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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 10:58 am Post subject: Chavistas target golf |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/world/americas/12venez.html?_r=1&ref=world
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CARACAS, Venezuela � President Hugo Ch�vez�s political movement has found a new target: golf.
President Hugo Ch�vez says some golf courses could be better used for the poor.
After a brief tirade against the sport by the president on national television last month, pro-Ch�vez officials have moved in recent weeks to shut down two of the country�s best-known golf courses, in Maracay, a city of military garrisons near here, and in the coastal city of Caraballeda.
�Let�s leave this clear,� Mr. Ch�vez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday television program. �Golf is a bourgeois sport,� he said, repeating the word �bourgeois� as if he were swallowing castor oil. Then he went on, mocking the use of golf carts as a practice illustrating the sport�s laziness.
The government�s broad nationalizations and asset seizures have gone far beyond the oil industry to include coffee roasters, cattle ranches and tomato-processing plants.
If the golf course closings go forward, the number of courses shut down in the last three years will be about nine, said Julio L. Torres, director of the Venezuelan Golf Federation. A project on Margarita Island, designed by the American architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. and intended to be South America�s top course, was halted because of financial problems.
Most of the closed courses are in oil regions, near Maracaibo in western Venezuela and in Monagas State, in the east, and were initially built for Americans working in the oil industry. Mr. Ch�vez�s purge of dissidents from the national oil company focused suspicion on the golf courses, which were seen as bastions of the old elite.
A housing shortage has also pushed the government�s hand, Mr. Ch�vez said last month, when he questioned why Maracay had so many slums while the golf course and the grounds of the state-owned Hotel Maracay, a decaying modernist gem built in the 1950s, stretch over about 74 acres of coveted real estate.
�Just so some little group of the bourgeois and the petit-bourgeois can go and play golf,� he said during his television program.
Backing up Mr. Ch�vez, a noted baseball fan, state media here have gone after golf.
Mr. Ch�vez�s loyalists have taken aim at the sport before. Juan Barreto, a former mayor of Caracas, tried to seize control of the 18-hole course at the Caracas Country Club to build thousands of homes for the poor in 2006. The move set off infighting among Chavistas, as the president�s followers are known. After a legal battle, Mr. Barreto backed down.
In Maracay, officials are considering building low-income homes on the golf course or turning it into a campus of Mr. Ch�vez�s Bolivarian University. In Caraballeda, plans are advancing to turn the course into a park for children.
Mr. Ch�vez, for his part, said he had no plans to outlaw golf. �I respect all sports,� he said. �But there are sports and there are sports. Do you mean to tell me this is a people�s sport?�
He then answered the question: �It is not.� |
I don't care about golf.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/08/12/world/americas/12lede_quiz.480.jpg
He goes right for lefty triangle of emotive pressure points to get his way: a liberal college or low income housing or a park for children. Does he know his constituency or what?
Alberta also just had a huge oil boom, like Ven. We don't have a housing shortage, but a glut. Why do we have a glut (meaing prices will fall) and they have a shortage (prices will rise, until the leftist then pushes price-controls, in which case quality collapses along with new construction and slums are formed)? Maybe Mr. Chavez is learning about the socialist calculation problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 11:09 am Post subject: |
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I'd like to know if these golf-courses are privately owned, government owned(as are a few golf courses in Edmonton, I believe), or some sort of partnership between government and the private sector. Because, if they're not entirely private sector, Chavez might be within his moral rights to close them down.
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while the golf course and the grounds of the state-owned Hotel Maracay, a decaying modernist gem built in the 1950s, stretch over about 74 acres of coveted real estate.
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 11:14 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
I'd like to know if these golf-courses are privately owned, government owned(as are a few golf courses in Edmonton, I believe), or some sort of partnership between government and the private sector. Because, if they're not entirely private sector, Chavez might be within his moral rights to close them down.
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while the golf course and the grounds of the state-owned Hotel Maracay, a decaying modernist gem built in the 1950s, stretch over about 74 acres of coveted real estate.
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I really don't care if he closes golf courses. Middle class Venezuela is emptying into Miami anyways. All that will be left are his supporters, which means the country (and the golf industry) is doomed.
I posted the article because it shows that he is becoming increasingly belligerent. When the man with all the guns goes after a sport because of who plays it, after nationalizing industries, driving up inflation, causing shortages etc the right-wing loonies (such as myself) who argued that this would never stop with energy or cows were right. He is following the traditional socialist path, though at a slower pace. He is politicizing the society. |
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