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Cyprus's proposed tax on bank deposits and what it has in common with America's tax increases is the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

At a New York City bagel store for some pre-Passover nourishment, I noticed a prominently placed new sign. "WARNING: Drinking Alcoholic Beverages During Pregnancy Can Cause Birth Defects."

I asked the owner-manager of the bagel store if the store sold alcoholic beverages and he said no, it does not, but that the city maintains full-time employees whose job it is to go around making sure that stores post these signs even if no alcoholic beverages are available for purchase in the stores. I'm all for reducing birth defects, but forcibly enlisting a bagel store owner who doesn't sell alcohol in the anti-birth-defect campaign seems going a bit far. If the city wants to advertise against drinking during pregnancy, there is plenty of city-owned property on which such advertising might be conducted.

The Service Employees International Union is trying to organize adjunct faculty members at Boston-area colleges and universities. The union says it wants "to advocate for greater job security, fair pay, and access to health benefits."

Imagine, three years after the enactment of ObamaCare and seven years after the enactment of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, part-time professors who work for ostensibly enlightened and large employers such as universities in a liberal, Democrat-dominated state like Massachusetts still need a union to "advocate" for "access to health benefits." Or at least the union organizers think they do. This should be an entertaining one to keep an eye on.

The Manhattan Institute has launched the Adam Smith Society, which is reaching out to business school students to promote capitalism. A YouTube video explaining it is embedded below.

The Weekly Standard reports that the hotel bill for Vice President Biden and his entourage to spend one night in Paris was $585,000.50. It sure looks like the American ambassador's residence in Paris might have some had some extra rooms available had the vice president wanted to stay there and save the taxpayers a half million dollars.

In a post here last month on the news that Amazon is introducing "Amazon coins," a "new virtual currency," I wrote, "It wouldn't surprise FutureOfCapitalism if federal regulators tried to find some way to shut down Amazon coins… The government doesn't like competition."

Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Treasury department has issued new "guidance" that imposes reporting and anti-money laundering rules on virtual currencies. The government says it's an effort to crack down on "criminals."

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Chicago taxpayers have been hit with a $57.8 million ruling in favor of the private company that runs four city-owned, downtown parking garages — stuck with that bill because former Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration mistakenly allowed a competing garage to open nearby, according to documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has 90 business days to appeal the Feb. 25 decision by a panel of independent arbitrators regarding Chicago Loop Parking LLC's claim that City Hall violated the terms of its 99-year garage-privatization deal by subsequently approving plans for a garage in the 82-story Aqua building, about a block from the company's nearest garage.

… Chicago Loop Parking was granted the right to raise parking rates in the garages as high as it wanted under the deal, which the Chicago City Council approved 37-8. At the time, Daley called the plan "an outstanding deal" for Chicago taxpayers.

"This vehicle was funded by Council Member Domenic M. Recchia, Jr." reads the lettering on the side of a New York City Parks Department "Dr. Playground" van.

Actually, the van was funded by the people of the City of New York, whose money was taken from them through force by taxation and then spent by the Council member. It's a distinction that may be too fine for the Parks Department or for the Council Member, but one that matters to at least some New Yorkers, who when they see such congratulation of politicians for spending taxpayer money may find themselves less inclined to vote for the politician being congratulated.

A subsidiary of Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd., a Chinese solar power company that trades on the New York Stock Exhange (STP), announced today that it is filing for bankruptcy.

Suntech is one of four alternative energy investments highlighted in the Yale University endowment's 2009 annual report. The Suntech spread in the annual report featured nearly two pages, with four color photographs of Suntech's manufacturing facilities, headquarters in China, and founder, Shi Zhengron, who was described as "the 'Solar King'...the richest man in China."

The Republican National Committee's report on how to recover from the loss of the 2012 presidential election is the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), or Newsmax (here).

The supposedly dire effects of the sequester notwithstanding, the federal government is somehow partially funding a $12.5 million project to repave 10 miles of the Montauk Highway, a New York road in Long Island's Hamptons. The stretch in question reportedly runs from Southampton to Wainscott.

Republicans are sometimes just as bad as Democrats when it comes to taxing and regulating. The "Grumpy Economist," John Cochrane of the University of Chicago has a wonderful report on how Senator Sessions of Alabama and Congressman Rick Crawford of Arkansas, both Republicans, are cheering on the Obama administration's decision to impose punitive tariffs on imported catfish, protecting Alabama and Arkansas catfish producers at the expense of American catfish consumers.

A press release from the office of New York City Mayor Bloomberg announces:

If you think the Dodd-Frank or ObamaCare regulations are rough, try opening a wood-fired pizza restaurant in New York City.

That's my takeaway from the Kickstarter campaign page of Pizza Moto. Regular readers of this site will know it doesn't usually feature endorsements of dining establishments, but I will make a rare exception in this case to say that these guys, operating from a wood-burning oven they tow behind a truck, make some of the best pizza I have ever tasted, and I am particular about pizza.

To make the transition to a storefront from a trailer-oven based business operating at flea markets and catering gigs, the owner operators have a $50,000 Kickstarter campaign going to fund the renovation of a historic pizza oven. What caught my eye, in the section on "risk," were the regulatory hurdles: