dropping a putter on the ball accidentally ON the green is not a penalty-dropping it OFF the green is.I need to know their intent.
That's not intent. That's geography. Clearly a person wasn't making a stroke at a ball by "dropping their putter," especially when they're entitled to mark, lift, and clean it.
Kicking it in the rough while searching vs, kicking it out of a bad lie-I need to know their intent.
Their intent is clear - they're searching. Furthermore, in both cases, the player must replace the ball. So kicking it and claiming accidental doesn't result in any change - they must bury their ball back in the same lie they had.
A ball moving at rest on the green-I need to know whether the player "caused it to move" even tohugh we agree it moved after he player addressed it.
That's got virtually nothing to do with intent.
"Inttent" is the phrase that was used when it was determined that Bernhard and MacCarron weren't violating the anchorig rule, even though they were as written (to be fair, not part of new rules-just another stupid new rule)
That's the only one you've managed to come up with.
but I have yet to play in an event where they invoked the local rule involving dropping with a two shot penalty
That's a rule for league and casual play. It speeds things up for people who don't think to hit a provisional.
The 3 minute part should also have been a LOCAL rule option as it has its own unintended consequences.
I disagree (and this has nothing to do with intent either). Three minutes speeds up play.
While we're at it-moving stones and limbs in a "penalty area" is absurd-what's next? abnormal groung conditions?
That simplifies the Rules. And I don't know what your problem with "abnormal ground conditions" is, which is now "abnormal course conditions."
exactly-bifurcation has always been around in one form or another-now masked as "conditions of competition" for rules such as 2010 groove rule
If you're so desperate to claim that bifurcation has always existed as a means of suggesting it would be easier to actually bifurcate in the future, then surely you must recognize that conditions of the competition (like the groove rule, which at this point everyone is following whether they know it or not, given the manufacturing limits dating back to… 2010? 2011?) angle is several orders of magnitude different than what people mean when they talk about actual bifurcation of equipment, etc.
as far as stones the US came on board with local rules to that effect in most professional events and recently when the rules were redone the USGA and R&A did all the changes together.
The USGA/R&A have done "all the changes together" since the 80s. The R&A resisted the embedded ball rule through the green (now general area) until 2019, too, when that was made the Rule and the Local Rule allows you to limit it to the fairway height or lower areas.