2020 US Election (Part One)

[Bamspeedy]

Used to just get a number from the ticket machine (6 different categories based on reason for visit), then wait until number is called before getting to counter and then find out what you needed. Wonder how many numbers we're taken and then the person just left, so they were calling numbers that nobody had, or people getting the wrong category.

Now, there is no machine, you get in line to be handed a number after stating the reason for your visit. The ticket guy also glances over your forms to see if there is something you are obviously missing.

6 different categories, still leaves you unsure when you are up next "ooh, my number is next for vehicle registering" only to see 10 other people (in other categories) called before you.

 

[Truthy]

Yeah this is what I find flummoxing. I don't think I've ever waited longer than 10 or 15 minutes at a government shopfront here (they do driving licenses but also other state level stuff). I'm not questioning the reality of the situation over there, just wondering how it got so messed up. It sounds at least as bad as our social welfare bureaucracy which is designed that way to punish people.

Mostly there aren't enough DMVs, they don't have enough employees, and visitors cluster in the morning and towards the end/beginning of the month. Plus, visitors often don't know what forms and documentation they need and slow everything down (it can all be found online, but people forget or get confused). There's also a stereotype that DMV employees are idiots or sadistic *******s who want you to suffer, like Patty and Selma from the Simpson's. I think they're usually fine and competent enough for me to be taken care of quickly once I'm served.

Also stuff like this:

Spoiler :

I do wonder if there are other factors in the US apart from funding that make DMVs worse than the analogous agencies in other countries. Eg, US use of driver's licenses as the universal form of ID, more cars per capita, inconsistencies between states, more stupid rules demanding documentation people are bound to forget about or mess up, and so on.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I do wonder if there are other factors in the US apart from funding that make DMVs worse than the analogous agencies in other countries. Eg, US use of driver's licenses as the universal form of ID, more cars per capita, inconsistencies between states, more stupid rules demanding documentation people are bound to forget about or mess up, and so on.

I'd guess that second one is significant.

And apparently I guessed wrong...maybe. A quick search (why do I have this voice ringing in my head of the local library director saying Google-search is NOT the same thing as re-search) provides a whole lot of "cars per capita by country" that seem to suggest the US is nowhere near the top of that statistic. I say "seems" because i cannot find any of these lists that show any kind of agreement, which makes all of them appear dubious at best.

Maybe the driver's license use one?

 

[Arwon]

I do wonder if there are other factors in the US apart from funding that make DMVs worse than the analogous agencies in other countries. Eg, US use of driver's licenses as the universal form of ID, more cars per capita, inconsistencies between states, more stupid rules demanding documentation people are bound to forget about or mess up, and so on.

FWIW I can tell you that in Australia both state-to-state licensing inconsistencies and people who don't drive struggling for photo ID are certainly both bureaucratic pain points here, too. Just without a notorious lines problem, which people apparently seem to think is mostly resourcing (for reference my city-state of 400k has five government shopfronts which deal with both drivers licenses and car registrations as well as births/deaths/marriages, business and occupation licensing, firearms, etc, they usually have about ten windows open and a couple of staff roaming the floor to help out, which usually results in a maximum 15 minute wait)

 

[amadeus]

Seth Meyers ... worth a watch.

I tried watching a few minutes of it, but I just can't get past the fact that Seth Meyers is a terrible late night host.

Before anyone accuses me of being biased against Meyers for his politics, it's not; it's because he's not funny and he does talk about too much politics when I'm trying to veg out and have some light entertainment. Conan O'Brien was good but has sunk a little. Jimmy Kimmel is pretty bad after being good on The Man Show and Win Ben Stein's Money. Jimmy Fallon is a talented guy but not cut for late night and better suited to some other kind of Sonny and Cher-esque variety show. That other CBS guy, Corden? Never watched him.

Carson, Letterman, Snyder! Sure, two of them have since passed but we can still put them in re-runs, right?

