All,
I always think of myself as a guest on this site and am grateful to have a place to discuss and hold forth on GCA. And I'm mad at both topics and people that posit the ugly politics of the naked world into this haven. And I'm mad at the absence of a moderating presence to instantly nip such threads in the bud, no matter the veneration of those who may have posted then.
That said, you electioneering, "Liberal Ideology has brought us down" morons, you have asked for it.
1. Patrick Mucci Shivas et al - who the f*** are you, Marie Antoinette? – You with your foolish idle holdings about how the liberal president will end the economic viability of the country club set. Where the hell have you been, certainly not the major clubs of the NE because there, not one less lobster dinner has been eaten, not one less Mercedes SUV has been leased, renovations and re-modelings are at a fever pitch – both at their clubs and their homes, caddie fees have gone UP. Have clubs bitten the dust? Yes two, in this area...the worst two, least desirable clubs in the region Hampshire and Ridgeway. Two, out of 250 and Donald Trump continues to build...and where the hell is the conservative. Laissez-faire Adam Smith bullshit you folks (yes, I’m painting with a large brush) have to say about everything else, that the "market will take care of it?" The absolute 100% bottom line for those of you who belong to country clubs is this: If you cannot afford to take the $10,000 - $50,000 it takes to fully enjoy a country club per year and throw it in the goddamn fire place for the next decade, then you should not be there - period. It is the height of luxury and if you avert your eyes from yesterday's 1.6 trillion dollar war, and 400 Billion administrative price tag for the Patriot Act - both still running - and instead yell about a health care system you haven't paid a nickel for and one you likely will not use if you prefer not to, and will always afford private or workplace insurance - then go to hell, you and your sniffling luxury of silly f'n golf
2. And it makes me laugh to hear such talk about all the out of work country club folks that might result - "oh heavens, they will add to the bleak situation." Please. To start with, most of the people that make posts like Mucci's are quite often the same ones saying we have got to do something about immigration and our borders. If you spent any time at the employees’ quarters of the Country club, Mr. Mucci, you will find them to be populated by those of predominantly Latino descent. I cannot give you accurate numbers but I have worked with these wonderful people for 30 years and if you promise not to tell ICE, I'll tell you that about 20% of them are or were illegal in the last year. But even if you're not willing to do an ICE raid on Quaker Ridge or United Fruit or Del Monte foods fields, it doesn't matter because the odd fallen country club that Obama's incompetence will shutter will result in the loss of about 35-60 employees, of which 8 are management who have transferable skills and saved wealth enough for 3 years of job search, 4 are administrative and it is their second job, 15 are part-time seasonal and minimum wage, a few are on the cusp of coming retirement and the other 15-35 you didn't want in the country in the first place! And if they must come, why must they bring their families...? So go haggle that point amongst the other broken-by government clubmen that seem to gravitate to your political opinion and sell your "Country Clubs Grow our Economy" jobs program to someone else, nobody with knowledge of the situation is buying.
3. Maybe the most annoying aspect of those who think the government is all over their economic ass is they never talk about themselves...it always some discrete number, some scale, some amorphous victim like "small business" owner and "future taxes' and "our children's future," never about a specific story, never about your own, just a self-approved analysis of mechanism that could possibly illustrate your point...Wanna know the reason? there's not so many of em...the jobs that were lost from businesses big and small between Jan 2009 and three months ago were lost to credit squeeze, no rotating flow of borrowing capital to restore monthly debt to revenue flow, lost to both Wall street corruption and regulatory incompetence that is always, always the result of that tired ol' conservative mantra to politics, "good business environment." So, while Bush's caricature of Attorney Generals were trying to explain how torture is justifiable and a Conservative congress was thumping the patriotism drums with debates about the pledge of allegiance and crashing the morality cymbals with national debate and disgrace about Terry Schiavo's husband pulling the plug on his wastrel wife...while all this went on, under conservative aegis...Fannie and Freddie went wild, the SEC was blind to even the most false rackets like Madoff as well as the mortgage-backed security derivatives that collapsed Bear...and what was the goddamn result of that era? So there's a story for you, a real one, and it was authored by a six year period of conservative hysteria which controlled all three branches of national government, a majority of governor's mansions. So either you tell me how something Obama, Pelosi and Reid have authored has taken money out of YOUR pockets, YOUR dreams, prevented YOU from getting or keeping a job, prevented YOUR children from goign to school, caused YOU to take a second job, destroyed YOUR investments and prevented YOU from making future investments or shut the hell up with the boot-strapped platitudes because you got no beef. You just don't want to pay at all do you, for the fat past or the trim future, you just want your country club retreat industry to be strong...
