An alien in my own land
I was born in April, many years ago, at Grace New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Conn. Or so I am told, on good authority. That explains why I got a little postcard from the Nevada DMV a few weeks ago, reminding me it’s been eight years since I last had my picture taken, that this time I had to go renew in person.
So I headed over to the North Decatur DMV on Wednesday morning. Filled out the form. Passed the eye test. Then the Filipina lady pointed out to me I’d left off the zip code from my residential address.
Actually, the address on my Nevada drivers license for the past 18 years has been my post office box. Since this is the only address the DMV needs to mail me my renewal notices, this has worked fine.
But now, “We can’t go any further until you fill in the zip code,” the lady said — even though there was a zip code listed after my post office box.
Why? How does my residential address have any bearing on my right or ability to drive myself around in a non-commercial vehicle? It doesn’t. They may CALL what I was attempting to renew a “driver’s license,” but in fact it’s now a uniform police ID. The police like to have that residential address in the database in case they want to “serve a warrant,” their quaint term for breaking in our doors in the middle of the night, without bothering to show their badges or paperwork.
I provided the second zip code.
Still no good. “Your name doesn’t match,” the Filipina lady said.
“Doesn’t match what?”
“Your name doesn’t match.”
We went around on that one long enough to change partners and allemande left.
Apparently, she was attempting to compare my data to a Social Security database.
“All that matches is the date of birth,” she said.
Ah. “As you can see,” I said. “the name on my drivers license — the one I’ve been using without a problem for 18 years — is ‘Vin Suprynowicz,’ my professional name. But the Social Security database may still be showing my birth name, the same name that appears HERE on my original Social Security card — the one issued in 1965 that says ‘NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION’ along the bottom,” I said, sliding it across the desk at her. That card was issued to “Vincent Anthony Suprynowicz, Jr.”
(If you can’t figure out why I went to a simpler version, take any government form and try to fill in a name of 31 characters. Or, try to spell it to an airline clerk over the phone.)
“That’s also the name listed on THESE two pieces of identification,” I said, presenting her with my draft registration card, issued May 1, 1968, and my Selective Service Notice of Classification.
“Those are no good,” she said. “The name doesn’t match.”
“Here’s my current drivers license, with my picture on it, which YOU people issued,” I said. “You can’t see that’s me?”
“You’re going to have to go to the Social Security administration and have them change your name, or else bring in your birth certificate or a passport or your immigration documents,” she said.
Immigration documents? I asked to speak to a supervisor.
One Sheri Olsen, who receives $49,614 per year, plus amazing benefits and a lifelong pension, for the job of refusing to renew valid drivers licenses for native-born Americans with an unusually large number of authentic identification documents, was finally located to (of course) repeat the same babbling lunacy.
Current valid drivers license no good as ID, original Social Security card and draft registration documents (one signed in ink by a member of my Connecticut draft board) all no good. “Your name doesn’t match,” she said.
Why was this never a problem before? Especially when Franklin Roosevelt swore up and down our Social Security numbers would always remain confidential between us and the Administration — never used for purposes of identification the way the Nazis did, just like it says on my original card.
“It’s because of nine-eleven,” she said.
So I’m trying to imagine a scenario under which some member of al-Qaida is showing up on a Wednesday morning at the North Decatur DMV, seeking to renew a Nevada drivers license which he’s had for 18 years, with his plainly recognizable photo on it, because doing so will somehow further his plans to hijack airliners and blow up skyscrapers, but fortunately he’s being foiled by this Sheri Olsen, who won’t let him renew his drivers license because no one in their right mind could imagine someone who calls himself “Vin Suprynowicz” could POSSIBLY be the person born in New Haven, Connecticut all those years ago — on the correct date — named at the time “Vincent Anthony Suprynowicz, Jr.” No POSSIBLE connection there, do you think?
Actually, the documents this Sheri Olsen rejected were accepted by U.S. Customs and Immigration for re-entry when I flew to Canada to give a speech, a few years back. I’d gone without a passport, after my airline informed me I didn’t need a passport to enter Canada.
They were half right. When it came time to board my plane, the U.S. Immigration official — yes, he had the Stars and Stripes on his sleeve, even though he was sitting hundreds of miles inside Canada — asked “How do I know you’re an American?”
“Because I have my draft card,” I said, showing it to him.
“This is 40 years old,” he said. “You still carry your draft card?”
“They had a lottery,” I said. “If you drew a number over 200 and they classified you 1-H for ‘too high,’ you kept the card.”
“I saved mine, too,” he said, waving me through.
But now the ever-smiling Miss Olsen is insisting “You’re going to have to go to the Social Security office and have your name changed.”
