercover sort of says something about the longshoremen’s union:

Federal officials announced the arrests yesterday of 10 people they said were members of an international smuggling gang that illegally shipped millions of dollars’ worth of counterfeit apparel into the New York region from factories in China, often in falsely labeled shipping containers.

The smuggling scheme, involving fake merchandise with a retail value of more than $200 million, was one of the largest smuggling operations ever discovered, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan said.

The charges, revealed yesterday in a complaint issued in Federal District Court in Manhattan, followed a yearlong investigation in which an undercover customs agent posed as a longshoremen’s union official and took nearly $500,000 in bribes to let the illegal shipments pass through the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in New Jersey.

The undercover agent had nearly daily contact with the smugglers, who included Chinese manufacturers, a customs broker and a husband-and-wife team that owned a Brooklyn trucking company, officials said.

While officials declined to say how the investigation started, the complaint said that in August 2006, Michael Chu, 70, of Manhattan, approached the undercover agent and asked for his help in moving the illegal containers through the port. Mr. Chu paid the agent $100,000 in cash bribes to smuggle about 20 containers carrying fake consumer goods with a value of more than $24 million, the complaint said.

The apparent ease with which the containers — 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 9 ½ feet high — were moved through the port with false bills of lading highlights frailties in the security system at the region’s ports, said Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan.

For That Much You’d Think They’d Want To Capitalize It

In other news, HBO seems a little overprotective of three seemingly common words used in a particular order:

She’s sexy and calls her business “Health and the City,” but a martial-arts trainer who works to turn stressed-out New Yorkers into urban warriors is ready to take on Goliath to prove she’s no Carrie Bradshaw wan nabe.

When Jennifer Cassetta found her calling coaching urbanites on fitness and nutrition — and came up with a catchy Web domain to match last year — she had no idea she’d be facing more agita than her average client in the form a trademark battle with HBO.

Cassetta, 31, said she was shocked to learn the entertainment giant had thrown down the gauntlet in June, accusing her of trying to ride the coattails of the wildly popular show “Sex and the City.”

“I’m not selling whatever they sell. I’m not doing a movie about sex and Carrie Bradshaw,” Cassetta told The Post yesterday as she braces for HBO’s Nov. 18 deadline to file its formal opposition to her trademark application.

“I thought it was a catchy phrase, with the main theme of what I’m trying to do. My clients know that. They have a hard time staying healthy in the city,” Cassetta said.

. . .

In an effort to avoid an expensive legal battle, Cassetta said she entered discussions with an HBO lawyer who gave her two options — change the name to “Health in the City” or withdraw her application for the trademark altogether.

“I asked, ‘Why would I do that?’ I’m supposed to roll over and die because I’m afraid of HBO?” said Cassetta, who has already paid $484 for the trademark-application fee and explained that the alternate name already is owned and could cost her more than $10,000.

. . .

HBO routinely challenges trademark applications that contain the words “and the city.”

Thus began a new game along the lines of adding “in bed” to fortune cookies (see, for example) where “and the city” is added to the end of everything; the new name for this post — “For That Much You’d Think They’d Want To Capitalize It . . . And The City”

And Before This Starts Some Sort Of Cloying Trend, Let’s Be Clear — Getting Press From The Post Doesn’t Make It Any Less Like Stalking

From romantic lark to worldwide media attention in just over 48 hours . . . yeah, right:

Brooklyn Heights Web designer Patrick Moberg, 21, is on a quest to track down the “girl of his dreams” with whom he locked eyes on a No. 5 train Sunday night — and he’s created an Internet page devoted to finding her.

The pair “shared a moment” while riding the train from Union Square to Bowling Green at about 9:30 p.m., Moberg said.

“She started writing in her journal, and I was intrigued,” Moberg told The Post yesterday.

“There’s been a ton of pretty girls I’ve seen of the train, but I just couldn’t shake this one.”

The self-described shy romantic, who moved to the Big Apple from Nashville, Tenn., this past summer, was working up the courage to speak to the “rosy-cheeked, mysterious brunette,” knowing they would both get off at the next stop, the train’s last.

But he lost her in the rush of the crowd as everyone stepped off the train.

Moberg’s last sighting of his love was her blue stockings and red flower in her hair as she turned a corner in the distance.

. . .

In the past 48 hours, Moberg’s Web site has garnered international attention, striking a chord with anyone who has regretted letting possible love slip away.

“I’ve had so many people wishing me good luck, especially Australians,” he said, after the story was posted on one of the most popular news Web sites Down Under.

In Magazine Publishing, Refusing To Accept Escort Ads Is The Ultimate Indicator Of Financial Robustness

You mean “escort” is a euphemism for that? Who in the classifieds department knew? Meanwhile, New York Magazine just wants its competitors to understand that it doesn’t even need those kinds of ads anymore:

Lonely hearts around town won’t be able to find rent-a-dates in the back pages of New York magazine anymore.

The popular weekly announced yesterday it will stop accepting sex ads in the wake of protest threats by the local chapter of the National Organization for Women.

The feminist group called the magazine the “marketing arm of the organized-crime world of prostitution and human trafficking” because of ads touting “Asians Gone Wild,” “Asian Bliss” or “Hot Latinas.”

. . .

New York magazine became the 15th publication this year, including Time Out New York and the New York Press, that agreed to end the “escort” and “model” ads that are often codes for prostitution.

“New York has been trying to eliminate this section for years. The business is prospering at this magazine and it was high time to get out of a business we were never comfortable being in,” said magazine spokeswoman Serena Torrey.

NOW-NYC threatened protests outside of New York magazine’s downtown offices, but Torrey declined to say if the protest threat prompted the move. All ads for adult services, spas, massages and the like will be phased out by the end of the year. The magazine earned $10,000 a week on the adult ads, according to NOW-NYC estimates.

Calls for comment to “Asians Gone Wild” and “Asian Bliss” were not immediately returned.