Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Higgenbotham wrote: Wed Dec 03, 2025 6:07 pm
Then she went on to say that in one school, there is a child who has hour long tantrums and everyone is told to stand back and do nothing until the tantrum plays out.

America’s Future Can Be Seen in Spain’s Past

My goal in the essay is to use a well-known historical precedent to illustrate the U.S. Federal government’s untenable indebtedness predicament.

In 1500, the New World had just recently been discovered, and Spain had just recently forced the Moorish invaders from the Iberian Peninsula. Expanding their army, expanding their navy, and the lengthy campaign to kick out the Moors had been expensive for the Spanish crown. They also needed to maintain a large army to keep the Islamic North Africans from returning. There were also the expenses of building and supplying a large fleet of ships, in the hopes of bringing back treasure and warding off pirates. And they also needed to arm and equip an army to subdue the various native tribes in the Americas.

When they began seizing territory from largely Stone Age tribesmen in the Americas, the Spanish luckily had the advantages of Spanish steel, matchlock muskets, cannons, and (unwittingly) deadly European microbes on their side. The latter included Swine flu, Smallpox, chickenpox, bubonic plague, measles, typhus, influenza, scarlet fever, pneumonia, and malaria. These germs killed far more native warriors than the Spanish soldiers and sailors ever did.

To finance building and equipping ships for their famed Armada Española and for raising armies, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile (and their successors) made the mistake of borrowing far too much money at interest, from northern European bankers. And even though silver and gold came back by the galleon-load, the Spanish monarchs could not stop borrowing. They became addicted to debt. They wrongly thought that they’d always have plenty of silver and gold coming in from the New World to service their debt load. However, by the 1590s they had a mountain of debt that was not offset by the inflow of gold. (By the way, most of that arriving gold and silver was privately held by merchants, and only lightly taxed by the Spanish crown.)

Following several national debt defaults (in 1557, 1575, and 1596), on November 29, 1596, King Phillip II of Spain ordered the devaluation of the country’s silver coinage. This included the famed Spanish Ocho Reales de Plata (“Pieces of Eight”) silver coin. By the 1630s, most coin mintages had 20% to 30% less silver than previously required. The Spanish coinage debasement led to the decline of the Spanish empire, and that decline has lasted for five centuries. To this day, Spain is still a third-rate world power.

AMERICA’S MOUNTAIN OF DEBT

Spain’s history has been partly mirrored in American history. But a key difference is that we held on to our colonized American soil. Starting in the early 20th Century, the United States began to accumulate a mountain of debt. The first large debts came during World War 2. The next wave of large-scale debt began in the 1960s, when congress approved spending for both President LBJ’s “Great Society” socialist programs and the large expenditures for the Vietnam War. By 1981, the National Debt reached $1 trillion for the first time. But, with out-of-control spending, it took just four years to amass another trillion in debt. Ponder that for a moment: It took 200 years for our government to accumulate its first trillion of debt, but then just four years for the second trillion. Parenthetically, when I published the first draft of my novel Patriots in the early 1990s, the national debt had grown to $3 trillion. Today, it is $38 trillion and rapidly climbing at more than $1 trillion per year.

Alarmingly, the aggregate long-term Federal obligations (including pensions) are roughly $100 trillion. That enormous sum is difficult to visualize. The Federal debt burden is now compounding so rapidly that the interest on the national debt has become the single largest Federal budget item, each year. At this point, it is mathematically impossible to repay the national debt. So, either there will be a debt default or a period of hyperinflation. There are no other viable exit strategies.

The Federal debt burden is so great that if interest rates were to spike back up above 8%, then the government would be technically insolvent. I predict that the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve will attempt to inflate their way out of this problem. To me, the situation sounds a lot like what I fictionally described in the first chapter of Patriots.

KEY TURNING POINTS

In retrospect, anyone who studies monetary history can see that there were three key turning points for the U.S. Dollar that came in 1913, 1933, and 1963. These were:

1913: The Federal income tax was unconstitutionally enacted and the Federal Reserve banking cartel was established and put in control of setting interest rates. By extension, that also gave the Federal Reserve control of the gross money supply.

1933: President FDR and Congress reset the official price of gold and banned the private possession of non-numismatic gold. This partially debased our currency. But at least we still had genuine 90% silver coinage, and some Silver Certificates.

1963: Congress changed the composition of the “Dollar” by eliminating 90% silver coinage. Dimes and quarters were fully debased to clad coinage starting in 1964. (A clad coin is a copper slug that is plated with silver.) Half dollars were debased to 40% silver starting in 1964, and then fully debased to clad coinage in 1970. Ever since then, our “dollar” has been a fully fiat currency, with no redeemibilty for real money.

AMERICA’S CORPORATE “PERSONS”

Corporations — especially banking corporations — now essentially run America. They provide both the driving engine of the economy and the tax base that allows the profligate spenders in Washington, D.C. to continue their mischief. But one characteristic of modern multinational corporations is that they have no national loyalty. They only have loyalty to their bottom lines. So when markets change, they redirect their capital, accordingly. Corporations know no borders. They are like fickle lovers.