“I don’t want my name changed. I like my name just fine. You can issue the license in either name, I don’t care which. Issue it as ‘Vincent Anthony Suprynowicz, Jr.,’ if that’ll make you happy, or as ‘Vin Suprynowicz,’ whichever.”
Nope. And they won’t REALLY accept my passport (which no American is required to have), because it expired in 2008.
“You’re telling me there are, what, 20,000 illegal Mexicans driving around this town with fake drivers licenses that they bought at the Indoor Swap Meet, no one ever arrests them when they show these bogus pieces of crap, and I can’t renew an 18-year-old drivers license because for 30 years I’ve been going by ‘Vin’ instead of ‘Vincent’?”
“We don’t care to discuss your political views,” said Miss Sheri Olsen.
She really said that.
So, no drivers license for me. What am I supposed to do, go buy one in the name of “Jose Jimenez” at the Giant Indoor Swap Meet?
I called Grace New Haven Hospital — now Yale New Haven. They don’t keep birth certificates; try the City of New Haven.
Sure, the City of New Haven would sell me one. Four to six weeks by mail, or I can go in person, Monday through Friday from 9 to 4. It’s only 2,000 miles away. Assuming they’ll let this “Vin Suprynowicz” character on an airplane, what his “name not matching” and everything.
The loop message at the New Haven Vital Records office was recorded by a young lady from the Indian subcontinent. Nice.
What we are dealing with, here, is the National ID. The folks in Washington said they’d dropped their plans to impose one, but they’ve just ordered the states to do it.
“We’re just obeying the federal law; it’s because of nine-eleven,” simpered the statist Ms. Olsen, her inability to grasp the “Separation of Powers” doctrine probably a telltale of a term of incarceration in one of our local government youth propaganda camps. You’ll remember the central government is delegated no power to interfere with or set conditions on the issuing of drivers licenses, issuing drivers licenses (assuming it’s a legitimate government function, at all) being the unalloyed province of the several sovereign states under the 10th Amendment.
But if the federals told these good soldiers they had to check everyone’s forearms to see that they had the proper 11-digit number tattooed there, they’d do that, too. Wouldn’t they? Gotta get those years in for the pension.
The illegals scamper around using stolen Social Slave numbers with impunity — the guy who did my taxes this year said he worked up in Mesquite last year, all kinds of folks came in to file for their “Earned Income Tax Credit,” but when he tried to run the numbers, the numbers were fake. Not one or two, but dozens, scores of people with fake Social Security numbers, filing to GET MORE MONEY FROM OUR GOVERNMENT, till he told his employer he just couldn’t be part of this.
There are two — and only two — other people who are allowed to go to the New Haven City office of Vital Statistics and buy a copy of my birth certificate: my parents. What better example of the infantilization of the populace than to make me “call my mommy”? As I write this, my 85-year-old mother is in downtown New Haven — a 90-minute drive from where she lives — to buy me the document the grinning Sheri Olsen insists on seeing before she’ll believe I’m me.
What do people do whose parents have not survived into their 80s, whose parents no longer live in the state where they had their children, whose parents are no longer capable of making such a trip?
It’s offensive even having to GO to the DMV. Commercial freight hauling may be an excisable activity, but merely traveling on the public roads is a right, not a privilege. From whom did George Washington have to beg the “privilege” of riding his horse from Virginia to Boston? And actively working to convert a God-given right into a “privilege” is an offense which should — and eventually will, I am convinced — bear serious consequences.
A once free people, who only seek to pay “our” taxes and obey the law, jumping through the ever greater assemblage of hoops set out for us, are increasingly lined up, numbered and humiliated by a police state so perverse it punishes ONLY those who try to obey the laws, until we are treated as aliens in our own land, while the invaders receive protection from the police who should be arresting them as they march in our streets with their foreign flags, demanding to have our immigration laws overturned.
Do they really think there will never be a price to pay, that we will never again be a free people, while the smiling bureaucrats who have cooperated in turning us into a numbered herd swing kicking from the lamp posts?
Sic semper tyrannis.
April 25th, 2011 at 9:47 am
Do they really think there will never be a price to pay, that we will never again be a free people, while the smiling bureaucrats who have cooperated in turning us into a numbered herd swing kicking from the lamp posts?
Much as I’d love to believe that the festooning of lamp posts, telephone polls, high-tension power lines, and highway overpasses with the buzzard-gnawed corpses of those whose livelihoods depend on our stolen tax dollars is a picture of our future, reality won’t allow it. Casual observation in public of what passes for intelligent humanoid life gives me no reason to be so optimistic. The Sheri Olsens of this world are the majority. The only way to reverse that unfortunate reality would be to do so very un-libertarian things that would be more appropriate in Nazi Germany or Khmer Rouge Cambodia than in a nation of people who value life and liberty.
