First, to all of the fathers on the market, Completely happy Father’s Day.

Walmart and Amazon Are Exploring Issuing Their Personal Stablecoins

by Gina Heeb, AnnaMaria Andriotis, and Josh Dawsey, Wall Road Journal, June 13, 2025 (digital version)

Excerpt:

A transfer to launch crypto-based funds by Walmart or Amazon that bypasses the normal funds system would ship shivers via the nation’s banks and card-network giants.

With huge networks of shoppers and workers, troves of knowledge and much lighter laws, retail and expertise corporations have lengthy been considered as specific threats to banks, together with regional and neighborhood lenders.

DRH observe: Figuring out my free-market proclivities, you may be capable to guess what my favourite adjective is within the second paragraph above.

 

Tobacco excise has handed a ‘tipping level’ and is fuelling black market, economists warn

by Patrick Commins, The Guardian, June 10, 2025.

Excerpts:

Economists say common will increase to the tobacco excise have stopped working to additional decrease smoking charges and are as an alternative encouraging a hovering cigarette black market.

As an alternative, they recommend both a freeze or a lower to the excise charge whereas Australia cracks down on illicit tobacco. Nonetheless, a public well being advocate warned policymakers to not be “conned” right into a radical tax lower.

And:

Over the previous decade, the excise charge per cigarette has tripled from 46c to $1.40. The excise now accounts for $28 of the typical $40 value for a packet of 20 cigarettes.

For a while a rising tax was related to the dual advantages of falling smoking charges and rising income, however after peaking at $16.3bn in 2019-20, federal excise receipts have plunged.

The March price range forecasts tobacco excise receipts might be simply $7.4bn on this monetary 12 months – the bottom since 2012-13 – and can proceed to fall to $6.7bn by the top of the last decade.

Somewhat than a sudden collapse in smoking charges, consultants level to an explosion within the availability of black market tobacco in recent times.

An equal of 605.8m cigarettes in unlawful tobacco was seized on the border in 2019-20, in response to authorities figures. By 2022-23, border seizures had reached the equal of two.6bn cigarettes earlier than easing to 2.2bn in 2023-24.

DRH remark: I vaguely bear in mind when the Canadian authorities imposed a stiff tax of about $5 per pack within the Nineteen Nineties. That may translate to over $10 per pack in at present’s {dollars}. Rising up in Canada, I used to be used to pondering of Canadians as significantly law-abiding. (I’m undecided it was true, however that’s how I considered my fellow Canadians.) However then we began listening to about boats crossing the St. Lawrence laden with cigarettes from the lower-priced United States.

 

Trad Wives and Tallow Fries: How the Wellness Wars Flipped Well being and Meals Politics Upside Down

by Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Cause, July 2025.

Excerpts:

“I don’t need to be informed what number of energy are in my Massive Mac meal or my quarter pounder meal. I don’t need the federal government telling me that I can’t put salt on my meals,” Sean Hannity declared on Fox Information in 2010. “I like junk meals. I like McDonald’s. I like Wendy’s. I like Burger King. I like Kentucky Fried Hen.”

This was a typical sentiment for conservatives of the period, a time when many on the precise considered makes an attempt to advertise well being as left-wing and subsequently suspect. Some of this Republican pushback was rooted in righteous opposition to intrusions on the free market and client alternative,as when Democrats tried to impose sin taxes on sodas or restrict the dimensions of sugary drinks shops may promote. However too typically, it appeared extra like oppositional defiance dysfunction.

And:

“The age of Massive Gulp conservatism is over,” says Breitbart author John Carney. “Now we’re into the protein- and blueberry-maxxing age.” And Carney—who jokingly calls yogurt with pomegranate seeds and blueberries his “neofascist breakfast“—thinks that is nice. “I’d quite be on the aspect that’s wholesome,” he says.

This isn’t only a story about MAGA going well being nut; plenty of well being nuts went MAGA too, partly as a rejection of the Democratic Get together’s centralized public well being dogmas, particularly through the pandemic. The story of how we acquired right here includes fertility fears and lentil wars, dietary science and social justice, dropping our faith and gaining Obamacare. Maybe most of all it includes COVID-19.

DRH remark: When RFK, Jr. was chosen because the secretary of HHS, I informed a pal who was surprisingly uncritical of Kennedy, “Be ready for the nanny state on steroids.”