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\u2019s been eight years since I last had my picture taken, that this time I had to go renew in person.<\/p>\n
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\u2019d left off the zip code from my residential address.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But now, \u201cWe can\u2019t go any further until you fill in the zip code,\u201d the lady said — even though there was a zip code listed after my post office box.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t. They may CALL what I was attempting to renew a \u201cdriver\u2019s license,\u201d but in fact it\u2019s now a uniform police ID. The police like to have that residential address in the database in case they want to \u201cserve a warrant,\u201d their quaint term for breaking in our doors in the middle of the night, without bothering to show their badges or paperwork.<\/p>\n
I provided the second zip code.<\/p>\n
Still no good. \u201cYour name doesn\u2019t match,\u201d the Filipina lady said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoesn\u2019t match what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour name doesn\u2019t match.\u201d<\/p>\n
We went around on that one long enough to change partners and allemande left.<\/p>\n
Apparently, she was attempting to compare my data to a Social Security database.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll that matches is the date of birth,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ah. \u201cAs you can see,\u201d I said. \u201cthe name on my drivers license — the one I\u2019ve been using without a problem for 18 years — is \u2018Vin Suprynowicz,\u2019 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 \u2018NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION\u2019 along the bottom,\u201d I said, sliding it across the desk at her. That card was issued to \u201cVincent Anthony Suprynowicz, Jr.\u201d<\/p>\n
(If you can\u2019t 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.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s also the name listed on THESE two pieces of identification,\u201d I said, presenting her with my draft registration card, issued May 1, 1968, and my Selective Service Notice of Classification.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are no good,\u201d she said. \u201cThe name doesn\u2019t match.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s my current drivers license, with my picture on it, which YOU people issued,\u201d I said. \u201cYou can\u2019t see that’s me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Immigration documents? I asked to speak to a supervisor.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cYour name doesn\u2019t match,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s because of nine-eleven,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m 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\u2019s 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\u2019s being foiled by this Sheri Olsen, who won\u2019t let him renew his drivers license because no one in their right mind could imagine someone who calls himself \u201cVin Suprynowicz\u201d could POSSIBLY be the person born in New Haven, Connecticut all those years ago — on the correct date — named at the time \u201cVincent Anthony Suprynowicz, Jr.\u201d No POSSIBLE connection there, do you think?<\/p>\n
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\u2019d gone without a passport, after my airline informed me I didn\u2019t need a passport to enter Canada.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cHow do I know you\u2019re an American?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I have my draft card,\u201d I said, showing it to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is 40 years old,\u201d he said. \u201cYou still carry your draft card?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had a lottery,\u201d I said. \u201cIf you drew a number over 200 and they classified you 1-H for \u2018too high,\u2019 you kept the card.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI saved mine, too,\u201d he said, waving me through.<\/p>\n
But now the ever-smiling Miss Olsen is insisting \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to go to the Social Security office and have your name changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want my name changed. I like my name just fine. You can issue the license in either name, I don\u2019t care which. Issue it as \u2018Vincent Anthony Suprynowicz, Jr.,\u2019 if that\u2019ll make you happy, or as \u2018Vin Suprynowicz,\u2019 whichever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nope. And they won\u2019t REALLY accept my passport (which no American is required to have), because it expired in 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re 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\u2019t renew an 18-year-old drivers license because for 30 years I\u2019ve been going by \u2018Vin\u2019 instead of \u2018Vincent\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t care to discuss your political views,\u201d said Miss Sheri Olsen.<\/p>\n
She really said that.<\/p>\n
So, no drivers license for me. What am I supposed to do, go buy one in the name of \u201cJose Jimenez\u201d at the Giant Indoor Swap Meet?<\/p>\n
I called Grace New Haven Hospital — now Yale New Haven. They don\u2019t keep birth certificates; try the City of New Haven.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s only 2,000 miles away. Assuming they\u2019ll let this \u201cVin Suprynowicz\u201d character on an airplane, what his \u201cname not matching\u201d and everything.<\/p>\n
The loop message at the New Haven Vital Records office was recorded by a young lady from the Indian subcontinent. Nice.<\/p>\n
What we are dealing with, here, is the National ID. The folks in Washington said they\u2019d dropped their plans to impose one, but they\u2019ve just ordered the states to do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just obeying the federal law; it\u2019s because of nine-eleven,\u201d simpered the statist Ms. Olsen, her inability to grasp the \u201cSeparation of Powers\u201d doctrine probably a telltale of a term of incarceration in one of our local government youth propaganda camps. You\u2019ll 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\u2019s a legitimate government function, at all) being the unalloyed province of the several sovereign states under the 10th Amendment.<\/p>\n
But if the federals told these good soldiers they had to check everyone\u2019s forearms to see that they had the proper 11-digit number tattooed there, they\u2019d do that, too. Wouldn\u2019t they? Gotta get those years in for the pension.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cEarned Income Tax Credit,\u201d 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\u2019t be part of this.<\/p>\n
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 \u201ccall my mommy\u201d? 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\u2019ll believe I\u2019m me.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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 \u201cprivilege\u201d of riding his horse from Virginia to Boston? And actively working to convert a God-given right into a \u201cprivilege\u201d is an offense which should — and eventually will, I am convinced — bear serious consequences.<\/p>\n
A once free people, who only seek to pay \u201cour\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
Sic semper tyrannis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s been eight years since I last had my picture taken, that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[34,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nevada","category-transportation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-ch","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":763,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}