Her name was Noma, although people kept trying to call her Norma. After her husband’s brother married an actual Norma, Noma would just say, “No. Norma is my sister-in-law.” One time, both ladies ended up in the same hospital at the same time – but they both survived the experience.

Her parents, Edward and Georgia, moved as newlyweds from Alabama to Oklahoma when fields were fertile and opportunity seemed unlimited for farmers. They had little more than the clothes on their back, a pot for soup, and hope. Then the drought hit, and the Grapes of Wrath Dust Bowl became a reality.

Noma was born in 1927 near Konowa in southeastern Oklahoma. She was the sixth child of the family. She had three older brothers, two older sisters, and one younger sister. Black Friday and the Great Depression would not hammer the rest of the country for another two and a half years, but the drought was already devastating family farms. No rain meant no crops, which meant no money, which meant no way for farmers to pay their mortgages. Banks couldn’t afford to carry those debts unpaid year after year, so lots of farmers lost their land.

Edward tried to buy farms two different times, but lost both of them. At one time things were so bad, Edward and his boys dug into the side of a hill, roofed the dugout with tree limbs and sod, hung a blanket across the front, and that was home. Back then you relied on yourself, did the best you could with what you had, and made it work.

Noma’s family was poor, but they were no worse off than a lot of other people of the day. Unlike today’s children, they didn’t need cell phones or video game for entertainment. Children were never bored. There was always work to do to help the family survive. When they played, they used their imaginations to create games with what they had. And they didn’t need organized sports leagues. When they wanted to play, the kids organized the games themselves and made up their own rules as needed. It was an early lesson in problem solving, negotiating, and getting along with people. The family not only survived, they thrived. And they did it without welfare or food stamps or Medicaid. When they had extra, they shared with those who didn’t have enough. They knew the difference between freeloaders and those truly in need of a helping hand.

Noma picked cotton in summer. She sewed her own clothes. She could turn a famine of ingredients into a feast of a meal. She won poetry contests and wrote short stories. She graduated as salutatorian of her high school class. She stepped up to do what needed to be done at home while her brothers served in the military during World War II.

After high school, she moved to Oklahoma City to work. In 1946, her boss embarrassed her when he tricked a returning service man into taking her out to dinner. She got over it. She and Richard celebrated their 68^th wedding anniversary three days before she died at the age of 87. When a wartime ailment caught up with Richard and put him in the hospital for three months followed by more months of rehabilitation, she went out and got a job that she worked for 28 years. When Richard was finally able to return to work they worked hard to pay off their mortgage early and put their children through college without any debt. They weren’t rich; they were wise with money.

In addition to formal education, they taught their children life lessons. Work hard. Love God. Take care of family. Be good to your friends. Neither they nor their children were perfect, but they tried to live life as Jesus taught us to live it. Noma was appalled by the “snowflake” mentality of today. She had no respect for anyone who thought they had a “right” to something for nothing. She would rare up and declare, “The only right to stuff they have is the right to work for it. Those lazy bums need to get off their lazy bums and get a job. And get fired if they don’t do it well enough to earn the pay they get for it.”

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr., recently said that the Republican Party is working to repeal the 20^thcentury. Noma, who grew up as a Democrat but became a Republican when the Democrats lost their senses, would say we need to repeal the second half of the 20^thcentury and go back to the morals and ethics that helped the nation survive the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and two world wars. She would tell you that we had real men back then, and most of what we have now are snowflakes who can’t stand the heat. Yes. Noma was a feisty woman. She loved her children, her ten grandchildren, and her 25 great-grandchildren. And she taught them by example what it means to be an American.

I can’t visit Noma’s grave in Oklahoma this Memorial Day, but I can write this column to say “Thanks, Mom.”

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

In medieval times – before YouTube, Netflix, television, or even “talking pictures” – kings would hire a jester to entertain the members of their court with silly songs, inane stories, and irresponsible jokes. This is where we get the expression “he played the fool.” Court jesters came to mind when a friend of mine, a retired U.S. Navy Captain, sent me a note about one of his areas of expertise: climate change. His facts make a mockery of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), the congressional clown, and her silly, inane, and irresponsible Green New Deal (GND).

The GND is not a proposed law. It is actually House Resolution 109. And it contains a number of silly, inane, and irresponsible statements. After she states every “Whereas” imaginable, she begins her “Resolved” with a factual error. “Resolved, that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that (1) it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal…” Stop right there.

Amendment 10 – part of the Bill of Rights, which had to be added in order to get all the states to sign off on the Constitution – says (in its entirety), “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” If you look very carefully at all seven articles and 27 amendments that currently make up our Constitution you will find nowhere that the federal government has a duty – or for that matter even the legal authority – to create a Green New Deal. So AOC’s whole resolution is based on her ignorance of the law she supposedly swore to uphold when she took office.