“We” (I know, I hate collectivist terms as much as the next individualist) allowed things to reach this sorry state of affairs, a process which took decades to complete. If there is any hope of reversing the trend (and I’m not optimistic about this either), it’s going to be just as long and painful as was the original affliction’s taking root.
(BTW, where DMV’s and driver’s licenses are concerned, anecdotal evidence suggests that a relatively small, but growing number of drivers, at least in my state, are abandoning the license scam altogether and turning themselves in to “rogue” drivers. Granted, most of these do so because of insurance issues or as a result of a criminal infraction that has resulted in the suspension or revocation of their licenses, but that hasn’t stopped them from driving. The only noticeable down side is that these outlaws become so over-cautious on the road as to become a hazard to the rest of the driving population.)
April 25th, 2011 at 11:12 am
I commiserate with you completely. I went through the same rigamarole when I tried to renew my driver’s license. Ever since I was in 1st grade I’ve used my middle name. Have always said it was my first name except on a will, divorce decree, house deed, etc. However, my driver’s license and passport have forever shown only my middle name….until now. I’m pretty sure back in”the dark ages” and “land of the free,” when I first applied for a passport, they asked for my birth certificate.
I, too, had to go to Social Security because my name didn’t match at the DMV. Luckily for me, SS showed my full middle name, and not just an initial, so I was good to go…back to DMV, stand in line, etc. However, the irony is, I was allowed to sign my name deleting my first one.
Okay, so that problem’s solved. However, when I go to renew my passport in 2014, I wonder what song and dance I’ll have to do. For now, I slide through airport security with my passport as ID since I haven’t changed the name on my mileage programs. That part will be easy to change over, I think. But, who knows? At the rate our nation is evolving by 2014 obtaining a passport may be moot.
April 25th, 2011 at 11:36 am
Vin, to feel better (An Alien in My own Land), read chapter 10 of Charles Dicken’s Little Dorrit.
In it he describes with exquisite parody the workings of a fictional British governmental bureaucracy, the Circumlocution Office, through which every public piece of governmental business must flow and be sentenced to years of delay, Catch-22’s, endless paperwork, and ultimate inaction. “How not to do it” was its motto.
Or get from the library the 2009 BBC DVD production of the same work, where Robert Hardy, in a minor role, plays the head of the Circumlocution Office with devilish glee.
Both are good for a painful laugh, because the truth of it isn’t far removed from the hyperbole of parody.
April 25th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
And I thought Washington state DMV workers were low IQ. We need to establish an annual awards ceremony for the dumbest public employees in the country, and make sure it gets broadcast far and wide.
April 25th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
I went through the in person renewal at the Stephanie branch in Sept.
2010.
My birth cert and ssn both have my birth name of Frederick R Wendt Jr. My driver’s license has always had Fred R Wendt. I had no issues since it’ s obvious my names match.
Either policy changed, at least at the branch you visited, or it’s you Vin.
Thank goodness I didn’t have a similar problem when I recently exercised one of my God given rights (turned into a privilege by our government). In that case I gave the authorities every name I had ever used .
April 26th, 2011 at 8:42 am
Vin-
Go to AZ. Set up a UPS address. Go to AzDOT, get a license fairly quickly. I have a home in Tombstone, and keep my DL there-good until age 65, easy to renew. NO “unREAL ID” crapolini.
Next state over…
April 26th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
@Chuck: The problem is, if Vin ever gets pulled over in the state of Nevada, to have an out of state DL while living in Nevada is a crime. While on active duty serving in the Marine Corps @ MCMWTC Bridgeport, CA, I was living in Carson City. I was pulled over heading home one night and the NHP troopette was going to write me a ticket for failure to register in the state of Nevada.
I politely explained to her that being on active duty exempted me from having to register in Nevada and my Michigan ID was completely valid. After arguing with me for some time, she finally got a supervisor who also didn’t have a clue. Luckily, a trooper who was also a prior Marine overheard the radio chatter and backed up my claim.
In the end, I was let off with a warning about speeding (in the middle of nowhere – 395 between Topaz and Gardnerville, NV) and sent on my way.
April 27th, 2011 at 4:52 am
I called the bureaucrats in Jefferson City to verify what I was told at a local DMV office: you have to have a home address to drive in the state of Missouri. Sorry homeless people — you can live in your car, you just can’t drive it anywhere!
April 27th, 2011 at 8:47 am
Mr Suprynowicz
I like your colume,and have “Ballad of Carl Drega” (used) on order from Amazon.
