Kings Creek Country Club held their Ladies Golf Invitational on Thursday, October 28. Two prizes were awarded in the gross category, and five net prizes were handed out as well. There were also four closest to the pin on par-3 winners, showing that Kings Creek was apparently attempting to make sure nearly everyone had a good chance to win something.

The first place gross winning team was Sandi Scitti, Perry Drevo, Diane Herndon, and Donna Pierce.

The first place net winning team included Jeanine Doan, Terry Derville, Prabha Karapurkar, and Christine Moore.

Hugo Chavez continues to preside over the slow dissolution of Venezuela as a formerly free-market, democratic society. During his leadership over this troubled South American country, he has nationalized a wide variety of companies operating there, including businesses active in the oil, telecommunications, cement, and steel industries.

Most recently Chavez announced the expropriation of two glass-making factories, owned by Owens-Illinois. His supporters made the usual claims of remedying past exploitation of the masses to justify the takeover.

As if these actions weren’t bad enough, Chavez has now shown that no economic activity of whatever modest consequence is operating below his acquisitive radar screen.

According to an October 31 Bloomberg report, Chavez announced during his weekly television show that golf courses should now be expropriated and turned over for housing purposes.

The news story quoted Chavez discussing golf in fairly pejorative terms: "That’s an injustice -- that someone should have the luxury of having I don’t know how many hectares to play golf and drink whiskey and, next door, there’s misery and children dying when there are landslides."

The story did not mention anything, of course, about whether and under what conditions the owners of these golf course properties might be paid for the takeover. One doubts that any such compensation would be offered. After all, under the Chavez regime, any efforts at correcting perceived past injustices could not possibly include the prospect of paying those property owners for what has been taken from them.

In this country, there is a long history of golf course properties being acquired for public purposes. The famous Oakmont golf course near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, site of legendary U.S. Open championships, is sliced in half by a major highway. Closer to the Cape Region, the Rock Manor Golf Course north of Wilmington has been altered at least twice by highway construction, most recently as part of the Blue Ball project.

In these and other U.S. cases, however, the catch is that private property cannot be taken for public use, without first paying just compensation for the acquisition. This compensation guarantee is recognized in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and in similar constitutional provisions in the state constitutions.

Every so often, one sees another bit of evidence that our way of life has a few things going for it that are unfortunately unavailable elsewhere. In the meantime, one can hope that the situation eventually improves in Venezuela and other countries, where respect for property rights is woefully absent.

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