Weinberg: Draining The Washington Swamp Is Only A Start. What About Your DMV?

(Fred Weinberg) – Donald Trump won the Presidency largely because he represented the disgust the average person has with government at all levels.

Any person who has any doubts, should have been at the Reno, Nevada office of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles last Saturday, where it took five hours to conduct a 10-minute transaction and some of the DMV employees made the TSA people at the airport seem kind and caring.

It happens my stepson has moved up to our house so he can finish school and I had an old pickup truck to give him.  It’s not pretty, but it runs and is a lot less expensive than him going out and buying something.

I pulled out the title, he bought some insurance and off to the DMV we went.

We got there at 11:30 Saturday morning.

There were no spaces in the parking lot, there was a line around the building and that line stopped at the front door.  Because the building was full.

There was a uniformed private security lady snapping and barking like a TSA agent at the airport and, when I picked up my iPhone to record it, a DMV employee sternly told me, “NO Recording!” (I ignored her.) I even saw that lady tell a guy who wanted to use the restroom that he couldn’t go into a state-owned building to do that.

To be sure, there were some very nice people there who worked for the DMV. But many of them gave us the attitude that they were occupying lifetime appointments and that we were lucky they’d come down to see us on a Saturday.

But all of that is begging a very big question:

Why are there any state employees there at all?

What does the DMV actually do which cannot be handled by a contracted retailer like WalMart?

Ask the state employees union and they’ll give you all kinds of answers, none of which make any sense at all.

The best argument might be the testing and issuance of driver’s licenses.  The problem with that is that when the FAA issues pilot licenses and you take a check ride, you don’t take it with a Federal employee.  You take it with a contracted check pilot who takes great pride in his or her work because nobody wants to grant a license to a pilot who might go out and have a fatal accident.

The real reason we have a DMV has to do with state employees keeping their jobs.

But a Saturday with the Nevada DMV is a reminder that merely sending Donald Trump to Washington is simply a start at draining the swamp.

There is a swamp in all 50 state capitals, in every county seat, in every city hall and at every school district headquarters. Each of them needs to be drained.

The fact is that most people—faced with the DMV in their own states—really didn’t know what to do about it.  But President Trump is setting an example which, if it is successful, could end the tyranny of the government employee over the average voter.

In Nevada, the DMV could be privatized by a voter initiative petition and an election.

Can you imagine how easy it would be to get signatures by standing outside a DMV building?

And can you imagine what would happen when the same state employee who tried to get me to stop recording video were to tell a signature gatherer he or she couldn’t collect signatures in front of a taxpayer owned facility?

And, seriously, who’s going to vote against making it easier to register your car?

Donald Trump has shown us one thing if nothing else.

We’re not gonna take it anymore.  We don’t have to.

Mr. Weinberg is publisher of the Penny Press. Get to know more about him by visiting www.PennyPressNV.com.