4. This is specifically addressed to the news articles Patrick H posted...the first story...69.8M in gambling, booze, drugs and luxury vacations on the part of CA welfare recipients...I read it and I have a few numbers of my own. One of the key evaluation numbers that this and any story like it fail to contextualize is...how many people are on this regimen of welfare in CA? The number is hard to find, but it is 1.3 million/37 million total Californians. That comes to $53.70 of terribly frivolous spending per CA welfare recipient, who represent 3.5% of the total population. But of course we know from some of the individual price tags of the frivolous items in the news story that some were spending much more than that $53.70 share of the total number. And we also know that not every single welfare recipient is corrupt so many are not even taking their $53.70 in corrupt spending while some are indeed spending exactly $53.70 on lottery tickets and beer per year. So how many are corrupt of the 1.3 million collecting welfare? It can't be all of them, what...? 100,000? 200,000? 300,000?...you tell me...but remember the closer you come to saying all 1.3 million, you are saying that these people, the poorest people in their state are bilking the 26 million taxpayers of California who paid 313 Billion in Federal taxes to the tune of $2.65 cents per year. And this is what irritates you, about a state I'm not sure you live in and about a class of the poorest that rob you of a Starbucks coffee - what's your story? I agree that the welfare system is in decline from restorative care to that of a palliative care, but what are you going to do...not give the many who convalesce or sustain with the help because of a pittance the most desperate of the poor steal from you? How can you square that with any morality or ethics scheme you can otherwise devise? It is part of the progressive liberalism that I believe in, that acknowledged long before you started haggling over the check. That said there is a certain segment of any natural order will wither and fade perversely, there but for the grace of God go I, and as an enlightened human being I pay the pittance alms to see some reverse their course, but knowing that desperate segment will always fall and it is humane to cushion their fall too. For all the hair-pulling about the issue - it comes down to that. Oh yeah a few scoundrels have really made the system a slick con and live larger than the people they bilk, but at trivial expense compared to that of the same small sample of the corrupt at the top of the individual, business and corporate income bracket – they will be in Washington to lobby the Tea-party too – bank on it.
5. Please tell me...when has conservative-libertarian-small government values ever been validated by the course of history? American history, for starters. At every turn I can recall - please refresh me - the conservative-small government path has been repudiated as being on the wrong side of history. To be conservative and anti-government interference has been to oppose abolition of slavery, civil rights, women's suffrage, trust and baron reform, child-labor, food and drug regulation, the TVA and the entirety of the New Deal and the income tax - which caused the early 20th century barons to put it to work for the benefit of the public in donations that founded libraries, museums and most of the fine cultural items that truly share the wealth of human experience with all and not hoard it for personal amusement - which is what the world's aristocracies and royalties did for a thousand years before. And of what of the great NY liberal Al Smith whose pragmatic visionary agent Robert Moses literally stole Long Island prime shores from the Vanderbilts and the Whitneys and envisoned all its bridges, tunnels, roads, thousand public parks, public pools and parkways to get there. That was a liberal vision, that gave the very aesthetic country clubs prosper by and the one which conservatives wish the world would return, only Eisenhower would be President instead of FDR or Wilson. There are so many more – but please give me an instance where when we look back at the true gigantum of history where the progressive, liberal movement hasn’t been validated, where calamity bought by conservatives and hoarders wasn’t rescued by a liberal ideology to save the nation from collapse, division or ruin. If it was up to you morons, Jefferson would have been blocked by parliamentary maneuvers from making the Louisiana Purchase. Yeah, isn’t that great – the first massive liberal stimulus spending which brought ZERO dollars in revenues for nearly 15 years and was just a huge massive debt that represented a healthy chunk of the entire nation’s wealth. Don’t think it can happen today?…bullshit…if the US were offered South America for 10 trillion dollars today, the conservative, anti-government forces would block it. Save our children’s future!
I am so sorry that I made this disgraceful post, disgraceful in that I should be provoked to share such opinions which don’t matter outside of my home, made more disgraceful by the fact that it was insinuated to a Golf and GCA forum to make the provocation, and disgraceful in that I used vulgarities and name-calling to make the rhetorical points. Disgraceful in that I addressed people as if I know them from how they post on a GCA board. I am sorry but this thread made me do it.
If I’m kicked off the board for making such a post, all I ask is that Ran please put up my Siwanoy profile with the pictures that I last gave him for its posting. I’d much rather that be my last post than this.
Again, I’m sorry to the offended and the furthered angered and the fatigued. I will try to limp back to the WF discussions and do better there.
Cheers
vk