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Maybe we need a telethon: Help this guy get his license
By adamg on Thu, 07/12/2007 - 9:13am
Four times now, Josh Ourisman has tried to swap his California license for a Massachusetts license. Four times now, the Registry of Motor Vehicles has found a way to screw it up. Yesterday, for the second time in a row, he was nearing the front of the line at the Chinatown RMV when their computer system went down:
... Had I previously had any faith in the state of the RMV, the Massachusetts state government, or bureaucracy in general, it would now be lost. Having never had such a thing, I'm simply wallowing in despondency and despair at the thought of having to try yet again. ...
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Comments
wow, that's odd @_@
There's got to be something about the Boston-area RMVs, every time I've been in one I was in and out in about 10 minutes -- both in the Northampton area and in Lowell. This poor guy!
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[VARiable expression] @ http://www.mvarmazis.com
That RMV
I've never had a bad experience at the very same RMV as Josh, but I've never tried something like transferring a license.
Massachusetts should stop requiring SSNs
This is an excellent reason why Massachusetts should change the law that now requires drivers to provide Social Security Numbers. There is no good reason to link driver's licenses to a retirement savings plan.
And why don't they have a backup plan to do things "by hand" when the computers are not available?
SSN is used for much more than that
It's used as an identification number for doing bank transactions and applying for credit and so forth. I needed to show mine and have it copied in order to take out a mortgage. They require the state ID, which is tied into social security (basically, your tax and credit information) rather than other forms of ID that would just prove that my physical appearance matches the name I'm giving.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Reasonable uses of SSN
It makes sense to need an SSN for a mortgage or a bank account, because the first creates an income tax deduction and the second is potentially a source of taxable income. But there is no good reason to tie it to driving privileges at all.
So then
there'd need to be another means of positively identifying people and tracking them for their whole lives. Because driving privilege is tied into criminal record and so forth. Car registration is part of both, so your registration would need your financial ID number and your driving ID number. So they'd still intersect a lot of the time. Except that we'd have to deal with two number-generating agencies instead of one.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Credit, too
Pulling up a credit report shows pretty much all financial involvement you've had in the last 7 years or more. Bank accounts, homes, employers, cars, debt, etc. It isn't just related to taxes.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Not totally unusual
Last time I was in the Chinatown office their computer system that handles testing was down and they didn't have any ETA on when it would be back up.