In 1941, Japan dragged the United States into World War II by attacking Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – an action for which the U.S. military was totally unprepared. The following year, the U.S. Navy’s ground troops – the United States Marines – eventually aided by units of the U.S. Army, fought and won a bloody, six-month-long battle against a fierce and tenacious enemy on the island of Guadalcanal. The First Marine Division was on the front page of every newspaper in America due to their ferocious and heroic efforts to protect freedom around the world through a battle on a tiny bit of land in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean.

Obviously, one battle did not win the war in the Pacific just as one battle at Pearl Harbor did not lose it. Many more battles were fought and won – Midway, New Guinea, Tarawa, Saipan, Luzon, Iwo Jima, among others – before America could claim victory in the war.

Republicans are currently in a similar situation. Republicans were unprepared for what happened in November 2020. The next year, Republicans won a long and fierce battle in Virginia. The victory made headlines around the country. But as at Guadalcanal, the war is not over, nor is victory assured.

During World War II, America called upon “citizen soldiers,” non-professional military men and women, to fill the ranks of the forces needed to win the War. Because of what they accomplished, they have become known as “the greatest generation,” a truly fitting title for those heroes of freedom.

Republicans also use an army of volunteer citizens. Their opponents, on the other hand, have many paid professionals working year-round to win the next battle and the next and the one after that.

After America-loving Virginia conservatives won the battle of the November 2021 election, euphoria reigned. People celebrated. But many exhausted volunteers thought, “My job is done here.” Unfortunately, it isn’t.

Following Guadalcanal, the exhausted First Marine Division wanted to go home, but they couldn’t. The war continued because of a tenacious and crafty enemy. At the end of 2021, the Republican’s volunteer army needs to stay in the fight because the war continues. Certainly, there is a need for R & R (rest and relaxation) after a big battle, but that is only for a brief time.

After that, armies need to be reinforced, resupplied, retrained, and released into battle again.

Over the holidays, Republican volunteers will take time to enjoy their friends and families as they rejuvenate themselves for the coming battles. Many of them will move into new positions of responsibility as election integrity and get-out-the-vote efforts expand in preparation for the 2022 general election. Many new volunteers will join their ranks.

No one should wait until November to take the next step in the fight. As proscribed by the Code of Virginia, events leading up to November General Elections begin as early as January. Additionally, there are mass meetings, unit meetings, and conventions that require volunteer involvement. City council meetings, board of supervisor meetings, and other public events need volunteers to attend, hear and understand what is being done in each meeting so that elected officials can be held accountable to those who elected them.

In most areas of Virginia, the need for competent, tenacious fighters is great. The training is good. The results are crucial. Conservatives must stand up and fill those roles.

The Republican Party needs to keep its huge, mobilized force of volunteers intact. In fact, it needs to expand that force. Most people don’t know how the election process works, and that leaves the process open to exploitation. Volunteer, learn the process, and be a part of keeping the election process honest, fair, and accurate.

Cordially,

Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

 

P.S. To see what a dedicated volunteer can do with a little creativity, watch this video on Progressive Lynchburg City Councilman Beau Wright’s lack of support for public safety. Re-election is coming.

https://www.facebook.com/LynchburgRepublicanCityCommittee/videos/1125945801275751

 

An article in the liberal leaning but relatively honest news site “The Hill” is less than glowing in its regard for the Biden administration’s decision to release fifty million barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR). One key point in the Zack Budryk article is that Biden will want to take credit for a reduction in gasoline prices that would have happened – and had already started to happen – without the government doing anything.

Gasoline prices have historically fallen at this time of year because of lower demand. Students are back in school, and vacations are over, so most people drive fewer miles in the winter than they do in the summer. Because people are using less gas – about two million barrels less per day during the winter months compared to the summer months – the law of supply and demand dictates that prices go down.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, points out that oil prices had already been on the decline ahead of Biden’s announcement. He also notes other factors contributing to a reduction. One of the biggest, he said, was an increase in coronavirus cases in Europe, increasing the likelihood of new travel restrictions or lockdowns that would reduce demand.

