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Public golf course Connestee Falls is in the middle of an attractive, mature community in the mountains of western North Carolina and features a number of dramatic downhill and doglegged par 4s.

    I recently reviewed a number of golf communities in the western North Carolina mountains, most of them offering private club privileges.  But for those who would prefer to play a rotation of good courses rather than commit to one, the area within an hour of Asheville offers a buffet of excellent daily fee courses at surprisingly reasonable prices.
    The Asheville Citizen-Times publishes an annual WNC Mountain Travel Guide that lists the 37 best public golf courses in western North Carolina, among them some excellent tracks I have played, like Reems Creek, Connestee Falls and Etowah Valley.
    Click here for the Mountain Travel Guide and a page that lists all the golf courses, including green fee information and web sites.  If you have any questions about mountain real estate and mountain golf, please do not hesitate to contact me.  I will respond quickly.

Notice to readers:  Some of you have taken me up on my offer to provide you personalized information about golf communities in the southern U.S.  However, the notes I received from a few of you did not include name and email address.  As you can understand, I am unable to respond unless I have your email address.  I hope you will resubmit your requests; I promise to respond promptly with some ideas that fit your criteria, including your geographical preferences. (Name and email address are now required fields to fill in.)

 

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The 5th at Reems Creek, a half-hour north of Asheville, provides the ultimate in risk reward.  The green on the par 4 is reachable from the tee but fraught with danger. 

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves - Thomas Sowell, economist

    Karl Marx thought that capitalism would collapse eventually because of worker exploitation.  He was wrong.  Our "workers" in Washington are exploiting us, with their lack of vigilance and casual attitudes toward Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Wall Street.
    You are probably as angry as I am.  The stakes have never been higher,

"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right."

and our elected officials are driving those stakes through the heart of our plans for the future.  Everybody is hurting, especially older Americans.  If you are on the cusp of retirement, for example, your planned move to that home in the south probably looks a lot different than it did a few short months ago.  As the acerbic financial commentator Ben Stein said on television yesterday, "Anyone with a 10-year time horizon [or longer] will be fine."  Thanks, Ben.
    I was glued to my television set yesterday, watching my kids' college funds and my retirement fund evaporate in congress with -- pun intended -- the vote on the bailout bill.  As it became clear the vote was going negative, the market dropped a couple of hundred points in a matter of minutes.  I was apparently the only American who didn't get up from the TV to phone or email my representative to express outrage at the provisions of the proposed package.  I am not smart enough to know whether the bailout plan will save the Republic or cause irreparable harm, and I am not minimizing how difficult it is to make the call on whether to entrust the Department of the Treasury with $700 billion.  Even savvy economists disagree on the merits.  But faced with a choice between self-interest and conscience, many of our elected representatives chose reelection (probably on the convoluted theory that, if they don't get reelected, then they can't vote their conscience).  
    I do know what shameless self-interest and partisan bickering and counter-productive finger pointing look like.  As the great American humorist H.L. Mencken wrote, "Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right."  
    The word "change" is thrown around rather cavalierly during this election season, but there is no better one to describe what needs to be done in Washington.  We all get a chance to cast our votes a month from now for Congress and the Presidency.  In another 34 days, our "workers" in Washington will know if they acted wisely (if at all). 

    We will let them know.