Of course there is a cost to the signs. On the 60 Minutes piece where the rural farmer kept getting them taken from his yard, I think they were $15-20 each. If the OP’s thief took 5 or so, it can add up.
I think it is the kind of thing where there is a deferred judgment, the thief pays the court costs ($100-500), does some community service, and the entire thing is dropped in a year if he no more bad acts. If the matter is then dismissed, it doesn’t have to be reported to schools where the question is usually "have you been convicted of any crimes?’
Smashing mailboxes with baseball bats is actual vandalistic destruction of property which is far more serious in scope and scale than merely stealing a political sign.
Not to mention if those mailboxes are considered USPS property, it’s automatically a Federal case as USPS property IS Federal property and vandalistically destroying Federal property is a serious criminal offense.
In short, there’s a much stronger case for rescinding admission for kids who bash mailboxes with baseball bats than for kids who steal political signs for prankish kicks.
The former’s much more likely to be inclined to physically destroy property and possibly prone to physical violence which no campus would likely desire risking. The latter…nowhere near as much.
My…some of those penalties kind of parody an old joke I used to make in HS equating some draconian rules/penalties with over-the-top authoritarian/totalitarian governments mandating death sentences for kids who don’t eat their vegetables…
That would have been a jail sentence to someone like me.
Not everyone just arbitrarily has $1k to just toss on something. I have worked since as long as I can remember but I still never had spare money. My money went to things like bills.
“Fine” means nothing to the middle & upper classes and can be a jail sentence to the poor. That’s why I believe in community service type things- it affects (more or less) everyone relatively equally.
But would you steal @romani? The point of the fine would be giving it to the cause you oppose. Whether it was $50 or $500, The fine would make a point. Don’t steal.
“Stothart, 52, was charged with one count of wrongful removal of temporary signs, a civil violation, after she and two friends removed approximately 40 Trump/ Pence signs from public rights of way on Route 1 in Falmouth. Under state law, she faces up to a $250 fine per sign, her attorney Benjamin Donahue said.”
This is a town close to us. $250 x 40, ouch. I don’t know what happened with the case. She was supposed to appear in court in February.
I really can’t believe that people think a kid should be rescinded from college acceptance for stealing a political yard sign, or lose scholarships. Really? I think that’s overkill in the extreme.
I saw the signs in the article @MaineLonghorn referenced, and they were truly overkill, and truly obnoxious. I have vowed never to patronize the businesses owned by the person who posted them, businesses I patronized before.
Like most people, I’ve been hugely irritated by political signs and bumper stickers from time to time. I’ve felt the impulse to knock them down. Yet I’ve refrained, because free speech and all that. It does make me more restrained in signs I post.
But taking college away from a teen for this seems ludicrous to me.
My daughter stole our neighbors Trump sign. It has been easy being her Dad, she is an exceptional person, I was kind of proud of her, her Mother thought she wasn’t being a god example for her 14 year old brother. They planned it and did it at 1:30 at night. We live in Massachusetts so I don’t think it swayed the election as maybe it could in a small town local election.
Just tonight, my neighbor asked me about my son. It
Was 9 years ago, when he and neighbor’s son graduTed HS. My clotest neighbor said that they spent an hour picking up beer bottl s, but “knew” they came from neighbor’s son. So, hear il am, so many years later, explaining X my son in grad school. I’m so surprised that our neighbor’s have such fixed impressions when they met my son at age 11. He is 30 now, but my neighbor’s remember him as the considerate youth at 13 y. O.
Just saying, back during the Kennedy-Nixon campaign, I lived in a great, friendly neighborhood where it was the dads who took each other’s signs. They’d replant them so a K supporter woke to a N sign and vice versa. And change bumper stickers. No one had a meltdown. Different era.
Nope, we have it displayed in our basement. She is an adult now and can make her own decisions. I proud of what she took a chance on, she usually would never do anything like this. He replaced it with a man made one, and they new that was off limits. Read my other post and you can she what she has accomplished. I’m proud of every thing she has done since the second she was born. No apologize from us.
I may think a certain candidate was despicable but IMHO the answer is not to abridge someone else’s free speech rights but to make use of one’s own. I would have bought your daughter a pink ■■■■■ hat and encouraged her to wear it proudly. I would have marched beside her at rallies and helped her write letters to the editor and driven her to phone banks. Sign stealing? No. By encouraging her to steal her neighbor’s sign you gave ammunition to those who said that candidate’s opponents were hooligans.
@lookingforward’s example of sign-stealing is different in my opinion, in that there was a clear attempt to prank the dads and the number of signs displayed didn’t change.
I don’t think that being proud of your child for stealing is a great parenting tool. You don’t have to agree with the law, but you have to follow it .
Where then so you draw the line if your child breaks other laws or steals ?