Tom Kloza, co-founder of the Oil Price Information Service, notes that Americans will probably see 60 to 75 days of gas prices “wobbling a little bit lower.” He doubts that prices will either drop sharply or gain significantly in the near term. However, Kloza warns that as gasoline demands return to pre-pandemic levels, Americans could see another sharp spike in prices next spring.

Republicans like to point out that Biden cancelled the Keystone Pipeline, however, even if uninterrupted, the Keystone would not have been ready to deliver oil in time to do anything about reducing this year’s price spike. It did presage Biden administration attitudes toward the petroleum industry, and that alone had a chilling effect on oil production.

Another example of Biden’s attitude toward oil is the ban on further development of oil resources on federal land. Even though that ban has since been lifted, it delayed investment in new sources of oil.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm blames the oil industry for the rising cost of gas. She says that oil companies have not yet begun wells despite holding thousands of permits. Then she brings out the tired line that oil companies are making enormous profits.

If Granholm knew what she was talking about, she would know that those billions of dollars in the bank are necessary to pay the cost of drilling new wells. At the depths companies must reach in the search for new oil fields, the cost of a single well is over a billion dollars. And there is no guarantee that drillers will find oil at the bottom of the hole. Gambling one billion dollars against geological and seismic research with only an educated guess that there will be return on the investment requires a lot of cash in hand. Oil investors have a lot riding on a well. Because the risks are so great, they are justified in seeking returns in keeping with the risks they take.

Additionally, before oil producers risk a billion dollars on a new well, they want to make sure the government is not going to shut them down – ruining their investments – with a bureaucratic regulation never even voted on by Congress.

As with most business in America, the best thing the government can do for the oil industry is get out of the way.

One other point in this release of SPR oil is that SPR oil is set aside to prevent short term shortages caused by war or natural disasters such as a hurricane hitting the refineries along the Gulf Coast. Biden’s release of SPR oil is unprecedented because for the first time since its inception SPR oil is being released as a form of price management.

Biden’s SPR oil release is little more than a publicity stunt so that he can say he is doing something about the high price of gas. In reality, his actions, as do most actions so far by his administration, are politically motivatd and accomplish nothing of real value for the American people.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

The first part of 2021 was an absolute nightmare for the Republican Party of Virginia’s (RPV) State Central Committee (SCC), which is the policy making body for the RPV. A group of “establishment” Republicans held the entire SCC – and thus the entire RPV – hostage by refusing, until no other option was left, to go along with the majority’s vote to use a convention to nominate our candidates for statewide office.

Thankfully, once we selected our nominees at the convention we finally managed to hold, everyone worked together to get those three candidates elected. Obviously, a unified Republican Party can be successful. This compares to the two prior statewide elections, both of which we lost in large part because of a divided Republican Party.

Now that our candidates are elected, the same group who caused so much consternation at the beginning of the year are back to their old tricks. A letter written by SCC member Mike Ginsberg (CD 11, Fairfax) outlines the elements of the issue here. [I agree with Mike on all points, and I have Mike’s permission to use his letter. I have modified small bits of it to protect innocent people.]

Mike’s letter starts by registering his “deep and profound disappointment” that the insider cabal, by arranging for ineligible people to vote on the Executive Committee, selected one of their cronies as “RPV Volunteer of the Year.” Mike writes:

First, I strongly believe these awards should be reserved for rank-and-file volunteers.  We should be recognizing volunteers who generally do not get recognition, who toil anonymously in the vineyards asking nothing for themselves.  [The selectee] was an elected member of the State Central Committee and [he was another GOP organization’s] Chairman.  In these positions, he received plenty of recognition and publicity.  SCC should not be in the business of giving awards to its own members.  …[T]he runner-up, is the very definition of the type of volunteer we should be recognizing.  He has given hundreds of hours to the party, not to see his name in lights, but to work for victory.  He’s never received recognition of any kind.  [The selectee] has received plenty of public accolades in his time; [the runner-up] has never received any.  That the ExComm cannot see this speaks volumes about its priorities and its consideration for the grassroots.  

