Thayer: Holding thugs accountable for graffiti

This letter is by Gregory Thayer of Rutland. He is a candidate for lieutenant governor.

I condemn the actions of the person or persons who violated the People’s House in Montpelier this past weekend in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court sending the abortion issue back to the States under the Tenth Amendment to our Constitution. This is the correct place for this issue.

These juvenile actions should not be tolerated and they must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Equally, if it is proven that these acts were perpetrated by minors, the parents/guardians need be held accountable too. This type of behavior shall never be acceptable.

Actions have consequences and people need to be held accountable and learn from their actions. I immediately condemned these actions on the LT. Governor’s Twitter page writing: “I condemn these actions, and ask that people get the truth. This SCOTUS ruling shifts abortions to the States, where it’s closes to the people. Here in VT. abortion is legal right up to moments before birth. #Respect”

I’m not going to get into my reasoning as to why I support the Court’s actions. I have attached my OpEd piece here for your reading here.

Friends, please take a step back and look at the entire picture and you will see that this is the best practice for this issue, closest to the People. As your Lieutenant Governor, I will advocate tirelessly to get the truth out to all of the people.

Gregory M. Thayer, MBA
Candidate for Vermont Lieutenant Governor
Rutland, Vermont

Image courtesy of Public domain

12 thoughts on “Thayer: Holding thugs accountable for graffiti

  1. Candidtate for Lt. Governor Thayer did the right thing in comdeming this vandalism. Extremist who break the law, be they on the left or right or no matter how fervently they believe in their cause, should be held accountable and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

  2. Radical marxist anarchists are ignorant, petty and confused. They did damage to an edifice that houses one of the most radically-marxist legislatures in the Country. They do not realize or refuse to acknowledge that a pre-born human is a human. They must have spent a lot of time playing with their “smart” phones during biology and civics class. The actions they took in delivering their THREAT OF VIOLENCE should be treated as terrorism. Treat them the way they would treat others. If caught, some creative islamic-style justice should be invoked: the surgical removal of the finger that is normally used to depress the nozzle of the spray paint. Other appendages will follow for subsequent offenses.

  3. Mr. Thayer, when a woman bears a child, she undertakes a great responsibility— to raise that child well. Intelligent pregnant women know what the odds against that are, and they might well decide they cannot do it. Here is a list of the dangers they will have to protect their child against:

    In America a child is born approximately every nine seconds, about 7 per minute, about 400 per hour, 96,000 per day, 3.5 million every year. Due to the sheer force of probability, each one of them has a destiny fairly well shaped for it as soon as its mother decides to carry it to term:

    Every eighteen seconds a child is born who for most of his life will barely, if at all, know his biological father
    Every 27 seconds, a baby is born whose parents never intended for him to exist
    Every thirty-six seconds, a baby is born who will not graduate high school
    Every thirty-six seconds, a child is born to a life without health insurance
    Every thirty-six seconds, a baby is born who will live in a family with an alcoholic parent
    Every forty-five seconds a child will be born to live in poverty
    Every sixty-three seconds a child is born who will be left alone at home unsupervised between the ages of five and fourteen
    Every eighty-one seconds a baby is born who will come home after school to an empty house
    Of the ten babies born every minute and a half, four are born to mothers weren’t “elated about their condition.”
    Every minute and a half a baby is born whose family pays more than half of its income for rent- two and a half times the national average
    Every minute and a half a baby will be born to a child
    Every minute and a half, a child is born who will experience lifelong depression
    Every minute and forty-five seconds a child will be born at an extremely low birth weight, at risk for school failure and for a felony conviction
    Every two minutes and twelve seconds, a girl baby will be born whose sexual abuse will begin at about age two and continue until about age 14
    Every three minutes, a girl will be born who will herself become a pregnant teenager
    Every three minutes, a child is born who will live in a household with no parent present
    
Every three minutes and 18 seconds a boy will be born to suffer sexual abuse
    Every five minutes a child will be born who will run away from home. Almost every other child will be running away because of intolerable family conditions
    Every six minutes and forty-five seconds a child will be born who will have to receive state custody to protect him from his own parents
    Every 8 ½ minutes, a child will be born to suffer child abuse.
    Every twenty-two minutes and 20 seconds a child will be born who will go to jail
    Every hour, a baby will be born to die within the first year of life
    Every hour and fifty minutes, a child will be born to die from a gunshot wound
    Every third hour, a baby will be born severely damaged for life by alcohol while in his mother’s womb

    To avoid almost all of these fates costs about $300,000: food, clothing, education, respite care, law enforcement, strong social services, and so on. The woman who decides she is not ready to have a child knows what she’s talking about. If you think you are doing a fetus a favor by forcing her to bear a child, please step forward with the money needed to make sure the child is indeed raised well.

    • Cgregory: You completely miss the point. This story is about the double standard of our legal system and the reticence of many of our elected officials to recognize and admit it.

      The people who vandalized the Vermont State House apparently forgot they are in Vermont and are clueless that the SCOTUS decision on the Dobbs case means that they (the people of Vermont) are responsible for their future (or lack thereof, as the case may be).

      As it is:
      “Vermont does not have any of the major types of abortion restrictions—such as waiting periods, mandated parental involvement, or limitations on publicly funded abortions—often found in other states.”

      “Vermont does not have a law requiring that alternatives to abortion be discussed with a patient before an abortion is performed.”

      “Vermont is one of only a very few states that allow abortions to be performed by non-physicians (physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and nurse midwives).”