Furthermore, there are two fairly large problems with the American legal system: 1.) As affirmed by the Supreme Court, it gives corporations legal standing as “persons”, so they can legally conduct political lobbying, and 2) It allows foreign individuals and foreign corporations to buy American real estate, including mining, farming, and timber land. Canada has a similar legal loophole. (In contrast, most other nations only allow foreigners to lease land – typically in 99-year increments.)

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO TANGIBLES

Because all modern currencies are unbacked fiat script, the fate of the 21st Century economy will all come down to who holds assets that are not denominated in those gradually inflating currencies. The Asian nations and the BRICS+ nations want tangibles, most notably silver and gold. They are buying up all that they can find, as a hedge on the degrading value of all the world’s fiat currencies.

Meanwhile, the corporations want their own tangibles hedge: U.S. and Canadian real estate. With the wise counsel of their CFOs, corporate managers now have a quite well-reasoned desire to acquire real estate. They rightly see it as one of the few safe havens in this age of inflation. Huge private equity firms like Blackstone and Home Partners of America are buying up as many houses as they can, to turn them into rentals. It is estimated that by 2030, corporations will own 60% of single-family homes in America, mostly held in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).

TAKING COLLATERAL?

With an inevitable United States debt default on the horizon, it is safe to assume that the holders of U.S. Treasury debt must be wondering how and when they will be repaid, in the event of an American debt collapse. In effect, most loans have the backing of collateral. We all know what happens if you stop making your car payments: Your car gets towed away. And if you stop making your house payments: Your interest in the property is signed over to the bank and then quite shortly, sheriff’s deputies escort you to the curb. Then, the bank either does a short sale or auctions the house and land. In any debt default, collateral reverts.

Coincidentally, the Federal government has announced tentative plans to sell off 80 to 250 million acres of land with mineral rights in 11 western states. (Those states are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.) The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service (USFS) have been tasked with identifying the precise geocode parcel descriptions of more than 250 million acres of eligible “excess” land. If and when a Federal land sale happens, it will most likely be via land auctions. At an estimated realized price of $10,000 per acre, the aggregate revenue would be just a pittance compared to our national debt. But it would fully cover the obligations of current Treasury bonds, as they come up on their rollover dates. Surely, the timing of the land sale study was just a coincidence.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the Trump Administration also started the Gold and Platinum Visa systems. Also, surely just a coincidence.

PLANNING AHEAD

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I strongly encourage my readers to invest in tangibles. Think: silver, land, and guns. To date, my advice has been sound. The spot price of gold has increased 125% in the past five years, while in the same period, silver is up 137%. (And I still expect silver to continue to outperform gold in the long run. I foresee the silver-to-gold price ratio dropping below 40-to-1.) While most commercial real estate has languished, residential land values have doubled in the past six years in many markets. In the 21st Century, the evidence has shown that tangibles rule.

Don’t trust the U.S. Dollar. Like all other fiat currencies, the Dollar is doomed. A rational distrust in the Dollar also means, to a lesser extent, distrusting any dollar-denominated investments. In a period of mass inflation, they will also surely suffer.

We can expect renewed inflation, a financial collapse, a stock market collapse, and perhaps a dollar collapse at any time. All that it will take is for the investors in U.S. Treasury paper to reach a psychological breaking point. Then, bang! Interest rates will go parabolic and, simultaneously, the value of the Dollar will go into freefall. Count on it. Welcome to a Spanish future, folks! – JWR

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Note: Permission to re-post this article is granted, as long as it is re-posted in full, with all links intact, and credit given to the author (James Wesley, Rawles) and to SurvivalBlog.com.

It's hard to know what's going wrong in the elementary schools

Glyphosate “Safety” Study Ghostwritten by Monsanto Retracted After 25 Years of Deception

Millions of pounds of glyphosate were approved, defended, and sprayed worldwide on the basis of a paper we now know was fundamentally compromised and scientifically invalid.

In a long-overdue move, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted the landmark 2000 glyphosate “safety” review by Williams, Kroes, and Munro — a paper Monsanto and global regulators have relied on for decades to assert that Roundup poses no carcinogenic risk to humans.

Crucially, the Editor-in-Chief confirms that Monsanto employees likely secretly wrote substantial portions of the paper, despite never being listed as authors or acknowledged — a revelation uncovered through U.S. litigation.

The retraction states that the article’s integrity has collapsed entirely, citing undisclosed corporate authorship, omitted carcinogenicity data, financial conflicts of interest, and a complete failure by the surviving author to respond to the journal’s investigation.

Teachers say those "quick fixes" included new behavioral policies known as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, or PBIS, a program to keep kids in school by promoting positive behavior instead of suspending them.

McGrath said the policy is being misapplied.

"What's been happening is they get counseled, and then they would come back with a bag of chips, or they would come back with a juice box or a prize," she said. "That's rewarding them for their bad behavior."

During Monday night's board meeting, several teachers described being kicked, bitten and cursed at, while others spoke about students destroying classrooms and frightening their classmates.