Would you PLEASE consider getting rid of the blue stripe on each side of your website?
It makes it hard to read.
Thanks.
Dan
April 27th, 2011 at 11:29 am
Mr Suprynowicz
I like your column, and have _The Ballad of Carl Drega_ (signed) on my reading table.
I don’t mind the blue stripe on each side of your website.
I don’t read that part.
Thanks.
John
April 28th, 2011 at 1:46 am
Avoidance is failing. Between crap like this and the license-plate scanning-and-recording, I’m a hair’s breadth away from swearing off both the plastic and metal licenses.
None are within the legal scope of government, particularly ours as the Declaration of Independence states, and action taken outside the purview of law by a government is by definition criminal.
Neither is a “law” on the law books necessarily valid law, as illustrated by Norton vs Shelby County.
For that matter, defense against government criminals is legal and moral, as recognized in John Bad Elk vs United States (though that won’t stop the thugs’ cohorts from summarily executing the defender).
April 28th, 2011 at 5:13 pm
Went thru the same crap in Jan, here in Wyoming. Couple days later I get a letter saying since I was born in a foreign country(B.C. Canada), I would need to bring in a passport, or US Naturalization papers. Took both to our little local DMV office and the lady said my passport was no good (expired U.S.A.) So she stood there for one hour, holding my Naturalization papers, making phone calls and not quite sure what to do with this piece of paper. I finally got fed up, walked up to her and demanded my paper back, and then walked out the front door. 3 days later my new license arrived in the mail. This woman was too stupid to fill in the # and issue date of Naturalization papers, someone else had to tell her what to do and still she was clueless. I can’t wait for all this to come crumbling down, we have nothing to fear from the .gov, they’re to stupid to even function, let alone under stress.
April 28th, 2011 at 10:48 pm
I live in a small town. 2000 people. I have a post office box. Everyone at my house was required to sign a form so that we could pick up each others mail. So, I go in. I have a parcel card so I go to the front desk. The parcel is for my son who has filled out the request form so I can pick up his packages. I need ID. I ask why because he has signed a form so I can pick up the package. “We need proof of who you are”. I reply, “It’s addressed to my son who has signed the form so I can pick up his parcel.” “Not good enough” (doesn’t matter I teach her granddaughter guitar and she know very well who I am). Angrily, I show her my drivers license. I get the package. Next day, I go into the post office and, oh no, there’s a parcel card. This time the package is for me. I give her the card and lo and behold she just hands me to bloody package. When I asked her why her reply of course is “If it’s for you and we know who you are and it’s your box or you’re a registered user of the box we can just give it to you.” I of course ask the obvious question “Well, how can you know it’s me if the parcel is for me but not know it’s me if it’s for another registered user of the box.” Of course the answer is “We’ve been told if the parcel is for another user of the box, we don’t know you.” Now there’s logic. I remember an old episode of MASH where Henry asks Radar if he understands the paperwork he’s asking Henry to sign. His response? “Oh, I try not to, sir, it slows up the work.” Next month, I get to do my annual renewal of my mailbox. I need a natural gas bill or an electrical bill that shows my physical address to do that. Just had my gas disconnected. Going to mess with their heads, tell them I’ve got a windmill for electricity. I’ve got Fridays off. I’m going to take up the counter for hours. Problem is, that’ll likely make them feel important. There’s also the risk of being tasered or shot.
April 29th, 2011 at 9:27 pm
I just went down to the DMV here in FL to get a motorcycle endorsement on my FL licence. I was told that they could not use my exiting licence as ID to issue a new licence with the MC endorsement. I had to have two other forms of ID to include a valid passport, birth cert, utility bill, OR original SS card.
I’ll be driving the bike without their F*****G endorsement…
May 1st, 2011 at 4:29 pm
That’s the way it will go emdfl. People will give up and just do it anyway. The way it should be.
May 2nd, 2011 at 2:54 pm
vin if you find anyone at the dmv that is capable of thinking please forward thier name to me. after not recieving a renewal notice in the mail i called dmv. this was 2009, i was told that my driver’s license was suspended in 2005. they could not tell me why they just know that whatever it was i had taken care of it. in 2005 i was in and out of the dmv. i had a change of address, i transferred two car titles. i also went in to get a handicap placard. i must take the written and drivers tests. this really is bugging me because i have been driving for 42 years and have a perfect driving record. i don’t know why but this has me so crazy i can’t get pass the written tests. pressures of health, money and just plain old survival seems to be locking my brain. i am also very concerned that if a policman had stopped me i would have been arrested. i would have been in a fighting mood because there is no way i would have believed that i did not have a legal drivers license.
