DMV COMMISSIONER UNVEILS NEW EMPIRE GOLD LICENSE PLATES

New York State Commissioner of Motor Vehicles and Chair of the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee David J. Swarts today unveiled the “Empire Gold” license plate which will be issued to most vehicles registered in the state beginning in April, 2010.

Our committee spent eight months trying to come up with something that looked like “work”, and the only thing we agreed on was this ugly-ass license plate. You know, the same one we got rid of 20 years ago.

“The bold colors of the new license plate reflect New York’s force and its resilience,” said Commissioner Swarts. “These new plates, in the official colors of the State of New York, will help maintain highway safety, reduce the number of unregistered and uninsured vehicles on our roads, and generate $129 million in General Fund revenue over two years, which will help address the State’s financial crisis.”

We could probably help the budget crisis by reinstating a more progressive tax structure and reducing graft, inefficiency, and corruption. Or we could just nickel and dime you schmucks for $129 million, because even though it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $12 billion deficit, it still looks like we’re “doing something”.

State Police Superintendent Harry J. Corbitt said, “License plates are a fundamental tool of law enforcement that has been enhanced in recent years through a variety of technologies that improve their readability, especially under low light conditions. The State Police has worked cooperatively with DMV to ensure that the new plates will continue to serve the law enforcement community effectively.”

Oooh, they’re shiny! And reflective!

“This project will benefit law enforcement efforts, and therefore enhance public safety, in several ways,” said Denise E. O’Donnell, Deputy Secretary for Public Safety and Commissioner of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. “For instance, nearly 300 police agencies in New York State are currently deploying approximately 500 computerized license plate readers (LPRs) that enable authorities to quickly identify vehicles that have been stolen or used in a crime. These new plates will ensure that the LPRs are as effective as possible.”

Oh my god, we are laughing so hard that you people let us get away with buying all this crap.

DMV will begin issuing the new plates for registration renewals that expire in May 2010. Customers renewing their vehicle registrations in person in a DMV office, over the phone, by mail or through the Internet, will receive their new Empire Gold plates in the mail. Customers completing an original over-the-counter registration transaction will receive their plates immediately. [ . . . ] A plate fee of $25.00 will be added to the registration renewal fee. Single plate registrations (e.g. motorcycles) will be charged a plate fee of $12.50. Motorists registered in the Passenger (PAS), Commercial (COM), Motorcycle (MOT) or Trailer (TRL) registration classes will have the option to keep their current plate number/letter combination. Those with vehicles registered in other classes may also have this option. The registration renewal invitation will tell motorists if this option is available. Those choosing to keep their current plate number/letter combination on the new Empire Gold plate will be required to pay a $20.00 fee. Those motorists holding a personalized plate will automatically be re-issued the same number/letter combination on their new plate. Because they currently pay an annual personalized plate fee, they will not be required to pay the $20.00 fee. Most plates with the New York skyline banner across the top of the plate will begin to be replaced by the new Empire Gold plate in April. Custom picture plates will be replaced at a later date. The DMV will also be electronically sharing updated plate number information with EZ-Pass so that motorists who participate in that program will not have to do so.

We’re making the entire process as obtuse as possible so that we can smack you with additional fees and fines when you inevitably fuck it up the first time. Good luck!

Representatives of the government torture innocent citizens into unconsciousness, on camera, in United States courtrooms with tasers. They use them on prisoners and on motorists and on political protesters and bicycle riders, on mentally ill and handicapped people and on children. And it’s happening with nary a peep of protest.

America’s torture problem is much bigger than Gitmo or the CIA or the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The government is torturing people every day and killing some of them. Then videos of the torture wind up on Youtube where sadists laugh and jeer at the victims. It’s the sign of profound cultural illness.

-Digby, guest blogging for Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com

I read everything Digby posts on Hullabaloo, but her philippics on the rising abuse and misuse of tasers always hit me especially hard. Go read this entire piece at Salon. I can’t guarantee it won’t turn your stomach—in fact, I hope it does—but it’s essential reading for anyone who has even the slightest concern about the creeping authoritarian state.

I should not be surprised by it, and yet I am.

cleversimon:

After wasting an afternoon taking pictures of a broken tricycle, moss on trees, and the shadow of a wrought-iron fence, Churchill Alternative High School senior Jessica Ivers falsely informed family and friends Saturday that she was getting into photography. “I love the way real film looks,” said Ivers, who has owned the old single-lens reflex 35 millimeter camera for exactly one week…

So what’s the right way to get into photography, then?

According to most critics on Flickr and Photo.net and such, the process is as follows:

-Be older than 45 and start every photography conversation with “I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and…”
-Have a lot of expensive current gear, as well as some expensive vintage gear.
-Talk about that gear in purely technical terms at all times.
-Understand that your gear is the Right Gear, and everyone else’s is the Wrong Gear.
-Be pedantic about every minor detail of your lenses, and make sure to commit every spec to memory including, but not limited to, exact weight in grams, focus throw, and circle of confusion.
-Never use squishy words like art, interpretation, aesthetic, composition, or beautiful. Photography is for technicians, not creative people who don’t know the proper way to use their gear.
-Have a full portfolio of technically perfect but visually lifeless photographs. Wide landscapes, mountains, trees, and deer are popular subjects.

I think that’s a pretty good starting point.

Ahem.

Atlas Shrugged is a novel, and a tedious one at that. It is tortured fiction, and nothing more. It is not an effective societal blueprint for pouty glibertarians who are still angry that their mommies never let them stay out past their curfew, they didn’t get the toy they really really wanted for their 12th birthday, and their fraternity of choice didn’t let them into the pledge class freshman year.

Grow. The fuck. Up.

Thank you. Now, back to the snark.

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I’d really like to meet some of these people, and then kick them right in the junk.

One of my recycling bins¹ is smashed and cracked to the point of uselessness. For the past several weeks, I’ve been putting it out on the curb, empty and upside down, in the hopes of indicating to the Guy Who Drives The Big Noisy Neon Green Truck Down My Street At 6:00am that I’d like them to recycle that bin. And each time, it just gets left there with the other bins.

Last week I tried throwing it into the trash can. The Guy Who Drives The *Other* Big Noisy Neon Green Truck Down My Street At 7:00am took it out of the trash can and left it on the curb with my other recycling bins.

Thwarted again.

So this week, I put a sign on the broken bin, saying “BROKEN – PLEASE REPLACE” in large, friendly letters. Again, the bin was left on the curb. But at least they took the sign off and recycled that.

Luckily my city has a dedicated phone line for Trash Issues, staffed by helpful and knowledgeable civil servants who are trained to answer all your disposal-related questions, such as “are pizza boxes recyclable?”, and “if I chop the body up, do I still need to put it in a plastic bag inside the can?”.

I called the number, and explained my bizarre situation. The nice lady on the other end put me on hold for a few moments, and then returned with her answer. “You have to put the broken bin inside of one of the other recycling bins if you want it recycled.”

On reflection, I guess that makes perfect sense.