 

[Bamspeedy]

FWIW I can tell you that in Australia both state-to-state licensing inconsistencies and people who don't drive struggling for photo ID are certainly both bureaucratic pain points here, too. Just without a notorious lines problem, which people apparently seem to think is mostly resourcing (for reference my city-state of 400k has five government shopfronts which deal with both drivers licenses and car registrations as well as births/deaths/marriages, business and occupation licensing, firearms, etc, they usually have about ten windows open and a couple of staff roaming the floor to help out, which usually results in a maximum 15 minute wait)

In the US, All the stuff you listed besides the driving and ID card is done at city or county hall. Knowing which one, and then which department within that hall, is the problem (register of deeds at county hall is your best bet when you don't know).
15 minutes would be a long wait at city hall. I don't think I've ever had to wait 1 minute, perhaps someone from a more urban area can inform me if their city hall visits are vastly different.

 

[amadeus]

I’ve lived in both small towns and a major city. The small town bureaucracy was faster at every level. Whether that was a result of more public employees per capita or I was going at different times in each city I can’t say.

 

[Arwon]

In the US, All the stuff you listed besides the driving and ID card is done at city or county hall. Knowing which one, and then which department within that hall, is the problem (register of deeds at county hall is your best bet when you don't know).
15 minutes would be a long wait at city hall. I don't think I've ever had to wait 1 minute, perhaps someone from a more urban area can inform me if their city hall visits are vastly different.

We're admittedly a bit unique in my part of the country being the designated territory of the capital city like DC over there - we don't have a local government at all, just the Australian Capital Territory government which does everything which is done at both state and local government level elsewhere. It's basically treated as a state government with less constitutional powers and a "municipal services agency". And for some reason we have the Federal Police instead of our own cops.

The rest of the country does have local governments, but I think more stuff defaults to state level rather than city level here compared to the US, and we make no city/county distinction, everything is just "local government" which can lead to situations like Sydney having like 30 local governments and nothing else between them and New South Wales, which governs an area twice the size of Texas but with two thirds of the population being in Sydney.

The local govt level is mostly planning and zoning rules, sport facilities and parks, and garbage collection. Police, education, emergency services, and public transportation are at state level.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The DMV things heavily varies from state to state. I never had issues with the DMV in NC, IL or MO but when I moved to California...yeah it's a bit of nightmare and the 3 hour waits are a real. You can register online ahead of time though at least. And at least California makes it easy to maintain/update your voter registration information outside of the DMV once you are registered the first time.

I honestly do not get America's military budget funding fetish. America is tired of war - until it isn't.

'Another disappointment is that Data for Progress found just 33 percent support (and 47 percent opposition) to a proposal “cutting back on our military spending for wasteful procurement of weapons systems.”'

Republicans and supporters apparently say that 1) as a *percentage* of GDP, military spending has been stagnant, and that 2) any reduction would endanger troops on the frontline. But the latter deals with the former: what frontline? America has, or the military loves to scaremonger that it has, slipped on peer-to-peer superiority and has no stomach or will to occupy any problematic nation for real change, and 'military adventurism' was a big topic in 2016, but apparently not now? The troops wouldn't BE on any frontline, they'll be withdrawn into a defensive posture: mostly Europe and Korea and Taiwan, maybe. What, are we really going to invade Iran? North Korea?

The DDX was a disaster, the F35 and F22 are fine but everyone else has not caught up in the slightest, and the fleet won't magically regain any superiority vis-a-vis China by getting into an building race there, and everything else is for wars that'll never happen, or frankly, shouldn't.

Americans won't be facing down Chinese or Russian troops and everyone else can be ignored - what tinpot dictators are we going to go after now? Especially after Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya?

The military budget should be cut back - 40% goes into dues and taking care of troops, fine. If even cut back to 50, 60% of what it is now, that's enough, isn't it? That 40% reduction (maybe over 4 years, so 90-80-70-60, or some such, and that is vastly needed elsewhere. In this budget, with nearly everything slashed save for the DOD and DHS, hundreds of billions do help on the ground. Especially if we get a Prog president who...needs money for their massive promised programmes! Or even just wants to fix the budget we had before Trump!

Just in case you are really asking why people don't think that's a great idea, at least several hundred thousand of them, I live in a valley with two decent sized cities and several unincorporated rural areas for a total population of about half a million. About twenty thousand of them make their living in military aerospace, where they are grossly overpaid for what they actually do because the things they build cannot be built overseas, ever. Every other job in this valley is in some way shape or form living off the pass through money that those 20,000 people bring here and spend to be respent and respent. When you say "cut military spending" you are telling this half a million people "I think this would make a really great ghost town."