May 6th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Americans are like German Jews. They refuse to realize their situation until they are in the camps, being pushed to the gas chambers and ovens. Maybe Ms. Olsen and her supervisor need to be visited. You better start making your lists on who, and where. Soon you will not be able to identify the traitors.
I.T.E.
May 6th, 2011 at 9:21 pm
“Do the bureaucrats really think there will never be a price to pay?” That is exactly what they think. They happen to be right. They will pay no price for their misconduct. They have the murderers of CPT Scott (and others) to back them up.
May 6th, 2011 at 11:59 pm
Vin,
You could always move to a state that doesn’t kill fine young men in front of Costco, shoot young black men with basketballs, or refuse to provide a required document to someone with abundant proof of who they are. There are many things I don’t like about my state of residence, Oregon, starting with all of the liberal old hippies in Eugene, Corvallis, and Salem, along with all of the progressives living in Portland (where death by cop is no longer rare.) But the Oregon DMV has always been great in almost every town I have lived in there, and dealing with them online and over the phone in Salem has actually been a pleasant experience.
My wife and I are classified as “Continuous Travelers” because we sold our home to live on a sailboat (at first) and now in an RV. We bought a new truck in Georgia and are currently living in Montana, but since we are effectively “homeless” we can continue to pay very low rates for licensing and registration, and Oregon DMV makes it all easy. Not all states are as nasty as Nevada. I’m trying to get my sister from Niantic, CT (who used to write for the Hartford Courant many years ago) to move out here when she retires.
I know you shouldn’t _need_ to move, but voting with your feet isn’t submission. It is merely reducing the frustration that government forces you to suffer until some of us decide we’ve had enough.
May 27th, 2011 at 11:48 am
Vin, they just have a job to do… the nazi’s all said the same thing.
June 15th, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Thats why freeways go both directions and you dont have to stop at the border either.
June 17th, 2011 at 7:28 pm
Vern,
The bottom line is you have to provide your DL, registration and proof of insurance. You NOT required to answer ANY questions the cops like to ask, like; Where are you going? Where are you coming froim? What do you do for a living? It’s none of their business, so do NOT answer their questions. You can say sorry, officr, but I’m kind of in a hurry, or “why would you ask such a personal question/”, but you are NEVER required to tell the police anything, so DON’T.
June 18th, 2011 at 8:38 am
Hey Vin, I saw your post and thought you would like to know that even though Sheri Olsen could not bend any rules for you, she would however try to bend them for her own personal needs.
I was once an employee of the NV DMV and worked at the North Decatur office with Sheri Olsen. First let me explain the DMV rule pertaining to a specific situation that happened to Sheri.
The DMV has what they call IVP (insurance verification program), which is where your insurance company has to report to the DMV that you have insurance on your currently registered vehicle. If your vehicle is currently registered and your insurance company fails to provide insurance coverage for even a single day you must pay a $250.00 fine. The fine can be lowered to a minimum of $50.00 provided you can show documentation that the vehicle could not have been on the road during the uninsured time.
Sheri Olsen and her son had a vehicle where they cancelled the insurance but left the vehicle registered. A clear violation that brought the $250.00 fine to her door. One day at work when there were few customers she came to me and asked to help her son who was here to take care of the fine. Sheri handed me some documents and stated they are eligible for the $50.00 minimum fine. As I looked over the documents I noticed her dates didn’t match up, her documentation had showed she hadn’t been driving for about a 2 week period but her insurance had been cancelled for well over a month. When I explained that they would have to pay the $250.00 fine she got irate and told her son to go get a notarized letter stating the vehicle was not driven. When the son came back with that document I took it to my personal supervisor Judy Howard. I let Judy know that I was not comfortable signing off on this transaction as it appeared they were committing fraud. Judy agreed with me and had the site manager have a talk with Sheri. Sheri ended up having to pay the $250.00 but received no other consequences for trying to cheat the system. I was told later by an employee at the West Flamingo DMV that Sheri Olsen had done this same scam there and got away with it.
Government Employees like Sheri Olsen are the reason people dread dealing with government. Public service without serving the public…she is a true example of abuse of power.
June 19th, 2011 at 8:50 am
Hey Matthew.
Why dont you work at the DMV anymore?
June 22nd, 2014 at 3:23 pm
Better late then never.
I’ve yet to understand why a birth certificate is considered a valid form of identification. A certified copy shows that an individual by that name was born on a certain date at a certain location. Not that you’re that individual!
I know it’s pointless to expect logic from these authoritarians as they enjoy frustrating those over whom they’ve been given power. Still…