BeeLine

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Red and Blue Names

I have written in these pages before about the interesting background on the names that parents give their children.

You can find earlier content on names here , here and here that I wrote about in BeeLine.

I became particularly interested in this subject when I read the book Freakanomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner about 20 years ago.

Freakanomics has an entire chapter on names.

One major conclusion of the authors is that a name by itself never reveals much about the person that holds it.

After all, they were not involved in the naming process.

However, it does reveal a lot about the parents, particularly the mother.

You often can discern a lot about the parents just by the name---their socioeconomic class, race, ethnicity, education level, etc.

Based on some recent data I have seen, you might also be able to discern their political affiliation.

For example, these are the ten baby boy names that have the highest prevalence of being found in Democrat leaning (Blue) states as compiled by the baby name website Nameberry.

Here is a list of the ten baby boy names that are more likely to be found in Republican leaning (Red) states.

Those names do seem to tell us a lot about the parents naming these boys.

Here are the "Blue" baby names for girls.

And the "Red"baby names for girls.

There is also recent data that shows the most prevalent names for registered Democrats and Republicans based on age groups.

These are the names in which you are most likely to find a Democrat voter based on voter registration rolls.

One big fact that the authors of Freakanomics found in their research was how little overlap there was between white and black names.

I would hazard a guess that it is unlikely that there are very many white voters in the list above.

Conversely, there was a great deal of overlap between white and Asian American names.

This is the list for Republican leaning names.

I would doubt that there are very many minorities in those names.

One thing I did learn in looking at the list above is that I seem to have been ahead of my time by about 20 years.

I also had no idea that the Jolene that Dolly Parton sang about, in addition to having beauty beyond compare with flaming lock of auburn hair, was most likely a Republican!

Here is an AI generated images (by Grok) of what a young Jolene might look like in a MAGA hat.

Dolly, we better understand why you were imploring Jolene to not take your man!

Monday, March 24, 2025

In this blog over the last few years I have observed several times about the curious fact that there is such a heavy representation of young, single, college-educated white women in the Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other far left movements.

It defies logic.

How is defunding the police or emptying prisons going to make single women feel more secure?

How is allowing a biological male to use a women's restroom going to make her feel safer?

How does allowing biological males to compete with females in athletics advance the opportunities for women?

Is there any group today that feels more lonely, is more misunderstood and wants to belong than young, single, college-educated white women?

Many have no man in their life. There are no children or likely prospects that marriage or children will occur soon due to the imbalance between male and female college graduates. They live in rental apartments in large cities leading hectic, anonymous lives with little sense of community and huge sums of student loan debt.

The picture below is one that I referenced in these pages in 2021 when I was discussing this issue.

How many young, white women do you see in this picture supporting BLM's calls to defund the police?

How many Blacks do you see in the picture?

How do you make sense of it?

You can't. It is not logical.

I thought of my earlier observations on this subject when I saw this recent poll on the opinions of white voters on Trump and other political figures and issues broken down by gender and education.

Source: NBC News Poll March 19, 2025

It used to be said that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

This polling would indicate that college-educated white women are living in completely different universe than other white men and women in the United States.

What explains this?

It seems to be a combination of both education and gender.

On Trump's approval, there is a 52 point difference between women with no degree compared to those with a degree.

There is 37 point difference between women with a degree compared to men with a degree.

Those are astounding numbers.

I could not find cross tabs breaking down the women's numbers between those who are married and those who are not married,

However, the white college-educated numbers are undoubtedly driven by single females who largely live in urban areas.

For example, in the 2024 general election, married women supported Trump 52%-47%.

White women college graduate supported Harris 58%-41%.

Unmarried women voted for Harris 61%-38%.

In previous blog posts I hypothesized that young, single women in the United States have become more liberal politically than their male counterparts due to two factors.

1) an innate need for security that pushes them to support large government safety net programs.

2) a need to belong that is provided by the large number of "causes" that make up the progressive agenda.

It can be argued that both of these are the result of the fact that there are now more young, unmarried women than we have ever had in history.

In fact, the most recent Census Bureau data indicates that 29% of all mid-life adults today(age 30-49) have never been married.

That is almost twice what it was in the year 2000 and over four times what it was in 1970.

Source: https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/marino-geographic-variation-percentage-mid-life-never-marrried-adults-2021-fp-23-13.html

The numbers are even higher for those under age 35.

