Commentary

Trump supported the bank bailout and auto bailout, Cruz opposes all bailouts

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Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons
Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons

I have two friends who are Trump supporters. I’ve been going over Trump’s record with them, and I thought that I would blog some of the evidence I presented here.

Now, the conservative view of bailouts is that we should not have them, because in a free market economy, companies that cannot serve customers efficiently (low price, high quality) must be allowed to go bankrupt. That includes banks and auto manufacturers.

Where does Trump stand? Here is a transcript of an appearance on Fox News from 2008, where he embraced the bank bailouts:

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Well, Donald Trump saying, anything close to that $700 billion bailout would be a black eye for an economy he says rushing into one big depression.

Real estate mogul Donald Trump joins me now on the phone.

[…]

TRUMP: […]Now, I did not know about a $700 billion bailout, in all fairness. And I think probably, it is something — it’s sad, but, probably, it’s something that has to get done, because your financial system is most likely going to come to a halt if it does not. So, it is a pretty sad day for this country.

This Daily Caller article explains Trump’s view on auto bailouts:

Faced with crushing debts caused by poor management and high labor costs, GM and Chrysler requested federal assistance to keep the firms afloat, and were granted a $25 billion loan in the fall of 2008. President George Bush then secured more than $17 billion for the companies.

This occurred months before the birth of the Tea Party, but conservatives were outraged.

Not Trump. A longtime advocate of sweetheart deals between corporation and state, the real-estate developer went all in for the deal.

“[Y]ou have to try and save the companies,” Trump said in a separate 2008 Fox News interview. “And I think you can easily save the companies.”

Ted Cruz opposes auto bailouts and bank bailouts.

Cruz was asked in a 2012 run-off debate if the federal government should have bailed out General Motors, and here is his answer:

Of course we shouldn’t have. We’ve got a problem in Washington. We’ve got career politicians in both parties that spend the taxpayer money. That’s how we’ve gotten a $16 trillion dollar debt that is bankrupting our country. I don’t support bailouts, period. I don’t support the bailout of the auto companies. I don’t support the bailout of the banks. Government shouldn’t be in the business of spending taxpayer money to help private corporations. The role of government is to protect our rights, to protect our national security, to ensure rule of law and to stay out of the way and let entrepreneurs create jobs. And the problem with Washington is career politicians spending money and digging us into a hole that is threatening the economic future of our nation.

Cruz doesn’t even like the government giving companies subsidies, much less bailouts. It’s taxpayer money, it should not go to corporations that cannot compete fair and square.

Trump also supported Obama’s pork-filled stimulus spending bill:

President Obama held his first prime-time press briefing — designed to build support for the economic stimulus package that was his top priority upon taking office — on Feb. 9, 2009. Later that same night, real estate mogul Donald Trump took to the airwaves to sing the plan’s — and the president’s — praises.

“I thought he did a terrific job,” Trump told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren. “This is a strong guy knows what he wants, and this is what we need.”

“First of all, I thought he did a great job tonight,” said Trump. “I thought he was strong and smart, and it looks like we have somebody that knows what he is doing finally in office, and he did inherit a tremendous problem. He really stepped into a mess, Greta.”

Van Susteren then asked Trump if a simple payroll tax holiday might be a better way to stimulate the flagging economy. Trump, however, held firm in his support for Obama’s plan, which he praised for the wide breadth of approaches it took to combatting the crisis.

[…]“Well, I have analyzed the bill as closely as it can be analyzed in this quick a period of time, but he’s really got a combination of both,” Trump replied. “He is doing the taxes, he is doing rebates, and he is also doing lots of public works.”

His support for public works spending reminded me of a chapter from Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” on public works, in which he explains that public works can never stimulate the economy, since it takes money out of the productive private sector and spends it in the wasteful and corrupt public sector. The chapter is entitled “Public Works Means Taxes”.

It says:

Two arguments are put forward for the bridge, one of which is mainly heard before it is built, the other of which is mainly heard after it has been completed. The first argument is that it will provide employment. It will provide, say, 500 jobs for a year. The implication is that these are jobs that would not otherwise have come into existence.

