Immoral Tree Planting

FairWarning.org has a pretty interesting article about Robert, a whistle blower, suing Lamar Advertising Co., a billboard company, about an unjust firing. In turn the billboard company is being investigated for illegally killing trees.

According to the article it looks like the company broke the law. The article is written to make Lamar and other billboard companies look bad. However, if you really pay attention, it is the state that is acting completely and wholly immoral.

Trees, the environment, and other touchy feely green things are touted as more important than companies today. Government wastes our money on this stuff. Remember the recent story of California moving a bush at a cost of over $200,000? Well this billboard issue is not about spending money on nature, but extorting money from companies by leveraging the touchy feely trend.

In brief, this is the problem. Billboard companies are killing trees so that you can see their billboards. Sound evil? Well ask yourself, why are there trees in the way? The state planted them!

So now we have destruction of state property. But as I said, this is a scam. These trees are part of beautification projects for the highway. If you want to have beautification of the highways, why not stop licensing billboards?

This is why.

1. Company pays fees, licensing, and/or permits for billboards
2. State plants trees in front of billboards
3. State extorts more money from company because
   • Company pays for a tree trimming permit
     and/or
   • Company gets fined for killing trees

Even if a company gets a permit to trim trees they may still end up killing them. The image below is an image from the article that shows trees that were neutralized in relation to a billboard. Remember that when sitting in a car your line of sight is lower than when standing. If you were to trim a tree so that you could see the billboard you would have to "top" the trees.

Topping is bad for trees. It can be very unhealthy for the tree. If the state was truly concerned about the trees they would not allow trimming to make billboards visible. Killing the trees is less expensive than "topping" that produces sick and hazardous trees.

The article also mentions that wild trees are killed. That is worse, right? If it is bad then how bad is it that our tax dollars were used to destroy many more trees to make the highway. The billboards companies are just participating in the exact same practice that we funded the state to do.

Due to this illogical and immoral campaign of planting trees in front of billboards by the state, the billboard companies take measure to remove them. Robert, the litigant mentioned at the beginning, had the job of killing trees. He suffered a back injury and insisted that he needed a light duty job and could no longer kill trees. He no longer works at Lamar. Lamar claims that they did not fire Robert. The article does not clarify this any further.

Robert should sue the state, not Lamar. The state's extortion practise put him in the position of filling an "illegal practice" job. Now he has no job since he refuses to do it. His whistle blower status gives him protection. I can only assume Lamar never thought Robert would do this for fear of prosecution for participating in the illegal activities.

In the end I would be willing to bet that Lamar will be fined and the state will get a windfall of cash. I am sure the state will let Lamar continue to operate billboards. The state has too much money to make from permits, fines, and lawsuits.