And higher still for college educated, young women who vastly outnumber college educated, young men making it even more challenging to find a marriage partner.

Look again at the net approval numbers among white college-educated women above.

Donald Trump -38

J.D. Vance -38

Elon Musk -40

Volodmyr Zelensky +53

DEI +30

How does one explain this?

I recently saw this answer to that question that is more sophisticated than what I have proposed in the past.

His thesis suggest that gender-based biological traits that are immutable that are "hijacked" by the education system and turned into leftist political ideology in the absence of a husband, children and family.

It is an interesting explanation.

What should most concern the Democrat party is that despite the negative opinions these women have of Donald Trump and the Republican Party they also have a net overall negative opinion of the Democrats.

How bad have things become when Ukraine President Zelensky is viewed more favorably by white women at many times the level in which the Democrat Party is viewed?

They don't like Trump but they also apparently don't see the Democrat Party as it exists today as being an effective countervailing political force.

What is most interesting in all of this is we have been told for the last decade that Trump and his supporters do not represent the mainstream of American voters.

Look at the survey data again and tell me who is outside of the mainstream here?

Friday, March 21, 2025

It Starts At The Top

"It starts at the top".

It does not matter whether it is business, education, sports, the military or government.

The leadership and actions of those who are in authority at the top of the chain of command, and are establishing the tone, tenor and priorities, have the greatest influence on the results and outcome of the group or organization.

There is not better example of this principle than what we have witnessed in Washington, D.C. over the last two months.

A recent NBC poll found that 44% of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction now compared to just 27% in November, 2024.

The net score (right direction minus wrong direction) has improved from -39 to -10 within the space of several months.

More significantly, a higher percentage believe the country is heading in right direction than at any time in the last 21 years!

Link: https://x.com/ResisttheMS/status/1901284066495709317

This is solely due to a change in leadership at the top in the United States.

Specific actions we are seeing in Washington, D.C. since the Trump administration took over puts a finer point on all of this.

For example, consider the issue of encounters of illegal immigrants at the southwest border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents for February, 2025 compared to the previous three years .

Source: https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1896568489072349212

You may recall that Joe Biden and the Democrats stated that new laws were necessary to stop this illegal migration.

All it took was a change in leadership.

In fact, border apprehensions in February were the lowest in 25 years.

A year ago almost 80,000 illegals were released into the country after being apprehended at the border.

In February, 2025 that number was ONE!

Link: https://x.com/PURE_BL00D2/status/1902013754599969028

There is no difference in the CBP personnel on the ground.

It starts at the top.

Another example involves the number of apprehensions that the FBI has made off of its famous "10 Most Wanted List".

In 2024, the FBI did not apprehend one criminal fugitive from its Top 10 List.

In 2023 the FBI nabbed one.

However, since January 20 of this year, the FBI has caught three who were on the Top 10 Most Wanted List.

Could it be that when the FBI is tasked with using its resources to go after the worst of the worst instead of trying to track down grandmothers who walked through The Capitol on January 6 or parents who protested at school board meetings during Covid that you get a different result?

Yes, once again it starts at the top.

I was also interested in seeing exactly who made up the FBI Most Wanted List that President Trump and FBI Director Patel inherited from the Biden administration.

We seem to have come a long way since we saw names like Al Capone, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson on the list.

Don't you have to wonder if where these criminals came from was the reason that the Biden administration showed so little interest in apprehending them?

Credit: https://x.com/RealJarTaylor/status/1892283466101780713

Also consider the fact that the United States has attracted $1.7 trillion of new investments into the country since Trump took office.

To put that in perspective, four years of the Biden administration saw only $1 trillion of business investment commitments.

A lot of this is due to Trump's "America First" agenda combined with his tariff threats designed to level the economic playing field with foreign competitors.

Link: https://x.com/amuse/status/1896820941382103130

Source: https://x.com/ExxAlerts/status/1896746972792627401

It starts at the top.

Finally, does anyone remember when President Barack Obama appointed Vice President Joe Biden to lead the "Campaign To Cut Waste" in 2011?

It was intended to "hunt down and and eliminate misspent tax dollars in every agency and department from across the federal government."

By golly, that sounds exactly like the mission of DOGE.