This is what is immediately seen. But if we have trained ourselves to look beyond immediate to secondary consequences, and beyond those who are directly benefited by a government project to others who are indirectly affected, a different picture presents itself. It is true that a particular group of bridgeworkers may receive more employment than otherwise. But the bridge has to be paid for out of taxes. For every dollar that is spent on the bridge a dollar will be taken away from taxpayers. If the bridge costs $10 million the taxpayers will lose $10 million. They will have that much taken away from them which they would otherwise have spent on the things they needed most.

There is no free lunch. Someone has to pay.

Listen to me. This economy is not doing well. We are going to have more debt, higher taxes, and lower public services the further we go down the path of socialism. It’s fun to spend money on all sorts of bailouts, but the money is not unlimited. Bailing out private businesses and giving them subsidies costs taxpayer money. Eventually, that runs out. We need a candidate who understands this, and that candidate is Ted Cruz, not Donald Trump.

Polemics

Walter Bradley lectures on the creation and design of the universe

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Dr. Walter L. Bradley
Dr. Walter L. Bradley

This lecture is special to me, because I bought a VHS tape of it just after I started working full-time, and watched it a million times. It changed my life. The lecture was delivered at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

About the speaker:

Dr. Bradley received his B.S. in Engineering Science and his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Texas in Austin.

Dr. Bradley taught for eight years at the Colorado School of Mines before assuming a position as Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in 1976.

During his 24 years at Texas A&M, Dr. Bradley served as Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University and as Director of the Polymer Technology Center, and received five College of Engineering Research Awards. He has received over $4,500,000 in research grants and has published over 140 technical articles and book chapters. He has also co-authored “The Mystery Of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Materials and of the American Scientific Affiliation and serves as a consultant for many Fortune 500 companies.

He currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor University.

The lecture: (63 minutes lecture, 25 minutes audience Q&A)

Summary slide:

This slide summarizes the content of the lecture
This slide summarizes the content of the lecture

Introduction:

  • At the beginning of the 20th century, people believed that the progress of science was pointing away from an intelligent Creator and Designer, and towards naturalism
  • A stream of new discoveries has shifted the support of science towards theism, and away from naturalism
  • Richard Dawkins, an atheist, says that nature only has the appearance of design, but that if you look closer, naturalistic mechanisms can account for the appearance of design
  • When deciding between design and apparent design (“designoid”), it matters whether you think there is an intelligence there to do the designing

Evidence #1: The Big Bang:

  • an eternal “steady state” universe is more compatible with naturalism, but a created universe is more compatible with a Creator
  • In 1929, Hubble used telescopes to observe that the light from distant galaxies was redshifted. The further away galaxies were, the faster they were moving away. Therefore, space is expanding in all directions, suggesting an explosive origin of the universe
  • In 1965, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation matched a prediction of the Big Bang cosmology, and of the creation event
  • In 1992, the COBE space telescope allowed us to test four specific predictions of the Big Bang model, especially the predictions for light element abundances (hydrogen and helium), which matched the predictions of the creation model

Evidence #2: Simple mathematical structure of the physical laws

  • the simple mathematical structure of natural laws allows us to understand these laws, make discoveries, and engineer solutions to problems
  • early scientists saw the mathematical structure of the universe to mean that nature was designed by an intelligent to be understood
  • the fundamental equations of the laws of the universe can be easily written on one side of one sheet of paper
  • Eugene Wigner’s famous paper, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences” makes the point that this simple structure is an unexpected gift that allows is to do science