Given that last year’s volunteer of the year award recipient was also a… member of the SCC, we will give the appearance that RPV is a club of insiders scratching each other’s backs.  In this case, I fear, the appearance accurately reflects reality, and our rank-and-file volunteers will see that.  

Second, [the selectee] played, in my view, a deeply unconstructive role in the nomination fight that consumed the first six months of the year.  His behavior on public Zoom meetings was abhorrent and repeatedly embarrassed the party.  [The selectee deliberately insulted] members supporting a convention.  He rebuffed several of my direct efforts to seek compromise….  His behavior, and the behavior of the… organization he led, was a disgrace. 

This is not behavior RPV should reward.  That it has is an insult to me and to all those who genuinely believed the convention was the best method of nomination and who behaved with decorum during the course of the debate.  

[L]et me be blunt: I am convinced more than ever our convention set the table for a statewide sweep.  (I’d also note that the Democrats’ primary left them with their weakest possible ticket; I think we would have had a much harder fight had the Democrats nominated McClellan, Carroll Foy, or Jay Jones.)  Our decision to hold a convention – particularly in the wake of the events of January 6 – was the smartest strategic decision anyone made all year.  My colleagues and I understood this and played chess, not checkers…. To reward one of the chief architects of all of [the aforementioned]misbehavior is a slap in the face and an abject disgrace.

District Chairmen are the only voting members of the Executive Committee. However, some non-voting members of the Executive Committee were allowed to vote on this selection. It seems that certain members of SCC will hold everyone else to the Party Plan, but not themselves when it suits their own needs. We may be in the process of fixing some things in our state government, but we apparently need to fix some things within GOP leadership as well.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

“The Prodigal Son” is one of the best known stories in the Bible. If you aren’t familiar with it, you can find it in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15, verses 11 through 32. (I recommend reading all of Luke, just on general principle.)

In this story, a man had two sons. The younger son decided he wanted his inheritance NOW, rather than waiting until his father died, so that he could go and live “the good life.” He went and spent everything on his friends, yet when he ran out of money, his so-called friends ran out on him. Then a famine struck the country, and the younger son was reduced to working at a filthy, disgusting job that still didn’t provide enough food for him to live.

Then he got smart. He remembered that his father’s servants had plenty to eat, while he was starving. So he decided to tuck his tail and go hat-in-hand to ask his father for a job as a servant. Instead, his father welcomed him back into the family with great joy.

A commentary my wife and I were reading the other day about this story used the phrase, “He didn’t know what he had until he lost it.” That sounds too much like America today.

When Donald Trump was President, the media constantly ranted about how awful he was, and Americans believed the lies. They also believed Joe Biden’s lies. As a result, Americans took their inheritance of liberty and went with a different leader – Joe Biden – into a totally different philosophy of life and government. It didn’t take long for Americans to find themselves well on the way to a bankrupt society.

The price of petroleum products – gas, oil, plastic – has doubled in less than a year. And the administration not only doesn’t care, they laugh about it. They plan to shut down a pipeline in Michigan that provides the propane that 90 percent of Michiganders in the Upper Peninsula need to heat their homes in their decidedly frigid winters. And the administration America elected doesn’t care.

Inflation is getting out of hand. Not surprisingly, inflation is several points higher in states that supported Trump in 2020 than in states that supported Biden. This is all due to federal government policies.

Transportation is a problem due to the doubling of gas prices. That prevents people not only from visiting relatives during holidays but also from driving their children to school. Speaking of school, federal policies have changed in the last year to speed up the indoctrination of our children in camps called “public schools.”

The increase in gas and diesel prices raises the cost of everything that has to travel by truck or rail – there are no electric trucks or solar powered trains. It affects the supply chain. There are too many empty shelves in this country, a country that was once known for its bounty.

And like the prodigal son, Americans have started to realize the mess we are in and have decided to go back home. That doesn’t mean they are becoming Trump supporters, but it does mean that they are going back to the type of society and economy that Trump’s policies encouraged and made into reality.