Here’s another funny from the congressional clown. AOC says the federal government is supposed to “create millions of good, high-wage [union] jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States.” Frankly, we already have too many people in government jobs. And the best thing the feds can do for private sector jobs is reduce regulations and get out of the way of the greatest economic engine the world has ever known. But these socialists in our government, like AOC, don’t want that because they want control of every aspect of our lives. They crave power, so they want to control our jobs, our health care, our education, our very lives. By the way, the government cannot “ensure prosperity and economic security.” God and our Constitution only provide opportunity. People must choose what to do with that opportunity as the determining factor in their prosperity.

Here’s another irresponsible joke from HR 109: within 10 years, we should meet “100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources…” AOC tries to put all the responsibility on the U.S., yet China consumes 62 percent more electricity than does the U.S. In fact, the U.S. is not even in the top ten countries in power used per capita. [Iceland, Liechtenstein, Canada, Sweden, Norway, United Arab Emirates, Finland, Qatar, Bahrain, and Finland make up the top ten.]

AOC must be trying to bankrupt the country, We in America use 3,911,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. Each commercial wind turbine generates about two megawatts (2000 kilowatts) of electricity. Each turbine costs roughly $4 million. Do the math. We would need 1,955,500 wind turbines installed over the next ten years to meet GND goals. This would cost the country $7,822,000,000,000. That’s over 7.8 quadrillion dollars – just to replace what we already have. And solar generators cost even more than that.

AOC will claim that we shouldn’t spare the expense because we have to combat “greenhouse gasses.” The resolution does not mention that most of “greenhouse gas” is carbon dioxide. We have 219 times as much CO²as we have of the second most common greenhouse gas. Apparently, AOC has about as much knowledge of photosynthesis as she does of garbage disposals. (She had never seen one before moving to Washington.) Plants need carbon dioxide like people need oxygen. In fact, plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. So to get lower levels of greenhouse gasses, we just need to plant more trees. You can get a whole lot more trees for $4 million than you can get wind turbines.

HR 109 also mentions “zero-emission vehicle infrastructure.” AOC’s 14^thCongressional District is geographically small. Fully half of it is green space (including a marsh and a golf course), the East River, Rikers Island (New York City’s main jail facility), and LaGuardia Airport. She has no concept of the size of the rest of the country, the real America. Doing away with private cars and airplanes in favor of public transportation might work in the Bronx, Jackson Heights, and Rikers Island, but it will not work for the rest of us. Distances are just too great. She doesn’t “get it” because she is ignorant. That makes her ideas silly at best, devastating at worst. May God preserve us from Congressmen and Congresswomen who play the fool.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

An explanation of the fiasco in the 97^th House District starts with a couple of definitions. An “Establishment Republican” (GOPe) thinks the job of the Republican Party is to keep every elected Republican in office for as many terms as possible no matter how that Republican votes. A “Grassroots Republican” (Grassroots) thinks that if a Republican does not represent the opinions of the people s/he represents, then voters need to elect a different Republican to represent them. The GOPe are adamant about reelecting incumbents because that’s where the money is. Lots of money gets donated to the “reelection campaigns” of favored politicians who vote the way the donors want them to vote. And Virginia law doesn’t limit donations. So GOPe incumbents are not shy about using that money and influence to keep themselves elected.

Democrats should not be smug about this. Some of the worst abusers in the General Assembly are Democrats. And don’t forget about Hilary Clinton’s “pay to play” fundraising for the Clinton Foundation or Joe Biden getting cozy with the Chinese government so that his son can make millions of dollars from a Chinese company. But I digress.

Chris Peace was first elected in 2006 as the delegate from Virginia’s 97^th District, which includes New Kent County and parts of Hanover and King William counties. It is a reliably Republican district where in 2018 Cory Stewart got 65 percent of the vote to Tim Kaine’s 33 percent. Whoever wins the Republican nomination for Delegate will most likely win the general election in November.

On January 19, 2019, the 97^th House Legislative District Committee (LDC) met and chose to select their nominee at a convention to be held on May 4. LDCs consist of representative from each Republican county committees in the district. Each county committee then held a Mass Meeting to elect delegates to the convention. New Kent held theirs on April 9, Hanover on April 11, and King William on April 18. After the delegates were certified, Chris Peace discovered that his opponent, Hanover County Supervisor Scott Wyatt, had more convention delegates signed up than Peace did. That meant Wyatt would in all likelihood be the Republican nominee. And this came about because Peace made a lot of his constituents angry with some of his votes in recent sessions. The grassroots want to replace him. The GOPe want to keep him in office. To do that the GOPe got one of the representatives to the LDC replaced. Then four days before the convention, after all the convention delegates had been certified, the new rep and one of the other reps voted to cancel the convention and go with a party caucus instead. There is no mechanism in the State Party Plan to do this, but the GOPe did it anyway. State Party Chairman Jack Wilson jumped in with no authority to do so and sent out emails declaring that the convention was cancelled. LDC Chairman Tom Miller countered with emails declaring that the convention was in fact going to be held – on May 4 – as scheduled.

