Delegate Rob Bell (R-58) serves as Vice-Chair of the non-partisan Virginia State Crime Commission. I asked him recently about how the Commission’s deliberations were progressing following the two days of highly publicized public testimony in August. Rob said the Commission was “keeping our cards close to our vest.” They do not want a lot of cherry-picked information floating about that could bias public perception of their final report. I respect that.

Two of the many proposals before the Commission (published in other sources) are worth particular note. House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert (R-15) has already filed legislation to create violence-reduction initiatives in Virginia that have proven successful in Boston. Youth homicide numbers in Boston dropped more than 60 percent after the first two years of the program. The program targets areas with high gang violence. Gangs are put on notice that unless the violence stops “business as usual” stops. Police presence would be high, no violation of law would be ignored no matter how minor, and gangs would find themselves under constant watch. Additionally, a social services component engages with the community and provides alternatives to gang culture.

The programs would be implemented where the violence is worst, typically in big cities. Richmond had the most gun-related murders in 2018 with almost twice as many (49) as number two Norfolk (26) and number three Newport News (20) – although Petersburg had the most murders per capita. The program would focus efforts on those who commit crimes rather than on those who want to be able to defend themselves from crime.

Virginia already has a number of small-scale, grant financed, violence reduction programs that flow through a number of agencies. The money is used in different ways depending on where in the state it is used. These programs have shown promise. With the lessons and successes of the Boston program as a guide, Delegate Gilbert’s plan could be one of the most effective recommendations to come out of the Crime Commission when they make their report to the General Assembly in November.

Unfortunately, a number of ineffective and blatantly unconstitutional measures have also been proposed to the Crime Commission. One of the more egregious of these is the so-called “Red-Flag Law.” Proponents disguise it by calling it a gun-violence prevention law, but it is really a gun-confiscation law. Red-flag laws allow any individual – who is not identified to the victim – to tell police that an individual (the victim of the law) is dangerous and should not have access to guns. The police then go to that victim’s home and take away all the victim’s guns.

These laws violate the Constitution on at least four points. First, we have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Nowhere in that document does it add “unless someone suspects you might, at some unnamed point in the future, actually use your guns.”

Red-flag laws violate our Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizures. The amendment reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” Red-flag laws in effect reduce “probable cause” to “possible cause,” and they do so without properly amending the Constitution. That means it’s unconstitutional. The state is supposed to punish those who do break the law, not those who might do so.

Red-flag laws violate our Fifth Amendment right to due process, to just compensation, and against self-incrimination. The victim is not allowed to defend himself before his property is taken, and then he has to prove himself innocent rather than require the state to prove him guilty.

Red-flag laws violate our Sixth Amendment right to confront accusers, cross-examine witnesses, and have a public defender. Not only does the victim not get to confront his accusers, he isn’t even allowed to know who made the charges against him.

If the target of a red-flag accusation is really dangerous, then take the target into custody, not the guns. If someone is going to be violent, they can do as much damage with a couple of big knives or a truck driven into a crowd on a sidewalk. You can make a case for mental health reform to deal with individuals, but confiscating those individuals’ guns under a Red-Flag law is just plain unconstitutional. Let us pray that the State Crime Commission recommends sensible and constitutional legislation to the General Assembly, not gun confiscation laws in disguise.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Raj Chetty’s credentials make him sound like the perfect, stereotypical liberal. His mother was a professor of pediatric medicine, and his father had a doctorate in economics in one of the most socialist parts of India. When Raj was nine his parents moved the family to America. Raj was valedictorian of his high school class, graduated from Harvard in three years, and earned his Doctor of Economics there as well. His first teaching job was at the University of California at Berkley. Then he returned to Harvard where in 2007 at age 28 he became one of the youngest faculty members in Harvard’s history to receive tenure. In 2015 he went to teach at Stanford, and then last year he returned to Harvard to launch his own research and policy institute with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. At age 40 he is considered one of the most influential social scientists of his generation. And as icing on the stereotype, his work was highlighted in “The Atlantic” magazine. A man with these credentials would not be expected to publish research data that supports conservative ideals.

Chetty’s research involves trying to figure out why some children’s financial prospects are much better than those of other children. Every generation of children in America has earned more than their parents’ generation – until this generation. Chetty established his research institute, called Opportunity Insights, to find out why opportunity is trending downward.

