We aren't quite the 99%, but Commissioner Nick Abraham is far from alone in opposing the Madison Country Club's request for a quarter-million-dollar no-interest loan from the city of Madison. The latest Madville Times poll sampled public opinion on this burning issue and found these results:
Should Madison taxpayers subsidize renovations of the Madison Country Club clubhouse?
- No (87%, 88 Votes)
- Yes (13%, 13 Votes)
Total Voters: 101
As usual, margin of error on Madville Times polls is slightly longer than Mark Lee's best drive. It is thus possible that my marginal, radical blog just happens to be read by all 88 Marxist class warriors in the Madison media market, and that everyone else in Madison thinks that handing free taxpayer dollars to the richest people in town to build a larger clubhouse for a country club that sits outside city limits and generates no direct tax revenue for the city is a wonderful idea. After all (that silent blog-averse majority might argue), we can't let all that new revenue from increased utility rates sit around doing nothing.
Actually, I'm pretty confident in these numbers. I'll spot the city commission 20%: suppose the percentage of the population opposed to a country club subsidy is only 67%. The commission will still find that if they are foolish enough to give this handout to the country club, Madison voters will have no problem referring and repealing that loan. Any commissioner who votes for this unnecessary loan to the rich will lose the next election to any candidate or sack of moldy potatoes who begins every sentence with, "Unlike Commissioner Lembcke, I don't think handing your tax dollars to the country club is a wonderful idea."
This poll makes clear that the Madison City Commission should bury the country club subsidy idea and never let it cloud the public agenda again. If the country club crowd hadn't wasted $2.3 million on the failed Forward Madison initiative, they'd have all the cash they need to build whatever big clubhouse they want. They could have spent that $2.3 million on tripling the size of the current clubhouse... and they would have had more concrete results than anything the LAIC did with their money in the last five years.