      “It’s legal for an abortion to be performed in Vermont at any stage of pregnancy for any reason, or for no reason. “

      You have, to a limited extent, expressed your sentiment, incongruous as it may be. But if you want to convince me to agree with you, don’t condone the violence at the state house. Explain why killing an unborn fetus isn’t considered murder, when killing a pregnant woman is deemed a double homicide, even when she’s contemplating having an abortion.

      Explain why it matters that “[e]very thirty-six seconds, a baby is born who will not graduate high school…..”, given that every eleven seconds, a baby is born who WILL graduate from high school. In other words, while 876,000 of these babies don’t graduate from high school, 2,737,647 of them do.

      Of course, I’d like you to explain why you think graduating from high school is a necessarily good thing and homeschooling, for example, isn’t. After all, Abraham Lincoln was self-educated. Fredrick Douglass was self-taught too. Not to mention Charles Dickens, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, and George Gershwin. What would our society be like if your logic applied to them?

      Explain why it isn’t a waste of our time to discuss unintentional (‘elated’) pregnancies (as if anyone can really know) and how the intention to have a child guaranties a successful outcome.

      Explain why having money ensures that a child is raised well. Are there no alcoholic, irresponsible rich people having kids? And keep in mind that when a child is born to an impoverished family, and has no health insurance, we do ‘step forward with the money needed’ – they qualify for Medicaid, and myriad other benefits.

      I’m not convinced this is the zero-sum issue you would have us believe it is and I look forward to the continued debate. But, again, this article is about the violence that occurred at the state house. And, better late than never, public sentiment has pushed our politicians to agree – halfhearted as they are.

      • Mr. Eshelman: Thayer quote: “I’m not going to get into my reasoning as to why I support the Court’s actions.” It’s time someone gave Thayer a reason to question his support, even if it was off thread.

        Elsewhere I dealt with the allegations about “lefties” having done the damage, a charge which appears unwarranted.

        Apart from the extremely rare news stories about rich children benefiting from “affluenza” when they break the law, the effects of lack of resources– generally expressed in terms of affordability– are extremely well known. The Warner Smith longitudinal (30-year) study of families in poverty in Maui showed that while, in line with your preference, two-thirds of children escaped the poverty trap in adult life, one-third did not. If you imagine a barrel of apples, one-third of which are rotten, you can see that having a society with one-third of its citizens blighted physically, mentally or morally ought to be unacceptable. It is not abortion, but nurture, that they need– and most of that nurture costs (check out the Ceaucescu Romanian orphanage situation for a comparison).

        In sum, as a Mel Brooks character once said, “I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” We need to put that $300,000 price tag on each fetus.

        But to get back to the original thread– before insisting on punishment for the malefactor, let’s get straight who the guilty party is.

        • As I said, Cgregory, we already DO put the $300,000 price tag on every unborn child, in Maui (of all places), and elsewhere. Why you persist at ignoring that point tells me you have an ulterior motive for expressing your point of view. Or, perhaps, you’re simply confused.

          Re: “But to get back to the original thread– before insisting on punishment for the malefactor, let’s get straight who the guilty party is.”

          The ‘guilty party’ is the person (or persons) who attacked the Vermont Statehouse. No one made them break the law.

          • Not until it’s YOUR $300,000 do you put that price tag on a fetus, Mr. Eshelman. The so-called “pro-lifers” are very careful not to let that bill be mailed to them. They are very focused on being seen as heroes, not as heroes in substance.

            The guilty parties, when or if discovered, will turn out not to be lefties. Why a contributor for True North would claim that they are is telling.

          • I contribute ‘my fair share’, cgregory, as, I assume, do you… as long as you pay your fair share of taxes too.

            Or am I being overly presumptuous to begin thinking that this is what you’re upset about. You’d rather these expectant mothers kill their unborn babies so your taxes decrease.

    • An individual can take preventative measures to not have children if they dont want them but are sexually active. However i understand sometimes there are exceptions. For those exceptions id say the pregnancy could be terminated, if desired, for up to 15 weeks. Beyond that its simply homicide. Who’s protecting the rights of the unborn? They are young people, not clumps of cells.

      • Chris, to reiterate my point: What you understand is your perspective. Cgregory has his understanding too. But the point you both continue to ignore is that the SCOTUS decision on Dobbs assigns to all of us the responsibility to not only express our opinion on the matter, but to lobby Vermont’s citizens and state government to follow it. In other words, the decision is on all of us now – not on a federal edict. And we will all have to accept responsibility for the rule of law we establish – whatever that is. We are now complicit in the decision-making process. Which is, I suspect, why so many people are upset. They don’t want to be held accountable.

        As with anything educational, one size never fits all. What we fail to understand is the benefit of Federalism, ‘states rights’ in our constitutional republic. It’s commonly referred to as ‘democracy’s laboratory’. Vermont has its laws. Mississippi has its laws. We’ll see, sooner or later, which laws produce which outcomes. And our decisions can be revised accordingly… by we the people… not a centralized oligarchy.

        Your questions are legitimate. And you should answer them on your behalf. But those who violated the statehouse (or condone the violation), attacked the messenger (the SCOTUS), who is merely telling us we have a constitutional obligation to express our opinions or abstain. And it’s time we step up to the plate and make our case under the precepts of our Federal and State Constitutions.

      • Well, Chris, you can protect the rights of an unborn by hiring the pregnant woman at a price of $300,000 to carry the fetus to term. So, pony up– or is fetal life not that precious in your estimate?

        • What is it about reality that eludes you, cgregory? As I’ve been trying to explain to you, taxpayers already ‘pony up’ plenty of social services. Not to mention the many and various private pregnancy resource centers… as long as the violent left doesn’t throw Molotov cocktails through their windows.

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