Chetty has shown that to a surprising degree a person’s financial prospects depend on where s/he grows up. For example, a person born to a family in the bottom fifth of household income in Salt Lake City had a 10.8 percent chance of reaching the top fifth. Yet in Milwaukee or Charlotte the odds are less than half that. However, when the data is examined in more detail the picture is not so cut and dried. Chetty’s research – which uses massive computing power to sort through decades of census, IRS, and other administrative data – shows extreme differences of opportunity in neighborhoods within easy walking distance of each other – even between neighborhoods that in many ways seem quite similar to each other.

There is something more at play than just one’s location on a GPS. A number of government programs have moved families from low success neighborhoods to higher success neighborhoods. Just as a reference, preteens who makes such a move go on to earn an average of 31 percent more than those who do not make such a move. That represents a lifetime earnings increase of $100,000. The research also finds that the later in life a child moves the less success they have. This indicates that the earlier in life a community affects the child, the greater the influence.

The strongest correlation to upward mobility is the number of intact families in the neighborhood. The “Atlantic” article points out the obvious: “A second parent usually means higher family income as well as more stability, a broader social network, additional emotional support and many other intangibles.” But then comes the conundrum. The correlation is with the number of two-parent families in the neighborhood, not necessarily in the home. The research has not yet shown whether one causes the other or if they both may be the result of some third factor.

One suggestion in the “Atlantic” article is the possibility that strong church communities help kids while also fostering strong marriages. Had the article’s author known about the research of Yale faculty member James J. Choi, he could have stated with some scientific certainty that “a randomized evaluation of an evangelical protestant Christian values and theology education program” allowed the research team to “conclude that this church-based program may represent a robust method of building non-cognitive skills and reducing poverty among adults in developing countries.”

That idea will not fly very well in socialist circles since one of the steps in creating a socialist takeover of a society is to destroy the family and the society’s morality. Research showing the value of a strong church community is antithetical to what socialists believe and want. In fact, a recent and widely circulated social media post vilified evangelical Christians and “all the evil they are doing.” Socialists apparently believe that strong families, economic opportunity, valuing the lives of every individual, and providing a strong moral base are somehow evil.

The point of my treatise though is that we as a society must stop disrespecting the value of two-parent families. We must also look to see what our society once had that we no longer have today. Among those missing items are strong two-parent families and a moral base that reflects the characteristics upon which this country was founded. To deny that is to deny the findings of “one of the most influential social scientists of his generation.”

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

I would not be surprised to find Bob Touhey’s picture in the dictionary under “American Patriot,” but Bob – a retired Navy Captain, former Navy test pilot, and highly decorated Vietnam War helicopter gunship pilot — would be surprised. He didn’t and still doesn’t think what he did was anything special. He believes that everyone should be willing to fight and possibly die for his country. Enough of the friends with whom he served died as a result of Vietnam to give him the right to speak on that topic.

Bob, who lives outside of Warrenton, VA, came to me because he needed help getting his story out of his head and onto paper. His book is Seawolf, Where You From?: A Warrior’s Tales. “Seawolves” were Navy helicopter gunships that were so effective against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars that they had a bounty on their heads of what would in today’s dollars be about $33,000 per crew member. Bob was a command pilot and a detachment commander in a Seawolf squadron. He only got shot down once, but it wasn’t for lack of being where the bullets were flying in both directions.

In his book, Bob reflects on the beauty of Vietnam.

Vietnam was an amazingly beautiful country. With the yearly monsoons, the inland vegetation is lush and full…. Vietnam is part of what was once known as French Indo-China, and the French military stationed units there to protect their interests. Many of the French soldiers married or lived with Vietnamese women. Their children, especially their daughters, were some of the most beautiful people I had ever seen.

Bob uses his book as an outlet to tell about the ugliness of war.

Some of the beautiful women would walk up to guard shacks protecting the entrances to some of our bases. They would start flirting with the guards there until all the soldiers or marines had gathered around them, and then they would blow themselves, the guards, and the gates up with bombs strapped to their bodies. Then the regular communist troops would attack during the resulting confusion.

In the honesty of his book, Bob speaks of the unspeakable.

In January 1969… my friend Ed Palowski was shot down…. He was in his early twenties, a good pilot, and a really nice guy. We had become friends. His fire team had made the mistake of trying to attack a mountain near the Vinh Tay Canal….

