Help me understand this. If American citizens are caught breaking the law and are put in jail and their children are put with other relatives or in temporary foster care, that’s okay with the Democrats. But if illegal border crossers are caught breaking the law and are put in jail and their children are put with other relatives or in temporary foster care, that’s not okay with the Democrats, and they scream their lungs out in protest.

Under the Trump administration, children who are separated from their parents who cross the border illegally are put in the care of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (HSSORR).While in the care of HSSORR, these children are given three meals plus snacks each day, they attend six hours of school each day, they are allowed outside in the fresh air for two hours each day, they live in air conditioned buildings, they have real mattresses on which to sleep, they are allowed two phone calls each week, and there are doctors and caseworkers on site. Even MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff reported that, “there are licensed professionals in there who are taking care of the children, there are no cages, there are no fences that have been described at some of the border patrol stations.”

Under the Obama administration “minors caught illegally crossing the border were stuffed into the equivalent of dog kennels.” The pictures that have gone viral on the Internet of minors lying on the floor in cages were taken in 2014 (under Obama) not in 2018.

So help me understand why Democrats such as Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (FL) would tweet, “The American people deserve to see the cruel way the Trump administration is treating children” even though they ignored the living conditions of illegal minors under Obama.

Illegally entering this country is a misdemeanor. (Illegally re-entering this country is a felony.) So if a family comes over the border and is caught, the parents are put in jail and the children are put into the care of HSSORR because federal law won’t allow children to be put in federal prisons. If the parents agree to go back home, they are generally sentenced to time served – frequently only a day – and are reunited with their children before they are sent back across the border. If the parents ask for asylum, it takes much longer. Under something called the Flores Consent Decree from 1997, children can only be held for 20 days. After that HSSORR tries to place them with relatives – if any can be found legally in the country.Otherwise, the law requires the children to be turned out. So even though the government would like to hold families of asylum seekers together, the courts won’t let them. Congress could fix this by doing away with Flores and providing more funding for family shelters at the border. So help me understand why the media blame President Trump for upholding the law instead of blaming Congress for writing such a law and refusing to change the law.

President Trump did try to fix the situation by signing an executive order that instructs the Department of Homeland Security to maintain custody of detained families (and keep them together), to find or construct facilities to house detained families, and to prioritize their cases to settle them first. So help me understand why the Democrats aren’t happy that the President is taking positive steps to keep children with their families – which has been the big complaint – but are claiming that the courts will declare his order violates the law – the law that they won’t fix.

I could continue with these comparisons, but we all understand what is really happening. The illegals and their children are just being used as pawns in a Democratic Party power play. It isn’t about the children. No Democrats complained when the children were treated poorly under a Democratic president. But nothing a Republican president does is acceptable to these two-faced hypocrites. We understand it. We need to make sure our friends and neighbors also understand it. Educating people with the facts is the only way to beat the Democrats in their PR war against our country and our president. Keep fighting the battle. Keep telling the truth.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. One of my former students who is now married to a Navy Captain posted this on Facebook: “In 2016, 21,000 children of US citizens were separated from their parents due to incarceration and over 750,000 due to military service. No liberal politician seemed to care about that and George Clooney never gave military kids a dime. Can we stop the fake outrage now please.”

The 7-2 decision handed down last week by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, LTD., v. Colorado Civil Rights Commissionhas not received a lot of attention. Many in the mainstream media, as is often their practice, responded to a decision with which they disagree by attempting to minimize its importance.

The “New York Times” article “In Narrow Decision, Supreme Court Sides with Baker Who Turned Away Gay Couple” said, “The court passed on an opportunity to either bolster the right to same-sex marriage or explain how far the government can go in regulating businesses run on religious principles.” It would seem that the “Times” wants the Court to promote a government-run “Thought Police.” The Germans tried that once. They called them the Gestapo.

An opinion piece by NBC’s Scott Lemieux, “How the ‘Narrow’ Ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Undermine Future Civil Rights Cases” complains that the ruling “presents a serious risk of undermining civil rights law in the name of religious freedom, especially given that it invites yet further suits for the court to consider, and will be interpreted by federal courts that Trump is making significantly more conservative through his appointments.” Lemieux tries to make it sound like that’s a bad thing.

Yet CNN contributor Mark Goldfeder correctly noted, “while the court did nothing to undermine the dignity of the LGBT community, it did much to caution all who would argue for tolerance against becoming intolerant themselves.”