The difference is that Obama only did this so he could have a sound bite in his re-election campaign in 2012.

There was no real intention to do anything.

President Trump is doing it to fulfill a campaign promise he made in the 2024 campaign.

He is serious about getting real results for the American people.

It starts at the top.

That is also why Elon Musk is heading the effort rather than someone like Joe Biden.

Musk has a long track record of success and getting more from less.

PayPal. Tesla. SpaceX. Twitter.

Musk did not become the world's richest man by not being on top of things.

Did Joe Biden produce even $1 in savings from cutting waste and making government more accountable?

Either as head of the "Campaign to Cut Waste" or in four years as President?

It really does start at the top, doesn't it?

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Recession Ahead?

Are we heading into a recession in the United States?

There are many who are predicting a recession is on the horizon.

The Atlanta Fed's GDP Now forecast is estimating first quarter GDP at -2.1%.

Source: https://x.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1901673454497137109/photo/1

However, the New York Fed is projecting GDP at +2.7% for the same period.

Source: https://x.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1901673454497137109/photo/2

That is quite a divergence of opinion from economists who are paid to track economic activity very closely.

For context, it is important to take into account that the Federal Reserve employs over 500 economists with more than 400 holding PhD's.

Keep in mind that this is the same group who were telling us that inflation would be transitory a few years ago.

You can make your own determination about how much confidence you might want to place in a GDP forecast by any Federal Reserve economists.

A survey of consumers from the University of Michigan recently showed a consumer sentiment score of 57.9 which is down significantly from a year ago.

This is also the lowest consumer sentiment score in the survey since inflation was raging in the summer of 2022.

Source: http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/

However, that consumer sentiment score seems to be heavily influenced by the political identification of the consumers surveyed.

The consumer sentiment score for Democrats was 41.4. It was 83.9 for Republicans.

Below is a separate survey question on consumer expectations that shows the same political divide.

When consumer confidence wanes it usually follows that consumer spending trends down.

Consumer spending also accounts for about 70% of what comprises GDP.

If consumer spending drops it almost certainly will result in a recession.

The other factor in all of this is that 50% of all consumer spending today is the result of spending of those in the top 10% of income earners ($250,000+ of annual income).

We also cannot ignore the role that government spending has in all of this.

There is little question that the last four years would have seen much worse GDP numbers but for the significant amount of government spending and jobs.

34% of U.S. GDP came from government spending in 2024. That is the highest it has ever been with the exception of times of war or crisis.

In addition, 2 million government jobs were added in the last four years.

There are a lot of factors at play here but my view is that President Trump and Treasury Secretary Bessent are not adverse to bringing the economy down a notch or two right now.

Link: https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1901393286868472266

First, they understand that the concentration of wealth and income at the top in not a healthy situation for the United States long-term. Trump also understands that a good deal of his support did not come from Wall Street and that top 10%.

Second, the large amount of government spending and money printing has fueled large increases in housing prices and stock prices in recent years that has disproportionately benefited the top 10% but has disadvantaged large groups of people (particularly the young).

Third, the federal government desperately needs interest rates to come down in order to finance the $36 trillion of federal debt.

In 2020, the average interest rate on federal debt was 1.772%. It is now 3.282%.

At the same time, total federal debt outstanding has gone from $23 trillion in 2020 to over $36 trillion today.

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN/

As a result, the United States is now spending well over $1 trillion per year just on interest on the federal debt.

It was spending only $400 billion per year in 2020.

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA

For context, personal income tax collections for the current year are projected to be $2.6 trillion meaning that it is taking almost half of our income taxes just to pay the interest on the federal debt.

The total Defense Department budget is only $850 billion.

It is simply unsustainable.

That is why the DOGE effort is so important.

The United States simply cannot afford to keep adding $2 trillion of debt every year from deficit spending.

It also cannot continue to pay interest at the rates in effect right now.

And it is going to take an economic slowdown and/or loss in asset values to bring interest rates down.

Trump and Bessent also know that it is preferable to take air out of the ballon in a controlled manner than to let it suddenly and dramatically burst which is inevitable if natural forces are left alone.

You simply cannot have the excesses we have seen in government spending, debt and money printing in recent years without a brutal correction at some point.

