A few solutions for our DMV problem
Fellow Rhode Islanders will be interested in reading this. If you are not among this group, I doubt you will show interest in what I have to say.

I don't know of a Rhode Islander who doesn't dread going to the DMV. A time comes when we all have to, and we hate it. Having to goto the DMV usually means that you have to take a day out of work and wait in line for an insane amount of time to even find out if you have the correct documentation to register your car, get a license, etc. When you try to call the DMV to see if you have everything you need, all of the numbers are constantly busy and you have to press redial for 15-30 minutes, and you might get through.

I accompanied my friend to the DMV today. To receive 10 minutes of help to get her car registered, we had to wait 3 and a half hours. Even though the bubbler didn't work, you are not supposed to bring food or drink into the building. Even the bathroom was unsatisfactory, graffiti everywhere and you couldn't dry your hands because the hot air blower was hanging off the wall by a thread. And where do you sit while you wait for a long time? In wooden pews that lack cushions or even angles that contour to a human body. I guess we are supposed to kneel in front of these pews and pray that our number is called soon.

Even the location sucked. After following the signs in town and couldn't find it, we stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. They told us, I kid you not, that we had to cut through a parking lot to get to it. There was absolutely no signage for the DMV entrance on Main St., save for some decals in the window that you cannot see from the road.

It doesn't have to be this way.

I've had to deal with the DMV in two states: RI and Ohio. In Ohio, I was given the run around, but at the very least I was able to call DMV (BMV there) offices, an was able to goto the offices and only wait in line 10-20 minutes. They have offices setup all over the place, and the selection of offices cuts down on excessive lines. If the lines in an office are long, they have a worker go through the line person by person, asking them what they need to do and seeing if they have the right documentation. The system there is far superior to our DMV in RI. The two biggest "improvements" our DMV has gone though in the past decade is the opening of an office at the mall that actually stays open past 3:30, and having people take tickets so they can wait until their number is called instead of standing in line. Nice, but nothing monumental. There hasn't really been a change to the system.

So, having to sit at a DMV office for almost 4 hours today, I thought of a few solutions.

Privatize it. Generally, when it comes to the privatization of government services (schools, water supply, etc,), I'm against it. But this Republican solution to problems makes a hell of a lot of sense where the DMV is concerned. This office had 7-8 workers on with over 200 people in the building waiting to be served. If any profit-driven business did this on a regular basis like the DMV does, they would be driven out of business because customers would leave and get their services from the competition. So, simple solution: the DMV needs competition! The state can create jobs and contract DMV services out to a few corporations, creating competition, which will lead to a drive for prompt and more precise customer service. More offices, short lines, phone numbers that you can call and they won't be busy, and a website that actually gives you some information. The state budget may take a hit, but this would put more money back in the pockets of businesses because their workers won't have to take a day out of work just to got the DMV.

I salivate at the thought of the perks that might come to us customers from DMV privatization: comfy seats, food and (non-alcoholic) drink in the buildings, and the uncomfortable seats I had to lounge in today made me think that a massage would be great.

Libraries. Every town has a library, why not throw a DMV office in a library in every town? If the line is long, then at the very least I have a wide selection of books and magazines to read. We could also have local DMV offices at town hall.

Communications. The DMV needs a telephone number that works. This is a fundamental part of business. If they can't fix the landline, at least develop a website that answers some basic questions, like what do I need to register a car? Right now, you can't get these questions answered without going to the DMV and waiting a long time. Then if you don't have everything, you have to take another day out of work and repeat the whole process all over again. It's ridiculous.

Karaoke. Fridays only.

New management. The manager I saw today was 5'6" and he had to have a 60" waist line. Given the state of his DMV office, it didn't look like he did much of anything besides suck down a paycheck. I hate to point out his physical appearance, but I instantly thought of it as a metaphor for the DMV: bloated and lazy. On top of that, he was the only male there amongst an office of middle aged women workers who did all the work and took all the shit for the mismanagement of the office. We need to fire his ass and promote one of those women.

These are a few of the, I think, reasonable solutions I thought of. Basically, I think that if my tax dollars are going to pay for the DMV, then it's a problem is I have to take a day out of work and spend a few hours at the office where I might get service. Other states, like Ohio, have better systems: more offices, more workers, shorter lines, and shorter waits. It's time Rhode Island shaped up its DMV, because we shouldn't have to take a day out of our lives just to get business done there.

Newsblast!
2000 Presidential candidates Nader, Buchanan, John Hagelin (Natural Law Party), and Howard Phillps (Constitution Party), have filed a legal complaint witht he Federal Election Commission against the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). They do not want the CPD to sponser Presidential debates for the 2004 campaign because the CPD is bleedingly biased into supporting the two party system. For a good primer on the CPD, in case you are unfamiliar with the private corporation headed by the Republicans and Democrats, funded by big corporations, and determines who should be in the debates from polls done by the same major media outlets that hardly give third party canaidates coverage, here's something I wrote about the CPD in 2000, when I worked with the Nader campaign in RI. Please excuse my mangled english.

Sen. Orrin Hatch suggested in a Senate session that those "criminals" who download music from file sharing services should have their computers "damaged" or "destroyed" to teach them a lesson, because there is "no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws." It's worth noting that opensecrets.org lists TV/Movies/Music PACs as being the fourth largest contributor to Sen Hatch's campaign funds, clocking in at $175,322. RIAA to Hatch: "we ownz j00!"