Green County Republican Chairman Ed Yensho notes: “Roberts Rules is clear that you cannot rescind a motion ‘after something has been done as a result of that vote that the assembly cannot undo,’ and that clearly happened with the Convention, so the actions of the 97th LDC on May 1st are blatantly improper and can be appealed.”

Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment (R) represents New Kent and King William Counties, which are part of his Senate District 3. While many people consider him a member of the GOPe, his published statement on May 3 completely supported the convention. He said

I feel a genuine responsibility to stand up for [my constituents’] rights, which are currently under assault…. No challenge to the Call issued on January 19 was ever filed. No challenges to the Calls issued by the Republican Committees of Hanover, King William, and New Kent were ever filed. No appeal of the elections of the nearly 1700 delegates and alternates has ever been produced nor – to the best of knowledge – is one currently pending. As best I can determine from publicly available information, no appeal of this convention is currently pending before either the 1^st Congressional District Republican Committee or the State Central Committee.

These individuals have been duly elected. Cancelling the Convention after these individuals have been elected would be comparable to cancelling a general election at 6:00 p.m. on Election Day because of dissatisfaction with those who turned out to vote.

The convention was held and Scott Wyatt won the weighted vote 244.56 to 7.9. Two days later, LDC Chairman Tom Miller filed the proper forms with the State Board of Elections (SBE) naming Scott Wyatt the duly selected nominee.

So now Chris Peace refuses to accept the results of the convention and rests his hopes on a party caucus scheduled for June 1. The GOPe members of the LDC have told the SBE not to accept Miller’s certification of Wyatt. The LDC plans to hold a special meeting on June 8 to depose Miller as chairman so they can put in their own chairman and send in a different statement as to who is the nominee. All certifications must be made to the SBE by June 17. And the GOPe leadership has scheduled the next State Central Committee meeting for June 22 at which time it is too late for the SCC to take any corrective action in this travesty of justice.

A number of the members of the SCC who normally would be considered GOPe are appalled at this underhanded and dirty political ploy. I believe they would vote to certify Scott Wyatt as the candidate in spite of the actions of the GOPe leadership. Perhaps that’s why the SCC meeting was scheduled when it is too late to correct these actions.

There are already calls for State Party Chairman Jack Wilson to resign. I like Jack, but he has disgraced himself and his party as he has disenfranchised hundreds of voters in the 97^th district who believe in honesty and fair play, but who are increasingly doubtful that the current Republican leadership believe the same thing.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Wyatt’s best defense of his nomination is to get his supporters out in full force and win the party caucus as well.

The Sixth Congressional District prevailed in our Federal suit to declare Virginia’s “Incumbent Protection Act” (IPA) unconstitutional. The IPA gave incumbent office holders an unfair advantage because they were allowed to select the nomination process for their own reelection. As a result of our win, the legislative district committee (LDC) for each Delegate and State Senate district now determines the method of nomination.

This spring the District 97 Delegate LDC decided to choose their nominee at a convention. In April each unit in the LDC held their mass meetings to elect delegates to the convention. When one campaign counted up the delegates, they discovered they didn’t have as many as the opponent. So in typical insider political gamesmanship, they moved to change the method of nomination and cancel the convention.

In an email at 11:05 p.m. on May 1, Tom Miller, Chairman of the 97^th LDC, said “Saturday’s Legislative District Convention of the 97t​h ​House District is ON!” His email also included these statements:

It became clear at today’s brief meeting of the Legislative District Committee that those members supporting one of the campaigns have not been forthright or dealing in good faith.  They attempted to move to cancel the Convention.  The Party Plan does not include provisions for cancelling a convention, and I ruled the motion to be out of order.

Cancelling the convention after Mass Meetings have been conducted, Delegates and Alternates elected, and those Delegates and Alternates certified to the Legislative District Committee, would be unprecedented, improper, and just plain wrong.

At 11:17 p.m. on May 1, RPV Chairman Jack Wilson sent an email that reads in part:

Like you, I am extremely displeased with how the events in the 97th LDC have unfolded over the course of the last few weeks. Tonight, the 97th Legislative District Committee passed a motion canceling the convention scheduled for this Saturday. Under the Party Plan, the Legislative District Committee, not the Chairman of the Committee, has jurisdiction over the Party nominating process in the 97th House of Delegates district.

