More On Why Rob Smith Is the Smartest Man In the World

Perhaps you have read my new best-selling book, Why Rob Smith is the Smartest Man in the World. Chapter 7 is titled Rob’s Rules for Political, Economic and Cultural Nirvana. Learn these rules and all societal problems are solved. Rule # 1: The Government Fu#ks Up Everything It Touches. Rule # 2: There Are Always Unintended Consequences To Stupid Ass Feel Good Legislation. Rule # 3: Quality Declines In Proportion To Government Involvement. Rule # 4: The Bastards Want to Control You And Make You Their Slave. Rule # 5: Politicians Always Have A Stealthy Agenda At Odds With The Stated Intent of Their Proposed Legislation. Rule # 6: They Lie Like a Rug. Rule # 7: There Is No Such Thing As Free Money. Rule # 8. Rob Is Always Right.

Nowhere are the benefits of understanding these rules (and the brilliance of their author) more apparent than Joe Biden’s decision to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans. But before we go there, let’s take a ride in the way back machine to 2010. Our president then was Barack Obama. He was often the opposite of his public persona.  He pretended to like sports, but he wore mom jeans and threw a baseball like a girl. Even though he was ½ black, he had no hops. He was stiffer than Al Gore. Occasionally, he would try a black dialect which went over about as well as Hillary Clinton’s fake southern accent. He pretended to like girls, but………. He campaigned as a nice guy who could unite the country, but in reality, was a cold calculating disciple of Saul Alinsky, schooled in the dark arts of political division. As a Marxist street agitator, he was quite skilled at fabricating outrage by use of the clever lie. Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals was his bible. Chairman Obama was a smooth operator, who used his oratory skills to snow over the gullible for “noble” sounding endeavors while always having a stealthy ignoble agenda. Most of his agenda centered on more government control over individual liberties. A brilliant strategic thinker, he employed Alinsky style tactics to create division hoping such policies would fuel a dystopian power vacuum allowing leftist forces to seize more power during times of crisis.

Comrade Obama told a willingly naive public and a compliant Democrat Congress that a Federal takeover of the student loan industry would save the taxpayers $68 billion over 10 years. See NY Times Article.  The mean old banks that administered the old system, actually made money and kept the default rates low. For this they had to be punished! To “help” students the Feds vastly increased Pell Grants, i.e., “free” money. Look at Rob’s Rules above, and tell me what you think happened once the Feds took over the industry?

Rule #1. They fuc#ed it up. College tuition rose 700%. Market forces and competition keeps prices low. However, whenever the government subsidizes something, the prices of that something sky rocket. Good job fellas, you made college tuition much more expensive, not just for the “poor” people you ostensibly were trying to help, but for everybody. Thanks for helping.  Since there are effectively no underwriting controls, the federal government’s student loan balance ballooned. It is now over $1.6 trillion.

Rule # 2. Unintended Consequences. Now, how many borrowers said to themselves: “Damn, the Feds just took over the student loan program, I am going to borrow all I can because I know they do a horrible job of collecting, and they are almost assuredly going to forgive the debt some day?”  One would have to be a very poor student of political history not to have these thoughts. Default rates since the Feds seized control have gone through the roof.

Rule # 3. Quality suffers. Well, maybe all this student loan debacle is worth it because our populace is much better educated and surely that’s a good thing? Ha! There’s a huge difference between being “educated” and being “learned.” To be learned, one must have intellectual curiosity and an intense desire to learn. To be educated, one must merely go to college and become immersed in meaningless pap. Telling every high school student that they “must” go to college and take on enormous levels of debt when such student has no interest in anything beyond the latest Kardashian gossip is nothing short of the tort of fraudulent inducement.

Learning is a lifetime passion. There are plenty of people who never went to college who are much more knowledgeable in certain subjects than college professors teaching those subjects. Take Mr. Delano, an 82-year-old auto mechanic. I caught him trying to sneak onto my farm with his metal detector. Once I got talking to him, I realized that he knew more colonial Virginia history than any such professor at William and Mary or the University of Virginia. Frank Butler owns a technology company. We were on our way to a business meeting when I mentioned that I had just read Brothers Karamazov. Frank then gave me a 2-hour lecture on Ivan’s encounter with the devil and what it all meant. There are plenty of Mr. Delanos and Franks out there. To be truly learned, one must simply have a passion to learn, read books and talk to smart people. The idea that learning can only occur at a 4-year university is a sick fiction perpetuated by a cabal of monied interests led by the US government.

Rule # 4. Slaves to the state. Now, why would the government want to force people to go to college and take on tremendous debt? For the same reason the Soviets wanted its people to go to the Solovestsky and Dmitrovsky labor camps, to get an eh, uhm, “education.” Barack Obama and his fellow travelers are well schooled in “state-sponsored” education and making sure that everyone is as properly indoctrinated as Winston Smith. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is strength!  There can be no dissent from the Party line. I can hear you now “Smith you are a John Birch Society nutjob, those were labor camps!” Well, when a kid graduates from Elite U with $100,000 in student loans, that kid has to “labor” for decades to pay off the cost of his indoctrination.

Rule # 5. The stealthy agenda. Just like the Left uses race to justify its power grabs, it does the same with education. It knows that it can pour taxpayer money into education to benefit itself at the expense of debt ridden students who then learn next to nothing, except “Ministry of Truth” sloganeering. 94% of the faculty at the University of Virginia identify as liberal. Here’s how it works. The Left proposes pouring wheel barrows of money into education. The dumb ass Republicans don’t have the balls to object, they cower in the corner in fear that some housewife will call them mean. Moreover, they don’t have the intelligence to see that they are being played. Just like Lenin’s statement about hanging the West with its own rope, the Left always uses YOUR money to destroy YOUR values. Thus, you raise your son to be a critical thinker with traditional values, he goes off to college, gets indoctrinated and comes home for Thanksgiving wearing a dress and calls you a Nazi.

Rule # 6. They lie. The Left also understands that if it floods academia with money, it becomes a tool of the state. Where do all the stupid ideas that are destroying western civilization come from? Academia! And the stupidest of these stupid ideas come from the so called “most prestigious” universities, which also have the most money provided to them by taxpayers. These universities produce all the “scholarly” idiocy to support Leftist policies. 5-year-olds can make the choice to cut their penises off and be a girl. The world will explode unless we kill all the cows because cow farts are bad. Facts are dangerous. We need therapy dogs and safe rooms for hurt feelings. Blah, blah, blah.

Forgiving student debt is a sinister and cravenly political act that is bad idea for a forklift of different reasons. Read John Tamny’s recent article on the subject. But the “elephant in the room”  is what I have outlined above. The system sucks, and it sucks because our political class is corrupt, and it is led by stealthy leftist elites whose agenda is to enhance their power at the expense of you and your kids.

Rule # 7. The lure of free money. Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education in 1979. Since 1980, the cost of college is up 1,200%. Eliminate every nickel of federal largess, direct payments, grants and loans. Every nickel! Tuition rates would plummet. Pony tailed professors in corduroy sports jackets and fanny packs would have to get real jobs. Schools would need to compete to keep their doors open. Wokeness would disappear and there would be no more classes in 2SLGBTQQIA Underwater Basket Weaving. Whether it is paper clips, widgets or education, markets work.

Rule # 8. See above. By now, this should be obvious.