Fourth, there are only two ways out of the gigantic deficit and debt hole that Trump has inherited. The most obvious path is for government to inflate the debt away. The federal debt becomes manageable by destroying the currency. Of course, this also destroys the wealth of much of the population. The second option is to constrain spending going forward (DOGE), seek new revenue sources (tariffs) and grow the economy at a faster rate than government spending. Trump is totally focused on the second option.

Fifth, Trump and Bessent also understand if there has to be some pain it is far better from a political standpoint to take it early in this term. To fully implement the Trump agenda is going to require stronger Republican majorities in the 2026 mid-term elections. Better to clear the decks now so that any pain is in the real view mirror than front and center in 2026.

Is a recession ahead in 2025?

The excesses of the last four years make it hard to avoid in the best of circumstances.

If you add to this the fact that Trump and Bessent have clearly signaled that they are willing to take some pain now for longer term gains makes me believe that we will see a visible slow down before the end of the year.

Plan accordingly.

Friday, March 14, 2025

Food for Thought

In 2019 I wrote about the emerging trend around plant-based meats.

These food items are more popularly referred to as "fake meat".

I profiled the company, Beyond Meat, which was the leading company in the sector and had recently gone public in an IPO.

The stock was then trading at $235/share and had a market cap of $14 billion.

It had a higher market value at that time than food industry giants Smucker's, Campbell Soup and Conagra.

I was not optimistic about its future in which the main ingredient for its "Beyond Meat" burger is yellow pea protein.

Since I wrote that blog post Beyond Meat's stock price has lost over 95% of its value.

Source: Google Finance

In 2024, Beyond Meat lost $160 million on $327 million in revenues. In other words, it lost about 50 cents on every dollar of sales.

It is reminder than the next great thing is sometimes not great at all.

The blog post that I wrote in 2019 entitled "Will You Eat Fake Meat? follows.

Right now it looks like the answer is no.

Beyond Meat had $465 million in revenues in 2021. In 2024, the company could only sell $327 million in fake meat.

Will You Eat Fake Meat?

(Originally published July 28, 2019)

Are you willing to eat meat that is not really meat?

There is a lot of money being bet that you will.

Fake meat is one of the biggest trends of the year.

Fake meat is a new food group that uses plant based ingredients to make something that looks and tastes like meat.

Two of the big brand names that are attempting to establish themselves in this space are Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.

Impossible Foods markets the "meat" to make what it calls the Impossible Burger.

Beyond Meat has the Beyond Meat burger.

It looks good but will you eat it?

Here are the ingredients in the Beyond Meat burger. The prime ingredient is pea protein. Fortunately, that is pea with an "a". The Impossible Burger relies on soy protein as its main ingredient.

Beyond Meat is already in some grocery stores and Impossible Foods plans to be in grocery stores by the end of the year with its "meat." Both have already made inroads with various restaurant chains.

I have not yet had the non-meat meat.

However, when I was in law school in the 1970's, my wife and I were watching our pennies very, very carefully. Kroger sold a ground beef product called Kroger Pro that included a 20% soybean filler. It sold at a lower price than regular ground beef making it attractive for a couple trying to get by on $20 per week in grocery spending.

We would buy it since we had little money and you can only eat so much macaroni and cheese (you could buy a box of Kraft mac and cheese for 15 cents). Adding Kroger Pro to the mac and cheese gave us a casserole. The only problem was that it tasted like eating cardboard. We eventually stopped eating it and Kroger stopped selling it. We must not have been the only ones who thought it tasted like cardboard.

I am sure advancements have been made in food science since that time. However, will enough people eat meat that is not meat?

Beyond Meat went public in May. The IPO price was $25 per share. It closed at $234.90 on Friday. That is +840% since it went public. It was up +33% just last week.

At that stock price Beyond Meat has a market cap of over $14 billion. That was up $3.6 billion in the last week. That is a lot of money being bet on fake meat.

Compare the market cap and product portfolio of Beyond Meat with another food company that has been around for almost 125 years and has a market cap of about $13 billion.

One has Smucker's jellies and jams, Jif peant butter, Crisco shortening and Folgers coffee and many other brands.

The other has fake meat made from pea protein.

Hat tip to @charlebilello for bringing this to my attention on Thursday of last week when the market cap of Beyond Meat was just $12.9 billion.

On Friday Beyond Meat's market cap went up by another $1+ billion so that it is now carries and higher market value than food giants Campbell's Soup and Conagra.