Evidence #3: fine-tuning of the physical constants and quantities

  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need stars that provide energy within specific ranges for long periods of time
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need planets with stable orbits that will not suffer from extreme temperature swings as it varies in distance from its star
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need stable atomic structure
  • in order for any kind of complex life to survive, we need to have chemical diversity and correct relative abundances of each element
  • organic life has minimum requirements: process energy, store information, replicate, and you can’t fulfill those functions if there is only one element, e.g. – hydrogen
  • the energy level from the photons from the sun have to match the energy levels of the different elements in order to drive the chemical bonding needed for life
  • These requirements for life of any imaginable type depend on the values of the constants and quantities. The constants and quantities cannot vary much from what they are, or the universe will lose the characteristics (above) that allow it to support complex life of any imaginable time
  • For example, ratio of strong force to electromagnetic force:
    – if 2% larger, then no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, no compounds containing hydrogen, e.g. – water
    – if 5% smaller, no stable stars, heavy hydrogen would be unstable, few elements other than hydrogen

Evidence #4: initial conditions for habitability

  • Universe: expansion rate of the universe must be fast enough to avoid a re-collapse, but slow enough to allow matter to clump together and form stars and planets for complex life to live on
  • Planet: right distance from the star to get the right climate
  • Planet: right mass to retain the right atmosphere

Evidence #5: origin of life and information theory

  • It’s possible to explain every process in an automobile engine using plain old naturalistic mechanisms – no supernatural explanation is necessary to understand the processes
  • But the existence of engine itself: engineering all the parts has to be explained by the work of an intelligence
  • Similarly, we can understand how living systems work, but the existence of the living systems requires an intelligence
  • Even the simplest living system has to perform minimal function: capture energy, store information and replicate
  • Living systems are composed of objects like proteins that are composed of sequences of components complex such that the order of the components gives the overall structure function
  • Developing the components for a simple living cell is very improbable – even given the large number of galaxies, stars and planets in the universe, it is unlikely that complex, embodied life would exist anywhere in the universe

Evidence #6: more initial conditions for habitability

  • Location within the galaxy: you need to be away from the center of the galaxy, because the explosions from dying stars, and excessive radiation will kill life
  • Location within the galaxy: you need to be close enough to the center in order catch the heavy elements you need for life from the explosions of other stars
  • Location within the galaxy: the best location is between two arms of  a spiral galaxy, where you can get the heavy elements you need from dying stars, but without being hit with explosions and harmful radiation
  • Star mass: determines rate at which the sun burns, determines the energy level of photons that are used to drive chemical bonding reactions, determines the length of time the star will be stable
  • Star mass: star mass must be the correct value in order to allow liquid water on the planet’s surface, while still preserving stable orbit

I wish there was more curiosity about science in churches, and young Christians understood how critical science is for grounding the rationality of the Christian worldview. We need to be training up more scientists who think about the big questions, like Dr. Walter Bradley.

News

Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio’s intervention in Libya created an ISIS caliphate

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Marco Rubio with his allies: Democrat Churck Schumer and RINO John McCain
Marco Rubio with his allies: Democrat Churck Schumer and RINO John McCain

First, let’s review what happened in Libya, and who owns it. Then, we’ll see where Marco Rubio stood on the issue.

The Daily Caller notes:

Clinton is, undoubtedly, the person most responsible for getting America into the international effort that toppled the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Prior to the Benghazi attack, she was happy to have it known as “Hillary’s War” and touted it as a serious accomplishment.

Libya:

Libya is now a failed state where all types of Islamic extremists find safe haven and illegal migrants are able to pass through on their way to an over-burdened Europe. There are no signs of success at all in the beleaguered country as it has descended into total anarchy.

Egypt:

[Hillary] was a-ok with the toppling of Egyptian president and U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak. But it wasn’t hip liberals who came to power after Mubarak was deposed — it was the Muslim Brotherhood who took over the reins in Egypt before a military coup ousted the Islamists in 2013.

Syria:

Clinton was also the leading force in the Obama administration in backing rebels in Syria and wanted a more active role for America in that conflict. However, hardly any of the rebels seem much better than the current ruler Bashar al-Assad and many of them, such as ISIS, are far worse than the Iranian-backed despot.

So that’s three foreign policy disasters for Hillary: Libya, Egypt and Syria. Sounds pretty bad. But the Daily Caller leans right. Let’s see what the leftist Atlantic says about Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy.