…[I]t backfired. There were all sorts of .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine gun bunkers in the mountain. So when these two gunships tried to fly straight up to the mountain, a massive crossfire of machine gun bullets hit one of the helicopters and shot it down. When it crashed, it burst into flames.

Ed was trapped in his seat…. Ed was screaming because he was burning, and the SEAL [who had come on the mission to spot Chinese advisors] saved Ed from burning alive – which was the only other option. He used his .45 to save Ed from that agony.

Seawolf, Where You From? covers Bob’s life from his patriotic upbringing in upstate New York to the weird event that allowed him to attend the Naval Academy to his stint in the Caribbean during the Cuban Missile Crisis to the perfect storm that almost sank his carrier in the Atlantic to his assignment testing captured Soviet aircraft as a Navy test pilot to his tour of duty in Vietnam to his post-retirement career as a counter-terrorism consultant – with some very interesting chapters at the end of his book.

Bob earned so many medals in Vietnam that he finally asked his commander to quit putting his name in for them. Many writers will try to define what it means to be an American hero. Bob demonstrates it.

If you would like a copy of this highly entertaining and informative, hardbound book, you can get it through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or just send $35 to Bob Touhey, P.O. Box 577, Warrenton, VA 20188. If you tell him that you heard about it from me, he will ship it to you at no extra charge. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

When my wife and I bought our first house, the first thing my wife did was paint the hallway. Unfortunately, she painted it before I could tell her about my project. I walled over the door from the hallway into the half bath and opened a new door from the half bath into our bedroom to make it more of a master bedroom. Of course, we had to paint the hallway – again. We’ve learned to communicate much better since then

After we had lived there a couple of years, one of our neighbors mentioned that the huge patio on the front of our house was installed by the previous owners to keep water away from the front basement wall. It seems that external water pressure had at one point collapsed the basement wall. The previous owners spent thousands of dollars cleaning up the mess and rebuilding that foundational wall. I went down and looked carefully at that wall – took a level to it – and saw that it was leaning in. That concerned me. Since I didn’t have thousands of dollars to spend on replacing a basement foundation wall (still don’t), I got inventive. I built a heavy duty set of storage shelves against that wall. I framed the shelves with double studded 2x4s bolted at the bottom into the concrete floor and at the top into the joists of the floor above. Then I screwed ¾ inch plywood into 2×4 cross braces so that these 2-foot deep shelves tied the strength of the 2x4s at the front of the shelves into the strength of the ones at the back of the shelves. I don’t know whether that wall would have caved in again had I not braced it, but I made very sure that it could not.

The point of these two stories is that cosmetics such as fresh paint is wasted if the structure isn’t right, but it doesn’t matter what you do to the structure of the house if the foundation is bad. Conservatives need to learn that lesson quickly. There is a lot of pressure pushing against the foundation of our society. There are people both foreign and domestic who are trying to tear down the very foundation of our way of life. Yet conservatives seem focused on building their lives without paying attention to the foundation on which their lives are built. People should build a career, grow a family, and enjoy the benefits of life in America. But people mindlessly risk it all if they ignore the blatant threats very publicly trying to destroy that foundation. Without that foundation, everything else collapses.

An article entitled “Beware the Useful Idiots” has been circulating on social media. It is a summary of the areas of control communist Saul Alinsky says socialists need in order to take over a country. It is an accurate though abridged list of what we are facing. (Hillary Clinton wrote her college honors thesis in tribute to this guy.)

Alinsky says if socialists control healthcare they will control the people. He says socialists need to increase poverty because poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if the government is providing everything they need to live. To increase welfare is to allow the government to control every aspect of citizens’ lives (food, housing, and income). Alinsky advocates increasing public debt to unsustainable levels so the government can increase taxes and create more poverty. He insists on gun control so the people cannot defend themselves from the government. That also opens the way to a police state. Take control of education so socialists can control what the next generation learns about history and our society. Remove belief in God from public life so that there is no moral standard. And create class warfare by dividing people into wealthy and poor. This will allow the government to tax all the money away from the wealthy so that everyone will be poor. Every one of these agendas is being pushed in America today. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin described the people who bought into these ideas as “Useful Idiots.” These Useful Idiots have destroyed every nation in which they have seized power and control – as they are currently trying to do in America.