"Roe" (Norma McCorvey), famous for being party in Roe v. Wade, has filed a petition through a US District Court asking for the decision to be overturned.. She claims that when she filed her landmark lawsuit, she didn't know what the term "abortion" meant. Unfortunately for the rest of humanity, this woman has already breeded.

Got Employment? The job market is the worst it has been since the early 90's. Let's see, in the early 90's, there was a Bush in office. And in the early 2000's, there's another Bush in office! What a coincidence! I guess this would make it kind of tough to blame things on Clinton.

Meanwhile, I still need a job.

In Florida, a company wants to place advertising inside school buses, even though it's illegal in Florida to place advertising on the outside of a school bus. It's only a matter of time before ads are thrown into the text books. Communities wouldn't be forced to consider advertising as an option to generate more revenue if they had enough money in the school budgets in the first place. Meanwhile, we have a huge national deficit and there's a Bush in office, kinda like when we had a huge national deficit when Reagan/Bush was in office. Anybody else see a correlation here?

Homeland Security has cleared one of their agents of any wrongdoing for his involvment in trying to locate one of the Texas Democrats who fled to Oklahoma a couple months back. Homeland Secuirty, despite the fact that this case was not a matter of nation security, or even a federal matter to begin with, said that the agent did not abuse the powers of his job. In other news, the Bush administration will be renaming the Department of Homeland Secuirty to "The Good Ole' Boys Network". Yeee-haw!

Some in Hollywood are blaming the influence of Bush an Ashcroft on American culture for the declining amount of sex scenes in new movies. This isn't really earth-shattering news, but damnit, when I have to pay 9 bucks for a movie I want to see some action.

I know I have been ignoring the 900 pound gorilla in the corner: Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. It's a big stoy right now, and the size and scope of it seems to be growing everyday. Other blogs and media services have been doing a great job with reporting the story, so I have stayed mum about it because I don't want to waste your reading time by having you read my rambles about a story that you can get better coverage for elsewhere.

I will mention a few things: listening to the Arlene Violet show in Providence, she was very critical of Bush and devoted time on her show to asking the question of whether or not Bush misrepresented (or completely ignored) evidence about WMD in Iraq. She pointed out that late in 2002, it was widely reported that the CIA did not believe that Iraq had WMD. If the general public has access to this knowledge, then why doesn't the President? Of course, we all know that he did have access to it..

My sister just came back from a vacation in England and Wales, and she told me that the media has been relentless in pressing PM Tony Blair on this stoy, and whether or not he lied to his nation about Iraq having WMD. UK intelligence agencies, not wishing to be blamed for this fiasco, are admitting that Blair's administration has pushed them into "misrepresenting" the evidence.

On this side of the pond, maybe this isn't a huge story yet because a third of America believes that we found WMD, and Iraq used chemical an biological weapons against us, so says this poll. This poll also finds that 55% of who it polled says that Bush was not misleading the public in his march to goto war with Iraq. All I can say is "wow". No wonder the rest of the world thinks we're a bunch of fucking morons.

Newsblast!
A Phoenix Bishop was involved in a hit and run accident where he hit, along with another vehicle, struck a man while he crossed the street. The man died. I wonder if the Republican Media is going to continue their ridiculous claims that the media is anti-Catholic and denouce this story the same way they have denouced stories about priests diddling with little boys.

The UN says that Iran is failing to report their nuclear activities and they want access to inspect all sites they deem fit to be inspected, not just sites that Iran has declared as nuclear sites. No word yet on whether the UN will start giving a shit about Israel's nuclear program.

The Chief International War Crimes Prosecutor has been sworn in at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. The United States wants (and has) immunity for its citizens from ICC prosecution: "The United States fears that the court could become a forum for politically-motivated prosecutions of its citizens -- notably US soldiers working as peacekeepers around the world." Well, the best defense against politically-motivated prosecutions is to make sure that our leaders are not performing war crimes. Duh. Which begs the question: why is our government afraid of having their citizens tried in this court? If we weren't doing anything against the law, then we won't have to worry, right? So, uhm, why is our government worrying? The only logical conclusion I can come to is that our government is doing illegal things.

With this Bush fundraiser, it sounds like he has seen the future. We have to remember that Dubya, while governor of Texas, partly owned the Texas Rangers Baseball Club. He played a primary role in bilking taxpaying Texas citizens into funding the Rangers new stadium, thus increasing the value of the team so that when his group of investors sold the ball club, he became a millionaire.

But that's besides the point. The last time I went to see a major league game was in another stadium that the tax payers built, Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. It cost me $11 to get seats behind the plate in the highest section of the stadium. If I wanted to get a 20 ounce bottle of soda, it was $5. A "foot long" hot dog which was surprisingly very skinny and short on meat was, I think, $4. When I eat, I kinda like to fill up my stomach, I think that's a basic point of food consumption. To fill up my tummy at a Reds game, I would reasonably need two hot dogs and a soda. We're looking at $13-14 there, on top of my $11 that I had to pay for shitty seats in the nosebleed section. I didn't have too much money left for peanuts and crackerjacks.

Dubya is just advancing the baseball philisophy on food costs, a philisophy which he helped propagate while owning the Texas Rangers. (I have never been to Texas to watch a ballgame, but I imagine that the food prices also require you to give up your first born son. You could eat like a king of you're a father from Utah who practices polygamy.) Just think, if we keep Dubya in office, then at ballparks across the country (which we paid for) we will be shelling out $1000 just to eat! Isn't capitalism fun?