Parents are taking back their schools. In Bedford County, two candidates for school board were elected as write-in candidates, because parents wanted school board members who would listen to them.

In Virginia, conservative candidates won all three state-wide offices and retook control of the House of Delegates.

In New Jersey, a truck driver who spent less than two thousand dollars on his campaign beat the president of the New Jersey state senate even though the incumbent spent almost a half million dollars.

Similar election results occurred all over the country in local elections because Americans have seen the mess we are in and have decided to return to the much better life of constitutional government and a capitalistic economic system, both of which will welcome them with liberty and personal opportunity.

It’s about time this prodigal nation comes to its senses and returns home to the principles that made us great.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Kudos to all the volunteers who worked so hard before, during, and after election day to gain this marvelous victory for common sense and a better Commonwealth. Of note are the hundreds of poll greeters who stood outside, often in the rain, to make literature and sample ballots available to the voters who came to the polls.

I am especially proud of the thousands of volunteers who served as “authorized representatives” inside the polling places to verify that each precinct was doing what they were supposed to do in order to have a fair election. Many came at 5:00 a.m. to watch the preparations that took place prior to the polls opening. Others stayed until after 9:00 p.m. to observe the ballot count and close of the precinct operations. They did an extraordinary job at what was often a tedious duty, although there were sometimes a few moments of interest.

I am chief election officer at a precinct in Lynchburg. As such, I serve as chief problem solver. If someone shows up and the poll book operator cannot find their name in the poll book or if they are shown to have been sent an absentee ballot, they get to visit me. In the first case, they often have come to the wrong polling place, and I help get them to the right one. In the second case, if they bring their absentee ballot with them, they simply turn it in to me and vote as a regular voter. If they do not have their ballot, we have them vote a provisional ballot. If the absentee ballot that was sent to them is returned as voted, the local Electoral Board will disallow the provisional ballot. If the absentee ballot does not come back as having been voted, then the provisional ballot will be counted.

Without going into specifics, I told the “authorized representatives” (one from each party) stationed at my precinct the general nature of the issues. They appreciated my openness and willingness to let them know what they were observing. I saw it as something every chief should do, I have nothing to hide, and the representatives can vouch for the fact that we ran the polling place legally and with regard for the voter.

One unusual situation occurred at my polling place. We had a minor issue with the printer on our ballot counter (the machine into which voters placed their ballots after they marked them). I lifted the printer cover to fish out a stray piece of paper. Then we couldn’t get the cover to shut. The technician arrived about 15 minutes after I called for help. It took another 10 minutes or so to figure out the problem. The unfortunate result of the situation is that we could not run ballots through the counter until we got the printer cover fixed.

There is a special, emergency lockbox on the back of the ballot box that is designed for just such a situation. Voters put their ballots into that box instead of into the counter. We planned, at the end of the day, to take the ballots out of the locked box and feed them into the counter before running the final results report (using that pesky printer).

I went to the trouble several times to explain to the voters waiting in line what the situation was and why they were putting their ballots someplace other than in the counter. Most people understood and were okay with the plan. One voter, however, left in disgust and started spreading the rumor that “they shut down the counter! They are trying to steal the election from Youngkin!” She obviously had no idea who I was or my role with the GOP or how hard I’ve been working for the Youngkin campaign prior to election day. (I’m only non-partisan on election day.) If the voter had known any of that she would have realized how silly her notion was. Instead, I got an agitated phone call from one local GOP committee member and a text query from a local elected GOP official, all up in arms until I explained the situation.

At the end of the day, the authorized representatives from each party watched me take the ballots out of the locked box and verified that I did not leave any in the box. Then the one Democratic representative and two Republican representatives watched every step as my assistant chief, a Democrat, and I ran each ballot through the counter. Everything was totally above board.

The speculative rumor that someone was trying to steal the election was merely a tempest in a teapot started because someone got angry before they found out all the facts. It just illustrates the value that authorized representatives have to the election officers. Nothing shady took place. And I have witnesses from each party to prove it.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.