In 2012, two men approached shop owner Jack Phillips, “an expert baker and devout Christian,” and asked him to bake a cake for their wedding reception. Phillips replied that he would sell them any cake in his shop that was already made, but he would not create a special cake to celebrate an event that violated his religious beliefs. The gay couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC), who found that Phillips had violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. The Supreme Court ruled that the CCRC did not reach its findings in a manner that was “neutral toward religion.” Justices Thomas and Gorsuch concurred with the ruling on religious grounds, but they would have expanded the ruling to include the thought that a baker’s cakes are an “artistic expression” that is protected under Freedom of Speech.

The Supreme Court ruled “religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.” Mr. Phillips’ decision not to make a cake was based not on who or what the same-sex couple were, i.e. their identity, but rather it was based on his right not to be associated with what they were doing, i.e. engaging in a relationship prohibited by the tenets of Mr. Phillips’ religion.

While the mainstream media would characterize this as a very narrow decision that leaves a lot of questions unanswered, the decision actually sets some very important parameters. It rejects the argument that “if you hold the view that marriage is between a man and a woman and live according to it, you must be a bigot.” A major tactic of the left is to shame into silence those people who disagree with them. With this Supreme Court decision, the LGBT community can no longer legitimately claim bigotry on the part of religious people who hold traditional views of marriage. (I use the term “legitimately” because some on the left will still cry “shame” in an effort to intimidate those who do not know the law.)

More importantly, the decision upholds the freedom of Americans to hold different opinions on controversial issues such as marriage at the same time it protects our right to be free from discrimination. Those are not insignificant points. A disgruntled reporter might call the decision “narrow,” but an honest journalist will recognize that the decision is crucial to maintaining our Constitutional freedoms.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. The State Central Committee will hold our quarterly meeting beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, June 30^th, at the McGuire-Woods building in downtown Richmond. The meeting will be open to the public

 

 

At Quora.com anybody can ask a question, and any one else can offer an answer without having to verify its accuracy. It’s sort of like a Wikipedia discussion group. I ran across a rather leading question last week: “Why do teenagers tend to support gun control.” The question intimates that most teenagers do in fact support gun control, but I found no research to back that up. I’m not so much interested in the question as in one of the answers.

A responder from Texas said:

Flipping through the answers given thus far, I see a lot of the following veins:

• Still teenagers incapable of adult-like critical thought
• Indoctrinated by U.S. liberal public education
• Lack of life experience
• Immersed in mass media coverage of these shootings, which disproportionately target young adults at common public gathering places, especially schools
• What else can we expect from a generation that eats Tide Pods?

But then further down in his response – after he lists options others have suggested for keeping students safe in schools – he writes: “These proposals allow those who are of age to continue to have the guns they want, to continue to provide for their self-defense and even expand the places they can do so. None of them, not a one, allows the students to provide for their [own]self-defense.”

The responder allows that no one argues to give guns to teenagers because “the overwhelming consensus on both sides is that kids having access to guns is the problem, not the solution.” I don’t know how valid the responder’s information is, but I have a couple of thoughts about that statement.

First, when I was in high school, kids stored their rifles in racks inside the cabs of their pickup trucks. They would lock the truck and go to class. No one ever had a problem. My friend George, who grew up in a more rural area, would along with his classmates carry their rifles to school, stack them in the cloakroom during the day, and hunt for supper on their way home. The issue is not that teens don’t have the capacity to safely handle guns. The issue is that parents have been so protective of their children that their children haven’t learned that actions have consequences. They haven’t been given the opportunity to learn how to take responsibility for their mistakes, thus creating a greater chance that they will make those mistakes. I have a teacher friend who was forced by his administration to raise the grades of an entire class even though the students did not follow the instructions they had not only been given, but which they had practiced in class for several weeks prior to the assignment due date. (They were simple instructions such as make the paper at least three pages long, cite your sources, and use proper grammar.) It seems the parents were up in arms not because their children didn’t do the work correctly, but because someone dared to give them the grade they “earned” rather than the grade they thought they “deserved.” After all, these were HONORS STUDENTS!!! There is no way to teach a child responsibility if they are never made to take responsibility.

Back in the west 150 years ago, 12 year old boys would ride to school with pistols strapped to their waists because they needed them to protect themselves from wild animals and occasionally from Indian (oops, political correctness warning), er, Native American attacks. Those “children” were given guns because they had been taught not only how to use guns but how to take responsibility for the use of them.

