Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

The reality of what happened yesterday is still settling into our national consciousness. This midterm cycle will be dissected ad nauseam for the next two years as the power brokers in Washington fight over the remnants of their dysfunctional regime. But the biggest story isn’t what happened at the national level, which was obvious to anyone paying attention, even those of us who hoped it wouldn’t come to fruition.

No. The biggest story took place in Texas. Deep red Texas.

The race between Ken Paxton and James Talarico received all of the attention in the state going into last night’s election. And that’s understandable. It’s been three decades since a Democrat won a statewide election in Texas, and no one thought a broader Democratic takeover would happen, even if Talarico squeaked out a win. But then last night, as results poured in, the once-Republican stronghold lost every statewide election. All major executive offices. All 10 statewide judicial races. And complete control over the state House.

While the Texas bloodbath went far beyond what anyone could have predicted, the writing had been on the wall, and despite seemingly retiring to his ranch, former President George W. Bush and his version of Republican politics still held a tight grip on Texas. His cronies, like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, treated Texas as Bush did the U.S. under his presidency. Texas was no longer the storied Lone Star state that battled the Spanish, Mexicans, and Indian tribes for sovereignty. It was pimped out to globalism and everything that comes with it.

Once close-knit communities turned into third-world enclaves. First, it was the onslaught of illegal immigrants coming in from the southern border. My family owns land down in South Texas, and I saw the devastation it brought as a child, but it wasn’t until high school that the effects reached us up in North Texas. Then Abbott and his Bush elites worked hand in hand with foreign nations to bring their citizens to our neighborhoods. The demographic shift started small but turned into an avalanche, and the next thing Texans knew, they were the minority in their home state. These evil forces had help from the federal government, which was more than happy to process every visa and expedite the path to citizenship for every import. By the time Texans realized the severity of the problem, it was too late. The monster was not only inside the gates but also in complete control of the armory.

The loss cannot be blamed on candidate quality or low voter turnout. Some projections show as many as 10 million Texans voted Tuesday, making it the highest midterm turnout in history. Republicans were activated to show up, but not in the way the GOP wanted. What happened on Tuesday wasn’t a rubber stamp on Democratic governance. It was a complete and utter repudiation of the Bush-era GOP in Texas. Republicans voted for Democrats because, for the last several decades, supporting the red team got them nothing but misery and heartache. The GOP losses in Texas parallel their losses nationally, but this wasn’t really about federal politics. Voters took out the cancer killing our state.

I warned this would happen. I tried to tell the voters that the primary is the war, but it was too late.

The future of Texas doesn’t look any rosier now that Democrats control the executive, half of the legislature, and the judicial branches. In fact, the road ahead will be extremely hard to travel. We know this because we saw how swiftly Democrats got to work once they gained power in Virginia. The same policy decisions that remade Virginia under Spanberger will come to our front door. But at least the Democrats are honest about it. Republicans will lie to your face, telling you they are against the H1-B visa abuses and the growing Islamic radicalism, while behind your back continuing to aid and abet their takeover.

My husband asked me why it makes any sense to govern the way Abbott and the rest of them did all these years. He wanted to try to make sense of the logic behind their disloyalty to their fellow Texans. Greed played a big role in their treachery, for sure, but really it’s because the electorate let them. And this election season was merely the boiling point. Nothing will be fixed under Democratic control. And, in fact, it’s more likely that everything is about to get a whole helluva lot worse for us here. As a ninth-generation Texan, this is probably the saddest pill I’ll have to swallow. Still, I get why my fellow Texans did what they did Tuesday. Enough finally became enough.

You can’t tell young Texans that their birthright isn’t theirs. You can’t laugh in their faces at their concerns and expect blind fealty to the party. Young men rightfully left the Republican Party because it offered them nothing. They feel politically homeless, and in a two-party nation, the only options left for them are to vote Democrat or stay home. That’s what we saw Tuesday. We know they don’t support Democrats, but they wanted to make the GOP pay for their crimes. And that they did.

Nationally, the election came down to the economy. “It’s the economy, stupid” is and forever will be the truest political statement ever made. But in Texas, among Texans, immigration and the downstream effects of having their birthright sold to the highest bidder toppled the Bush GOP machine. It’s not the only issue that voters cared about, but it goes a long way toward explaining why Republicans got the biggest middle finger in three decades.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2026 8:13 pm Musk has funneled something like $156 million to Paxton. My guess is that will not help him much.

Is waddling up to the window for a bailout the most in demand job skill in America today?

AI Overview

While requesting a corporate bailout (often satirized as "waddling up to the window") remains a high-stakes corporate legal and lobbying strategy during economic crises, it is not an actual or in-demand job skill in the American labor market.

Data from major labor market analytics platforms, such as Upwork, Coursera, and staffing agencies like Randstad USA, show that the most in-demand skills in the United States focus on technological disruption, healthcare, and operational data literacy.

Top In-Demand Technical & Professional Skills

Applied Artificial Intelligence: AI integration (+178%), video generation (+329%), and data annotation (+154%) are the fastest-growing technical skills required by modern organizations.
Data & Digital Literacy: High employer demand persists for data scientists, information security analysts, and statisticians to navigate cybersecurity risks and large enterprise data frameworks.
Core Technical Development: Traditional technical competencies like full-stack web development and software engineering remain consistently core to hiring initiatives.

In-Demand Human & Operational Competencies

Cognitive Skills: Organizations heavily prioritize critical thinking, complex problem-solving, and structural innovation over rote administrative tasks.
Interpersonal Skills: Emotional intelligence and human-centered leadership are highly valued as companies integrate AI into standard operational workflows.
Essential Services: Industry demand continues to surge for frontline operational roles, including licensed practical nurses, medical assistants, and supply chain logistics managers.