Higgenbotham wrote: Wed Dec 03, 2025 10:07 pm After I posted earlier today, a parent of one of my daughter's classmates was saying all but 2 of the public elementary schools in Pflugerville, Texas have basically collapsed and aren't worth sending your kids to. According to her, school after school has collapsed in that district over the past 10 years. Then she went on to say that in one school, there is a child who has hour long tantrums and everyone is told to stand back and do nothing until the tantrum plays out. So twenty some kids are basically on standby doing nothing for an hour. They are told that every child has a right to learn as the reason for allowing this. She said, therefore, for her it is either the private school our kids are going to or home schooling. Public school is now out of the question for her family. We then carried on with a discussion of how we have to pay for this nonsense, the amount of money public schools waste and how high our taxes are.

Local News
Modesto teachers say classroom chaos, violence reaching "breaking point"
By Nina Burns
Updated on: October 21, 2025 / 6:40 PM PDT / CBS Sacramento

Modesto City Schools teachers say classroom destruction and violent student behavior are reaching a breaking point, and they're calling on district leaders to take action.

Photos shared with the Modesto Teachers Association show overturned desks, ripped bulletin boards and supplies scattered across the floor. Educators say they're often forced to evacuate students during outbursts and wait for help to arrive.

Prepare for automotive sticker shock next year – again.

Average new car prices briefly topped $50,000 in September for the first time, before slipping back under that level in October.

But now, automotive experts say, car prices are headed back over that level. And this time, they might stay there.

The higher prices for cars – a necessity in many transit-starved cities and towns – are part of a larger affordability crisis that’s squeezed Americans, leaving many living paycheck to paycheck just to get by.

What Is—and Isn’t—a PFAS?

One of the most widely used fluorinated pesticides is bifenthrin. It targets insects’ nervous system and is the prime ingredient in more than 600 pesticide formulations used on corn, soy, vegetables, berries and orchard crops. It is also used to treat seeds and to control ants, termites and other pests in urban settings. Its potential effects on human health are not well known, though there is some evidence that chronic exposure is linked to neurotoxicity, and the EPA has classified it as a possible human carcinogen. Ultimately, the EPA concluded in a 2020 human health risk assessment that “dietary exposure and risk estimates are not of concern for the existing uses of bifenthrin”—at least when levels designated as safe for human consumption are not exceeded. But amounts found in recent years on collard greens, eggplants, spinach, cherry tomatoes, sweet potatoes and peaches have exceeded those EPA safety levels. Removing such residues from produce requires extra scrubbing because bifenthrin is an oily substance.

Bifenthrin (BF) is a Type 1 synthetic pyrethroid that accounts for over 25% of commercially used pesticides worldwide (Deanovic et al. 2018). Its extensive application is underscored by its substantial purchase volume, estimated to exceed 1 million pounds of active ingredient (USEPA 2020). BF's physicochemical characteristics, including high hydrophobicity and photostability (Table S1), contribute to its environmental persistence. These properties and broad‐spectrum applications facilitate the accumulation of its residue in diverse environmental matrices, such as soil, air, and water (Budd et al. 2020; Li et al. 2018; Sanders et al. 2018; Yang et al. 2018). The resulting environmental ubiquity inadvertently creates human exposure pathways and health risks (Corcellas et al. 2012; Liang et al. 2022; Yoshida et al. 2021). Although regulatory frameworks have been developed to ensure its safe use, emerging investigations, spurred in part by BF's growing relevance in green chemistry and nonagricultural sectors, have highlighted its potential toxicological effects (Gargouri, Yousif, Attaai, et al. 2018; Morgan et al. 2018). Findings from these studies underscore the need to revisit the toxicological database from a risk‐safety perspective.

Higgenbotham wrote: Wed Dec 03, 2025 10:07 pm After I posted earlier today, a parent of one of my daughter's classmates was saying all but 2 of the public elementary schools in Pflugerville, Texas have basically collapsed and aren't worth sending your kids to. According to her, school after school has collapsed in that district over the past 10 years. Then she went on to say that in one school, there is a child who has hour long tantrums and everyone is told to stand back and do nothing until the tantrum plays out. So twenty some kids are basically on standby doing nothing for an hour. They are told that every child has a right to learn as the reason for allowing this. She said, therefore, for her it is either the private school our kids are going to or home schooling. Public school is now out of the question for her family. We then carried on with a discussion of how we have to pay for this nonsense, the amount of money public schools waste and how high our taxes are.

Higgenbotham wrote: Wed Dec 03, 2025 11:23 pm In an accelerating collapse, there are some silver linings. Also during that conversation, we talked about how truly excellent the school is that we send our kids to. Many of the teachers there are what I call "public school refugees" who are experienced teachers and administrators who have left the public schools in disgust so they can now do what they are called to do, albeit for less money. We traded stories about how the teachers there discipline to a higher standard than what we as parents expect. Therefore, we know that things are in good hands and we don't have to babysit situations we hear about from our kids. Of course, as those highly competent teachers and administrators flee the public schools, the collapse of the public schools accelerates.