Second, today’s teenagers DO want to have a say in their own lives. We harm them by not giving them both authority for certain areas of their own lives and also the responsibility that goes with that authority.

I don’t blame teens for wanting to have a say in their own lives. But we Republicans, when we approach this generation, need to present life and our conservative values to teens in a way that makes them think about their choices and about what happens if the government takes those choices away from them in the name of “security” and about what kind of future they will have if they continue to believe the things they believe.

Teens are not stupid. They may be ignorant, but that can be fixed if we approach them as rational, intelligent people. Teens don’t like to be told what to believe; they won’t take things just on our word. We have to be able to provide reasons and rationale for the positions we espouse. Talk with some teens. Don’t try to convince them to believe as we do.  Provide information that allows teens to persuade themselves. They will appreciate you for doing so.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

The Elections Committee put a lot of hard work into making this perhaps the quickest vote count (for the number of delegates attending) in memory. I insisted on using paper ballots. You can always recount paper; you can’t recount electrons. Second, we wanted machine counting. Hand counting is just too slow. Third, we wanted it to be affordable. One vender offered to do electronic balloting (no paper trail) on smart phones for over $100,000. We ended up working with a vendor who supplied the scanners and printed ballots for well under a tenth of that price.

Balloting did not begin when unit chairs started handing out ballots. It began when election team members April McWilliams and Molly Gimbert put together a packet of ballots for each of the 17 delegations. That included counting the number of ballots we were giving to each unit. We wanted to account for every ballot just as we do in Virginia elections. The delegation chairs had to bring all of their ballots back either marked, unmarked, or spoiled. We did quite well since of the nearly 2200 ballots that went out, we were able to account for all but four of them.

One unit chair didn’t see the need for doing a photo I.D. check because “I know all my people.” I don’t doubt that. But if any questions had been raised about the vote, that unit’s votes might have been disqualified if they hadn’t followed the stated procedures. That unit did follow the procedures though because of the good relationship I have with that chair, and my insistence on “doing it by the book.”

After the ballots were counted in, we ran the marked ballots, one unit at a time, through one of the four scanners we had set up, got our raw vote totals, and printed out the results. I must commend Herman Murray and Andy Morse, two CPA friends of mine from Lynchburg, Rev. Mike Smith from Bedford, and Jon Aronson, a last minute appointee to the committee, for doing such a tremendous job of running the scanning process with a couple dozen “official observers” looking over their shoulders – one or two of whom seemed to nit pick about every little thing. I finally had to make an announcement telling all the observers that if they had any questions they needed to direct them to me, and not to bother my team because they were working. After that, things went fairly smoothly. I did have a few legitimate issues brought to me. Most of the issues had to do with how unit chairs collected their ballots. In every case, I decided to wait and see how close the vote was. If the vote that was challenged made a difference in the outcome, we would deal with it. If not, we would “more clearly instruct” the unit chairs before the next round.

Team member Donna Moser read out loud the raw vote totals that came from the scanners so the observers could see that Election Committee members Randy Gilbert and Gary Chatelain had accurately entered those numbers into two identical programs on two identical, but totally unconnected computers. Those programs took the raw vote totals and turned them into the weighted vote totals required by the RPV Party Plan. When the results on the two computers matched, we were assured that we had accurate results.

The real hero of the balloting process was Al Tucker. Al developed the spreadsheets that took the raw data and accurately converted it into weighted votes. He helped the scanner team figure out the minor glitches in that process. He helped me figured out over the past several weeks all the connection and operational issues. And he made sure that our LAN was exceedingly difficult to hack. If you don’t know Al, get to know him. He’s a wonderful guy. Just beware of his unbelievably corny jokes.

Other team members who took care of a lot of little things that would have become big things if they weren’t done well included John Hartless, Brian Triplett, Allan Ferguson, Josh White, and Hud McWilliams. Carrie Thompson, Dan Cullers, and Ed Yensho were incredibly helpful in getting volunteers for the balloting teams who checked the photo I.D.s during voting. I wanted to mention all these folks so that I could offer them “a simple thank you.” (I can’t afford to take them all to dinner.)

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. In addition to two observers from each campaign, we had the Chairman, Executive Director, and Communication Director from the RPV observing everything we did as well as three representatives from the Republican National Committee. I think we satisfied them that our balloting operation was fair, open, and honest.