These are the brands that Campbell's Soup owns.

Here are all the brands that Conagra owns.

That ought to give you a perspective on how much money is being bet that you will eat fake meat.

However, will you really eat fake meat?

Count me as someone who is not buying Beyond Meat at $235 per share.

You can also probably count me as someone who is also not going to eat a Beyond Meat burger anytime soon.

Why? My appetite for Fake Meat is about the same as it is for Fake News.

Postscript:
The plant based fake meat of Beyond Meat also reminded me of the 1973 film sci-fi movie Soylent Green in which the plot involves a world in which Soylent Industries controls the food supply of half the world with a soybean and lentil ingredient wafer. Only the very rich can afford natural food as the earth's resources and water have been decimated by pollution, overpopulation and the greenhouse effect. Interestingly, the film is set in 2022. We are almost there!

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Germany---Anything But Unified

The recent German election results offer some interesting insights on German society, attitudes and the after effects of several generations who lived under communism in East Germany.

In the last few decades German politics has largely centered around five major political parties.

1. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) (and its smaller Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union CSU) which is a center-right party.

2. The Social Democratic Party (SDU) which is a center-left party.

3. The Free Democratic Party (FDU) has views that go both left and right. They favor free market principles but don't have problems with the social welfare state. As a result, they often ended up being the majority maker for either the CDU or SDU to form a governing coalition.

4. Die Linke, or the Left Party which is further left than the SDU.

5. The Greens which is the party of the environmentalists, hard-line opponents of nuclear energy and peace activists. It is also the party favored by much of the media and urban elites.

Over the last decade a new party, Alternative für Deutschland, or the AfD, started to gain support with those disenchanted with the CDU on the right. The media refers to the AfD as the far right wing party. This party is more nationalist in its interest which makes it share some characteristics with the MAGA movement in the U.S.

The CDU/CSU and SPD parties have generally controlled German politics since World War II.

In the last 25 years they have actually come together several times to form the ruling coalition as the Greens, The Left and AfD took more and more of the total votes and seats in the Bundestag.

The election of 2021 saw the SPD take control in a coalition with the Greens and FDP.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestag

Every Chancellor (the head of the German federal government) has come from either the CDU or SPD since 1949 including Angela Merkel of the CDU who served for 16 years until Olaf Scholz of the SPD took over in 2021.

Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949–present)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_of_Germany

The 2025 election took place seven months ahead of schedule due to the collapse last year of the incumbent governing coalition between the SDU, Greens and FDP. Following the loss of its majority, the government called and intentionally lost a motion of confidence, which enabled the approval of a new election.

Reforms in seat distribution reduced the number of Bundestag seats to 630 from the 736 it had been in 2021.

The 2025 election results saw the CDC garner the most votes (28.5%) followed by the AfD (20.8%).

Most telling, the former ruling coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP saw their vote percentages drop by almost 20 percentage points compared to 2021. From 52.1% of the total vote to 32.4%.

The FDP has disappeared completely from the Bundestag as it did not gain the minimum threshold of 5% of the vote to qualify for any seats.

Source: https://x.com/Martin_Sellner/status/1893942072865890404/photo/1

What I find most interesting in looking at the German voting results is how the vote broke down by regions within the country.

This is a map that shows which party received the highest vote total in each region/political subdivision in the county.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx29wlje6dno

Compare this map to that of the division between the former West and East Germany in map below.

Red is the former East Germany. Blue is West Germany.

Why would people who lived for several generations under communist and authoritarian rule be so much more likely to vote for the AfD than those from the West?

Do they know something that those in the West do not?

How the people of the former East and West Germany vote is not the only thing that differentiates these people 35 years after the Wall came down and the country was "reunified".

The map below is one that I have referenced before in these pages.

The faith divide in Germany decades after reunification is astounding.

Of course, the Communists of East Germany subverted any religion for almost four decades after World War II before the country was reunified in 1990.

You do not even need to draw a line on the map to show where East and West Germany were situated before reunification.

Decades after the country was reunited there is very little religion practiced in East Germany.

It really is true that religion is usually no more than one generation away from extinction.

A few other factual comparisons about Germany.

In almost all cases there is no need to have a line to show where the demarcation was between East and West Germany.

Average salaries are much higher in the West.