Conservatives – particularly the evangelical church – are letting this happen. Some don’t want to believe that our way of life could ever be at risk, so they go on as normal while blindly assuming the foundation is forever good. Some naively hope that all the bad news will go away without them having to get involved. Some claim that they don’t know what to do – even though it isn’t that hard to figure out. And some are just too busy building the structure of their lives to pay appropriate attention to the very foundation on which they build.

If conservatives will take a little time away from building the structure of their lives, they still have time to invest in bracing and strengthening the foundation of American society so that everything they are building does not collapse because of a broken foundation. The logic is simple. The doing of it is not so simple. Getting people to actually do it is the hardest part of all.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Rumors are flying about the Republican nomination situation in House District 30. I talked with several of the major players to find out what is really going on. Nick Freitas, the incumbent delegate from District 30 filed his paperwork with the State Board of Elections (SBE) in a timely manner. He also sent a copy of his paperwork and his filing fee to the District 30 Legislative District Committee (LDC30). In due course he received both his cancelled check and an email from LDC30 telling him that his paperwork had been filed. Then a few days later he discovered his name was not on the ballot. He checked to find out why, and the SBE said they could not find one of Nick’s forms and they could not find a record of LDC30 having filed a copy of his paperwork. Nick and his legal team asked for an extension to allow them to refile the missing documents, but the SBE refused. The SBE allowed five other candidates to have extensions so that they could get their paperwork in order after the filing date, but every time the GOP member of the SBE made a motion to approve an extension for Nick neither of the Democratic members would second it, so the motion died without being heard. (Parenthetically, the SBE is made up of one Republican member, one Democratic member, and one member representing the Party of the Governor. This is another reason why winning statewide offices is so important.)

When the SBE ruled that under no circumstances would Nick’s name be on the ballot, his legal team told him that he could spend $100,000 and fight the ruling in court with a less than even chance of winning or he could run as a write-in candidate. Or LDC30 could select a different candidate and go to court with a good chance to get that candidate on the ballot. Nick was more concerned about having a Republican candidate on the ballot than about that candidate being himself. He told LDC30 members to go ahead and select someone else. They refused. They think he can win a write-in campaign, and they intend for him to run one.

Some among the GOP leadership, including House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert, are deeply concerned about maintaining at least 51 seats in the House of Delegates. If Democrats gain the majority, everything conservatives have gained over the past generation will be lost in two afternoons, and Virginia will become California east with rat problems like Sacramento, homeless problems like San Francisco, outrageous taxes, an unending stream of illegal immigrants, unlimited government spending, unlimited abortion, and almost total gun control. Todd is deeply concerned about the future – or lack of it – that his children would have in Virginia should Democrats take control of the General Assembly. Court ordered redistricting has turned several solidly Republican districts into toss-up districts. House District 30 was not at risk until this SBE filing foul up. Todd and other House leaders wanted LDC30 to choose a new nominee as the best option going forward. In District 30, an R by a candidate’s name is almost all that candidate needs to win. Without a candidate on the ballot, the seat is not secure. When LDC30 chose to have Nick run a write-in campaign, Todd and several other leaders tried to find some way or someone to convince them to change their minds. At no time did Todd try to get any member of LDC30 replaced.

Then during a recent conference call, RPV’s consulting lawyers said that a new nominee’s chance of getting on the ballot via a court order were little better than Nick’s chances. That drastically changed the dynamics of the decision. As things now stand Nick is running as a write-in candidate, and he has a good chance of winning the seat again. He has an extra month to campaign (since he doesn’t have to wait on the resolution of a court case), he has raised a half million dollars, and he has retained the team that helped Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski win her seat with a state-wide write-in campaign.

Todd Gilbert and others did NOT try to change the makeup of LDC30. They did try to convince LDC30 members to change their minds out of a deep concern for the wellbeing of Virginia as a whole. We Republicans need to learn to talk with each other about what we want rather than assuming those with whom we disagree do so from evil motives. Nick has pointed out in a public post that his discussions with Todd and others have been about finding the best strategy for moving forward. He still considers Todd to be a good friend

Finally, since Nick Freitas is running a write-in campaign, he will need everyone to get on board in support of his campaign. It is winnable. We must win it. We must work together to win it. Passions have been high because the stakes are high. Let’s turn that passion into effort for Nick and all of our Republican candidates this fall.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.