How much of Musk’s wealth comes from government help? Virtually all of it
By Chris Isidore Jun 13, 2026

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, on screen in Times Square during the company's initial public offering at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York on Friday. SpaceX has made history with the biggest IPO and making Musk the world's first trillionaire.

Elon Musk has many people to thank for becoming the world’s first trillionaire — his companies’ engineers who produced technological breakthroughs, Wall Street investors who were eager to shower him with their dollars despite questionable financials, but most of all, American taxpayers and government policymakers.

“There would not be (Tesla and SpaceX) if it weren’t for the government,” said Ross Gerber, CEO of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki and an early investor in Tesla.

The federal government awarded SpaceX more than $500 million worth of grants in its early years. And that $500 million is just a fraction of what Tesla received from government grants, loans, contracts and regulatory policies.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2026 12:43 pmcorrupt lobbyists and revolving door parasites

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2011 5:09 pm

William Playfair wrote:As in the hall, in which there has been a sumptuous banquet, we perceive the fragments of a feast now become prey to beggars and banditti; if in some instances, the spectacle is less wretched and disgusting; it is, because the banquet is not entirely over, and the guests have not all yet risen from the table.

William Playfair
An inquiry into the permanent causes of the decline and fall of powerful and wealthy nations
1805

http://books.google.com/books?id=MLvIAA ... &q&f=false

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Oct 08, 2026 10:11 am According to google search, I am the only person in the world who has used this phrase.

Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Oct 30, 2026 10:25 pm These quotes remind me of an interview with Nomi Prins a couple decades ago. She was asked what the concerns of her Goldman colleagues were with regard to the ethics of what they were doing during subprime and were they concerned with any fallout that would have resulted from that. She said the only thing on their minds was closing the next deal.

Nomi Prins worked in the upper echelons of the financial world as a managing director at Goldman Sachs and a senior managing director at Bear Stearns as well as a strategist at Lehman Brothers and an analyst at the Chase Manhattan Bank. During her time on Wall Street, she grew increasingly aware of and discouraged by the unethical practices that permeated the banking industry. In 2002, she left and has since become a journalist and writer and leading authority on financial and monetary systems. She is author of ‘Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World’ as well as “All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power and ‘It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street’.

From your experience within some leading international banks, what did you learn about the nature of the corporation?

The general theme is that all major multinational companies are driven by the bottom line. This means maximising profits and minimising costs. This might seem obvious but it permeates everything they do, the taxes they avoid, risks they take, and what they do in communities. I worked in four major international banks, and from the inside, upper management simply doesn’t care about how their activities impact the outside world.

For example, working at Bear Stearns in London in the 1990s, I was involved in a product that involved a major expansion of debt in emerging and corporate markets, looking at new ways to repackage and sell off or trade that debt, so that the bank could profit multiple times from a single bond. At the same time, activists with the Jubilee 2000 initiative, were campaigning on the streets, pointing to the dangers of these debts for needed investments in health, education and so on and looking to reduce the debt burden. But none of that mattered on a day to day basis within the banks anymore than current citizen demonstrations do, except in that they might move markets on any given day.

Corporations are also very much driven by short-term profit gain and how to translate favourable quarterly and annual results into higher share prices. In the banking sector, and most corporations, the higher up people are in the firm, the more likely they will receive part of their compensation in the form of shares, stocks, or options on an annual basis, so everyone cares most of all about what was made that year at the firm and how it impacted share prices. There may be internal meetings on five year-plans or products, but the whole of corporate culture is geared to those annual profits.

This shapes corporate culture, by increasing competition between departments and within departments with everyone wanting to get the most credit for what they are doing, so as to have it reflected in their year-end bonuses. I experienced this personally at Goldman Sachs in New York, where I was running a department expanding the credit derivatives market that would ultimately play a role in the financial crisis. I had worked on a successful deal with several internal groups made up of many pieces worth millions of dollars to the firm, and when I took the stairs to the next floor to let the head of the division, Lloyd Blankfein, know about my group’s role in the deal, I found a colleague from another department already there inside the office pretending it was their deal, so as to take credit for it. He ultimately rose to a very high level there.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2026 5:06 pm I've talked pretty extensively here about what I call The 97th Percentile. In a high school class of 300, The 97th Percentile could ideally be characterized as those who ranked from roughly Position 4 through Position 15. They are those who do the work without question and strive to do the best job they can. You could spend somewhere between 4 and 12 years around these people and get a pretty good feel for who fits in at that level. If a teacher is an entitled goldbrick who teaches two classes while wasting oodles of taxpayer money, The 97th Percentile will fear, aid and abet him without question.

I'll get back to that in a minute.

That bring us to the point of the quote above from Charles Hugh Smith, "devote every waking hour to enriching the most avaricious few for their share of the loot."

This might sound a little harsh to some. It does to me. I mean, I know some of them are good people. At best, they probably didn't intend for their actions to produce that result. But that is what has happened, and at best they were too myopic to see the result. But that is in fact, in the big picture, the result that was produced.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Oct 25, 2026 11:47 am While the sentiment of Charles Hugh Smith is admirable, generational change is not about people willfully and proactively adopting a new set of values. For the vast majority, it's about being shocked to the core by generational panic first. The change comes after that.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 6:18 pm People are occupied with current concerns. They have many and it doesn't seem the coming global food crisis is on the radar.

aedens wrote: Wed Aug 06, 2014 7:03 pm Time will enact a common price as they are consumed by todays wisdom. Same as it ever was.