It must have happened in my childhood and early teen years, but I literally cannot remember a time when the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector or the Harris County Clerk was a Democrat. And so it is today: these elected county officials are Republicans. I'm sure they would tell you, as would every GOPer who bothers to tell you anything, that "
less government is better" and "
government costs too much." When they are in office, GOPers simplify the combination of these two statements into "
less government service is better." And act accordingly.
 |
| (not mine) |
I received a notice that it's time to renew my auto registration. The state, at long last, is doing the sensible thing and combining registration and inspection status into a single sticker. I can't blame Repubs alone for that, though it's been a long time since Dems had the power to legislate it. Anyway, my notice contained a statement telling me "
* NEW PLATES REQUIRED *" and telling me in a very few words my options for obtaining the plates. The short version: the notice arrived too late for me to do it online or by mail with any reasonable expectation of plates arriving before my current ones expire. As undiligent as county officials are about notifying, that's how diligent HPD is about stopping people with out-of-date stickers; I am not the only person I know to whom they've done that (never mind that the state failed to send me a notice that year). So today I have to go to the county tax assessor's office to pay my registration fee and get my sticker (now only one) and plates.
In the past, the lines at the closest branch tax assessor's office have been so long and slow that they confirm every GOP stereotype of government inefficiency. I'd be very surprised if that has changed. So my day is cut out for me.
The GOPers will not succeed in making me loathe government; they only succeed at that when their government officials try repeatedly to illegalize or otherwise interfere with a woman's constitutionally protected right to choose abortion, which of course they do several times a year here. If the goddam gummint lets me get back home soon enough today, I'll write an article about the recent execrable hostility of Repubs in Congress and the state Lege to the very existence of Planned Parenthood, which is many women's only source of health care of any sort.
Once more into the
fray queue...
Good Luck! Just remember that the DMV stands for Dumb Mutha's Victimize.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Michael. The deed is done now, thank the good Dog. I am exhausted, but at least I was reminded of something by the actual experience that I forgot when I wrote the above post: however cold-hearted or crony-oriented the officials in charge of such departments may be, the employees are by law not permitted to behave politically in performing their jobs. And indeed they were helpful to me. I was signed in by someone who obviously understood what it is to be made to stand in line when one is dependent on a cane or walker (cane for me today), who promptly put me in a line apparently used mostly for load-balancing or handicapped people. The woman serving that line was very patient with my hearing loss, and I was out of there in 15 minutes with my sticker and plates. (Gawd, the new "plain" non-decorated Texas plates are ugly!) So the worst of the experience was getting there and getting back. Well, one other aspect was not so easy for someone like me who has a lot of trouble going down on his haunches to mount the plates, but hey, it's done!
Delete