Then at 9:19 p.m. on May 2, Jack Wilson sent a follow up email that said in part:

…[A]pproximately 76% of the LDC voted to cancel the convention. Those in the 97th district can attempt to appeal the ruling of the committee. However, a clear majority of the committee voted to change the process at the last second. Again, I would have preferred the convention go forward.

And at 11:13 p.m. on May 2, Tom Miller sent a follow up email that reiterated that the convention was on, adding:

I know that the ruckus from those who have been trying to prevent this convention from being held has been disheartening. Considering that both candidates properly filed, recruited and filed delegates, and actively participated in the New Kent Mass Meeting on April 9, the Hanover Mass Meeting on April 11, and the King William Mass Meeting on April 18, it is unimaginable that either would try to stop the Convention.

I tend to agree with Tom Miller that there is no mechanism for cancelling the convention once the delegates have been certified, so it doesn’t matter if a majority of the LDC voted to do something if they can’t do it. Yet one of the candidates appears to be having a snit about not getting enough delegates to win the convention. As a result, he wants to change the rules. This is terrible for the Party, it is terrible for increasing grassroots participation in the nomination process, and it is terrible for our representative processes. It appears to me to be a case of a candidate putting his own interests ahead of the good of the Commonwealth. Maybe that’s why the other candidate got more delegates in the first place.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

 

Some of the leaders within Virginia’s political parties have demonstrated very poor leadership skills. Many of their ardent supporters who mindlessly seek to emulate their heroes are unsure how to lead in a similarly poor manner. So as a public service, I provide ten rules to follow if you want to be a poor leader.

1. Have a “thin skin.” A thin-skinned leader can’t take criticism, can’t handle opposition, and can’t stand to lose on any issue no matter how minor – even though all of those things will happen multiple times during a leader’s tenure.

2. Be more concerned about winning the office than fulfilling the duties of the office. Get the title since it looks good on your résumé. Show up at events to be seen and applauded, but when it comes time to do the work either stick somebody else with doing it or make excuses when it doesn’t get done.

3. Take credit for the work of other people. When somebody else does your job, take credit for their hard work. Act as though every good idea that comes out of your organization is your idea. Don’t give credit to anyone else. That makes your people feel used. Then they will only work as hard as their conscience requires them to work. And if you can get them to quit, then no one can compare their energetic work ethic with your lazy bones.

4. If your supporters do not control a majority of the votes in your organization, then pick fights with the people who do control the votes. Repeatedly insult them on social media and in public appearances – or allow your significant other as well as other supporters to do so. Do not under any circumstances try to work with the “other side.” Attempt to undermine them in every situation and in any way possible.

5. Alienate the supporters you do have. They may retaliate by using on you the same tactics you condoned when they used them on your opponent for your leadership position. If they do retaliate, sue them in court as nastily and as publicly as possible. It is especially important to do this if the people you sue are among the hardest working volunteers in your organization. That also will severely damage your ability to get anything done as a leader.

6. Go public with your fights and dirty laundry. Don’t try to work things out within the confines of your organization. Blow it up all over social media and – if you are really good at being a poor leader – let the story get published in all the local newspapers. That discourages your current volunteers and repels potential volunteers, which in turn limits the scope of what your organization can accomplish.

7. Put your efforts into other organizations. When you are the leader of one organization, put your efforts into building and raising money for your own separate, private organization. Neglect the welfare of the organization you were elected to lead, especially if you aren’t getting your own way.

8. Take advice from people who have ulterior motives. Surround yourself with people who have an “axe to grind,” who have personal vendettas to pursue, and who’s egos lead them to advise you to make decisions that benefit themselves rather than the organization you are leading.

9. Be paranoid enough to think that everyone is against you, and blame others for your own stupid mistakes. This will keep you from learning and growing as a leader. And since you are the only person you can change and since you don’t see any reason to change, things won’t get better; they will just get worse.

10. Be narcissistic. Focus everything on yourself. Never help anyone else grow unless it is for your own benefit. Never help anyone else develop into a leader since you don’t want competition and you don’t want to share your glory. And lie – a lot – to make sure that you look good compared to everyone else. Never mind that the truth always comes out and you will eventually have to face the consequences of your fabrications.

Based on my observations over the years – and especially recently – you can be assured that if you follow these ten rules, you will be certain to dishearten, disorganize, and demoralize the rank-and-file individuals in your organization and will win for yourself the iron clad, irrefutable, and widespread reputation as a poor leader.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.