They say:

In August, TheNew Yorker’s John Lee Anderson described the gains made by the Islamists as well as the consequences of ISIS fighters controlling territory in Libya:

Last November, battle-hardened Libyan Islamists, who had returned home from fighting in Iraq and Syria, along with Islamists from other countries, seized the eastern city of Derna and claimed it for ISIS. Emulating their comrades in Raqqa and Mosul, they stoned, shot, beheaded, and crucified people deemed guilty of espionage or ‘un-Islamic’ behavior. Last month, a rival militia loyal to Al Qaeda waged and won a battle for control of the city. The victors are said to have marched the captured ISIS commander through the streets naked before executing him. ISIS lost Derna, but in the past few months they have taken Qaddafi’s home town of Sirte and surrounding areas in Libya’s “Oil Crescent,” and have begun attacks on the outer defenses of the city of Misrata.

Alas, that’s not all:

For months, ISIS has been trumpeting its abduction and execution of African Christians in Libya. In February, a slick, ghoulish video showed twenty-one Egyptian hostages in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach by black-masked executioners, who forced them to kneel and then cut off their heads.

In April, another video appeared, showing the execution of twenty-nine Ethiopians in Libya. Gunmen who trained with ISIS in Libya were involved in the murder of twenty foreign tourists, at a Tunis museum in March, and thirty-eight more tourists, most of them British, at a seaside resort in Tunisia in June. These attacks focused attention on the fact that Libya, a vast, oil-rich, underpopulated country with a long southern-Mediterranean coastline, has become part of the self-proclaimed ISIS caliphate. In a parallel phenomenon, armed trafficking gangs in Libya are driving most of Africa’s illegal immigration to Europe. As many as a hundred and seventy thousand are thought to have made the crossing last year, with thousands dying en route. Unprecedented numbers are continuing to cross this year, taking advantage of the chaos in Libya.

An unnamed Obama Administration official told Anderson, “We think that the threat from ISIL-affiliated groups in Libya is very serious and we’re treating it that way.”

A strong case can be made that the war made Americans less safe.

Libya and Egypt were contained and peaceful before the U.S. Arab Spring interventions. After intervening in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood took over. After intervening in Libya, the Islamic State is rising. And after intervening in Syria, the Islamic State has a base there, too.

Do you know who backed Hillary in her Libya intervention plan?

MARCO RUBIO. 

Here’s an article from the Weekly Standard by Stephen Hayes, who is very favorable to Rubio, explaining how Rubio supported the Hillary-led intervention in Libya.

It says:

Senator Marco Rubio offered his full-throated support Wednesday for the U.S. intervention in Libya and called on President Barack Obama to be clear that regime change is the objective of America’s involvement.

[…]Last night, Rubio sent a letter to Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate, calling for Congress to affirm Obama’s policy by authorizing the use of the military force in Libya and to make explicit the goal of regime change. “This resolution should also state that removing Moamar Qadhafi from power is in our national interest and therefore should authorize the President to accomplish this goal. To that end, the resolution should urge the President to immediately recognize the Interim Transitional National Council as the legitimate government in Libya.”

Qadhafi had voluntarily given up his weapons of mass destruction and invited inspectors in, after seeing Bush invade Afghanistan and Iraq. They were no threat to us, and there were no crucifixions of Christians, kidnappings, executions, etc. that we see now.

And now we have an Islamic State caliphate in Libya, as the UK Telegraph reported earlier this week:

Yet this latest [execution] broadcast was shot not in the Isil strongholds of Raqqa [Syria] or Mosul [Iraq] but the terror group’s new “caliphate” in Libya, where it now controls Colonel Gaddafi’s home city of Sirte, just 350 miles south of Italy.

[…]Formed by a vanguard of just a few dozen fighters a year ago, Isil’s Sirte chapter is now believed to be up to 3,000-strong, imposing a regime of beheadings and crucifixions.

Marco Rubio strongly supported the intervention in Libya, spurning conservatives and embracing Hillary Clinton and the far left. Now we have a caliphate in Islamic State in Libya. I’m a very hawkish person, and supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Libya and Egypt interventions made no sense, and no Republican should have backed either of them.