And now ... armed guards at the DMV

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:03:08 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED DEC. 8, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
And now ... armed guards at the DMV

Constitutional authority for licensing cars and drivers is pretty tenuous, largely based on early legal sleight-of-hand designed to purposely confuse the excisable professional of "driving" -- hauling passengers or freight for profit on the public roads -- with simple civilian travel.

The image is colorful -- the Slim Pickens "toll booth" scene from the Mel Brooks film "Blazing Saddles" comes to mind -- but there's no record that George Washington had to stop by each state capitol along his route, signing up for the 18th century equivalent a "photo ID" and a little metal plate to hang over his horse's rump, as he moved from Massachusetts through Connecticut, rushing to the defense of New York in 1776 and Philadelphia in 1777.

In fact, drivers' licenses are thinly disguised police ID cards. (Does one forget how to drive when moving across town, or into another state? Then why isn't the license you got in another state the year you graduated from high school still as "good" as the high school diploma you earned that same year?)

Yet we obligingly buy into the euphemism that the "customers" of the Department of Motor Vehicles want quick and efficient "service" when we go wait in line to renew these sundry government forms -- as though anyone would be buying this bill of goods, absent the armed and uniformed men who stand ready to handcuff us and impound our valuable vehicles if we're caught without our "papers, please."

Now, some of the peons are apparently growing restless. Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn said Monday that state workers fear for their lives because "patrons" at DMV offices are going ballistic when they're told -- after waiting in line for an average of more than an hour -- not only that they're being refused the routine paperwork they've come to pay for, but that their vehicles are instead going to be impounded for overdue traffic or parking tickets.

DMV Director Richard Kirkland added that some victims have told his employees that they will be killed or that they should be looking over their shoulder when they leave work.

"Some have been grabbed around the throat," he added.

Oh, the humanity!

The governor Monday asked members of the Legislature's Interim Finance Committee to provide funding for armed guards in the Las Vegas and Reno DMV offices, to keep these unruly peasants in line.

Though it's tempting to suggest they be given MP-40 submachine guns and fancy black uniforms with silver skulls on the collars, the better to help everyone appreciate the true nature of the transaction being effected, in fact some better solutions are available:

First, the American system of governance is based on carefully delineated lines of jurisdiction between the various levels of government -- one of many safeguards against a vertically integrated, Napoleonic tyranny.

A state motor vehicle office has no more business withholding a state document from an otherwise qualified citizen based on non-payment of local or municipal parking tickets, than the U.S. State Department should be refusing us passports because our chicken coops are alleged to be in violation of some local zoning code.

Yes, local judges have ruled that the state should impound the vehicles of drivers who ignore local parking tickets. The correct response from Gov. Guinn should be: "The judges have made their ruling; now let them try to enforce it. My guys aren't going to do it, because it's unconstitutional."

(The "balance of powers" is supposed to allow any of the three branches to block an unconstitutional order from another -- otherwise we'd only need one branch of government: the courts.)

In the meantime, though, statistics provided by the governor and his staff in the course of seeking funds for 64 new part-time workers in an effort to decrease waiting times at the DMV offices -- now averaging 79 minutes per victim at the Sahara office in Las Vegas -- should raise some eyebrows in their own right.

In part because of a perverse incentive in state employee contracts which encourage workers to "use or lose" their "sick time," on any given day 30 percent of employees are absent from their posts in the Henderson, Carey Avenue and West Flamingo Road DMV offices, the governor's staff revealed.

While on East Sahara, the average rate of absenteeism is a whopping 49 percent.

Couple this with the astonishingly inefficient hunt-and-peck methods of data entry which citizens are witnessing when they finally do reach the front of the lines, and it's small wonder tempers are near the breaking point.

"The way that the sick time pay is structured is one of the things that we're looking at very closely," the governor's spokesmen, Jack Finn, told me Tuesday.

And will the governor be looking at getting his DMV workers out of the job of impounding autos to enforce municipal parking tickets?

"That's something we're looking at. It's something we're very seriously studying," Finn says.

The long-term solution, of course, is to abandon the whole system -- allow Nevada's citizens to travel the highways as they please without any government "licenses," "registrations" or "permits."

But until the governor finds the political courage to take that obvious step toward restoring one of our most basic freedoms, one further thing does come to mind:

Employers in the private sector seem to have no problem hiring employees who can type 60 words per minute, and who actually show up for work a lot more often then 51 percent of the time, for as little as 10 bucks an hour.

The governor might want to "seriously study" firing the entire current DMV staff, and replacing them with Kelly Girls.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (952-895-8757.) His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair