Wealth and hubris fuel the tale of a politically connected Missouri couple who allegedly poisoned their neighbor’s trees to secure their million-dollar view of Camden Harbor. The incident that was unearthed by the victim herself — the philanthropic wife of L.L. Bean’s late president — has united local residents in outrage.
To make matters worse, the herbicide used to poison the trees leached into a neighboring park and the town’s only public seaside beach. The state attorney general is now investigating.
“Anybody dumb enough to poison trees right next to the ocean should be prosecuted, as far as I’m concerned,” said Paul Hodgson, echoing the view of many exasperated residents in Camden, a community of 5,000 nestled at the foot of mountains that sweep upward from the Atlantic Ocean and overlook a harbor filled with lobster boats, yachts and schooners.
Amelia Bond, former CEO of the St. Louis Foundation, which oversees charitable funds with more than $500 million in assets, brought the herbicide from Missouri in 2021 and applied it near oak trees on the waterfront property of Lisa Gorman, wife of the late Leon Gorman, L.L. Bean’s president and grandson of L.L. himself, according to a pair of consent agreements with the town and the state pesticide board.
Bond’s husband, Arthur Bond III, is an architect and the nephew of former U.S. Sen. Kit Bond. Their summer home, owned by a trust, is situated directly behind Gorman’s home, farther up the hill.
If the punishment for a crime is a set fine, then it is a law that targets only the poor; the wealthy will just pay that fine with the spare pennies at the bottom of their pocket as “a cost of doing business” and move on like nothing ever happened.
Are you a bot? This answer is so generic and not even addressing OP.
Are you a bot? This answer is so generic and not even addressing OP.
There is no Karma on Lemmy. You don’t need to add the “It’s just a fine for them. A business expense.”-comment on every other post related to capitalism. I’ve seen this exact comment a billion times and never has it added any value to the thread.
But if I stop seeing those comments then I’ll have to start making them. Easier to just vote my approval and be glad someone’s done it.
A repetition of the truth is always valuable. Not everyone fully understands how broken our society is. Even if just 0.1% read the comment and understand something new, it was valuable. Even if it’s just a reminder, it was valuable.
On the other hand, your comment is not valuable 100% of the time. Complaining about something generally true being there, which you could just ignore if you already know it, is absolutely useless. In fact, it’s even negative value, because if your complaint was followed and someone came to the thread without the knowledge, they’d be denied an opportunity to learn.