PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Excuse me, while I vent for a moment about developments in my former home state.
The news on two fronts from California is distressing, as it usually is when the whack jobs holding public office on the Left Coast start looking to balance budgets and begin pointing fingers of blame at perceived fiscal culprits.
According to separate news reports in San Francisco and San Diego, the two coastal cities are strongly considering turning over the management of their storied municipal golf courses to private firms as a cost-cutting measure.
The assumption is that it will cost taxpayers less money if somebody else runs the courses -- and almost certainly hikes prices -- although in San Francisco, where city-owned Harding Park will host the Presidents Cup next year, they also are considering shutting down courses completely to save taxpayers some dough.
I've had it with clueless politicians, a term that represents the biggest redundancy I have typed in months. My philosophical beef with the liberal tofu-eaters is this: Why is it that nobody ever gripes about how much the hiking trails, tennis courts, soccer fields, softball diamonds and basketball courts cost to maintain?
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the six courses in that city cost $1 million in red ink, a drop in the bucket, really. Still, they have done the all-too-predictable: targeted the perceived rich white guys who play golf as the first place to make budget trims. Nevermind that millions of blue-collar types look to city courses for reasonable green fees and a place to take kids to learn the game.
The concept of the muni course is already as dead as the wound ball in this country. This type of thinking only hastens their demise. My point is, why is there a double-standard for this particular sport?
For some asinine reason, city and county governments expect golf courses to generate piles of revenue. No similar expectation is heaped on tennis courts, outdoor hoops or handball courts, soccer fields or softball venues. They eat money endlessly, but nobody complains.
Despite golf's reputation as a refuge solely for those with fat wallets, muni courses are filled with people of all hues and economic classes. Golf is no less a recreational activity than any of the aforementioned sports, yet it bears the brunt of the examination when cuts are necessary.
It's a dangerous proposition when elected officials charged with protecting civic jewels like Harding Park and Torrey Pines, site of the U.S. Open next month, start trying to prove that they are unafraid to take on the perceived elite who use the golf courses as their civic playground of choice.
Judge golf by the same metric as the other sports. You want to make a trim? Why don’t the butterfly-chasing politicos shut down the frisbee golf courses or horseback trails? Oh, that's right, those frivolous pursuits are expected to operate at a loss and thus are not given the same degree of suspicion and scrutiny.
Not that I have anything against horse trails, per se. The smell is the same as the one emanating from these two city council boardrooms.