P.P.S. If you are interested in reading a much different (Libertarian) perspective on the convention, go to http://virginiaconservative.net/a-potentially-nasty-convention/

On Tuesday, I drove up to Harrisonburg on convention business for the fourth time in four weeks. I was prepared to drive up Wednesday and Thursday as well, but thankfully we got everything worked out so I didn’t have to go. As I was driving, I thought briefly about the number of trips, the unreimbursed car expense, the hours away from work and family, the income lost from putting clients’ projects on hold while doing convention business.

And I wasn’t necessarily thinking about myself. I was thinking about other committee chairs, such as Nate Boyer (Rules), Charlie Nave (Credentials), Ken Adams (Nominations), and Steve Richards (Arrangements). We give up a lot in return for the satisfaction of doing the best job we can of providing the best convention we can because we think it’s important to our country that we do so. A simple “thank you” would be sufficient.

Instead we are smeared by the broad brush of innuendo and outright lies that is smacked against the current Sixth District leadership every day by people who apparently think such tactics will help their own candidate. The stupidity of it is that there is not a more honorable man nor one with a better reputation in the Sixth District than Nate Boyer. The fact that he was able to get a consensus from ALL the candidates on the proposed rules for the convention is solid evidence that he may be a genius, too!

Charlie Nave and I have talked often over the past two years as he sorts through all the duties of a unit chair and more recently as the head of the Credentials Committee. As chair of Credentials, he has made every effort to follow the rules and stick with the precedents set at prior conventions. But when John Whitbeck (whom I consider a friend) heard that Credentials was trying to disenfranchise delegates, he sent out an email blast that blasted Charlie. John and I had a long, sometimes heated conversation because John never bothered to call Charlie to find out Charlie’s side of the story before the email was released. John just tried and convicted Charlie in absentia. If he had bothered to call Charlie, he would have found out that Credentials was only responding – as they are required to do – to challenges from a campaign. The sub-committee mentioned was from the campaign, not from Credentials. And in 2013 at an RPV convention, a number of delegates were challenged who never knew they were challenged. Charlie insisted that our convention’s Credentials Committee would not accept a challenge unless the “challenger” notified the delegate being challenged. Charlie pushed that idea because he believes it is the fair and honest thing to do and that it was in the best interests of the delegates.

Whitbeck also claimed that the Sixth District was going to “unseat” the entire Rockbridge delegation over an irregularity. He told me he had written proof. The only “proof” I know about is a private email to a friend from one of our committee members who was worried about an irregularity at the Rockbridge mass meeting and who didn’t want that irregularity to cause problems. That friend (so-called) promptly sent the private email to RPV, and Whitbeck assumed that because one person was concerned, then the entire committee must therefore be out to get Rockbridge. I’m on the Sixth District Executive Committee, and I heard absolutely nothing about any such idea until I read Whitbeck’s email. By the way, Scott Sayre is a part of the Rockbridge delegation. Scott would not condone, let alone lead, a movement to unseat his own delegation and his many supporters – family, friends, and admirers – who are coming to the convention.

And if Whitbeck thinks a conjecture based on a private email is worth getting upset about – because he refuses to allow any delegates to be disenfranchised – then why isn’t he upset about an “appeal” that Roger Jarrell, the former Rockbridge chair and Jennifer Brown’s fiancé, sent to Whitbeckthat has the potential to unseat the delegation from Augusta after the convention. Roger and Ben Cline are buddies. Ben has endorsed Roger, and Roger has proxied for Ben. And I’m told their mothers are longtime friends. So where is the outrage at the poor optics here. If the same standards were applied to this as are applied to any action by the current leadership, then people would be screaming that the appeal is designed to change the outcome of the convention if Ben Cline doesn’t win.I’m not saying anything underhanded is going on.I’m just saying that if you applied the same standards that certain detractors Cynthia Dunbar then the appeal would have caused a huge outcry. I’m not saying why the appeal was filed because I don’t think I’m qualified to pontificate on other people’s motives – unlike a lot of our accusers who are no more qualified than I am to judge other people’s motives, but who don’t seem to care that they aren’t.

I know life isn’t fair, but I think the hard work and long hours that all of our volunteers are providing – regardless of their motivation – is worth some positive recognition. None of us expects riches or fame. A simple “thank you” would be sufficient.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.