Do you have any idea how hard you make it to get a Democrat even within spitting distance of winning here when you promote "vote Democrat and destroy the local economy"?

Do you have any idea how many demographic pockets just like this one exist?

Tim beat me to it - I also favor big slashes to the military budget but it really has to be thought through due to how much of our economy has been structured around support of the military in various means. If you just gave a 10, 20 or 50% hair cut to the budget, a lot of human suffering will follow.

Southern California was devastated economically in the late 80's and 90's as the defense budget finally began to draw down. There were mass layoffs in aerospace that are still reverberating 30 years later.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Wow what a coincidence

I just saw a Bernie advertisement that started with a reference to Kennedy's moon speech and how we can do anything. Well, Sanders is the one proposing we slash the military budget and I hope he at least recognizes the massive mess that followed the draw down of Kennedy's moon landing. The economic devastation was real, and this is a separate slump from the 90's drawdown I mentioned in my last post.

I also find it amusing he went with that reference given his space policy is absolute trash. And what is especially frustrating is that when looking for productive places to park tax dollars, NASA and space technology development is one of the absolute best things to invest in given the amazing, un-outsourceable jobs it brings and the economic growth it drives both directly and then indirectly through R&D. Seriously his space policy is absolute garbage but it could be a win-win of cutting defense and increasing good paying jobs by shifting some of that defense spending to space.

And I'm going to go out on a limb and assume he has nothing useful to say about the Space Force other than 'cut the military'.

And to repeat: I too want to cut the military dramatically, we just have to be smart about it. And no, I don't think NASA should get 50% of the DoD budget. There are other great things to do with the money too!

Edit: And now I can't even find space policy on his website. I checked a few weeks back and found it and posted it here. It was extremely disappointing and is summed up by 'spend money on Earth first'. I have been able to find on Reddit where he said that he wants to increase NASA's budget but that's all I can find now and saying that on the stump isn't the same as an official policy position.

Edit 2: And if he's serious about climate change, he needs a bigger, more robust NASA! Every year good climate science missions get passed up due to lack of funding.

 

[Kyriakos]

Wow what a coincidence

I just saw a Bernie advertisement that started with a reference to Kennedy's moon speech and how we can do anything. Well, Sanders is the one proposing we slash the military budget and I hope he at least recognizes the massive mess that followed the draw down of Kennedy's moon landing. The economic devastation was real, and this is a separate slump from the 90's drawdown I mentioned in my last post.

I also find it amusing he went with that reference given his space policy is absolute trash. And what is especially frustrating is that when looking for productive places to park tax dollars, NASA and space technology development is one of the absolute best things to invest in given the amazing, un-outsourceable jobs it brings and the economic growth it drives both directly and then indirectly through R&D. Seriously his space policy is absolute garbage but it could be a win-win of cutting defense and increasing good paying jobs by shifting some of that defense spending to space.

And I'm going to go out on a limb and assume he has nothing useful to say about the Space Force other than 'cut the military'.

And to repeat: I too want to cut the military dramatically, we just have to be smart about it. And no, I don't think NASA should get 50% of the DoD budget. There are other great things to do with the money too!

Edit: And now I can't even find space policy on his website. I checked a few weeks back and found it and posted it here. It was extremely disappointing and is summed up by 'spend money on Earth first'. I have been able to find on Reddit where he said that he wants to increase NASA's budget but that's all I can find now and saying that on the stump isn't the same as an official policy position.

Edit 2: And if he's serious about climate change, he needs a bigger, more robust NASA! Every year good climate science missions get passed up due to lack of funding.

Space policy means nothing for the election - nor should it, tbh.
It may be a big issue three elections from now, with global warming

 

[amadeus]

One of the great things about living overseas for as long as I have is that I can pick and choose when I view U.S. political propaganda.

Not because of the political contents, just because all of them are so terrible. Trump, Sanders, Mini Mike. Ew!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Space policy means nothing for the election - nor should it, tbh.
It may be a big issue three elections from now, with global warming

Climate change is a central plank he's running on. The entire Democratic field is running on that issue.

 

[Kyriakos]

Climate change is a central plank he's running on. The entire Democratic field is running on that issue.

We are just not yet in the "evacuate the planet" stage, is all.

Monosolarians, with poor tech as well.

 

[Lexicus]

So uh apparently Biden called himself a candidate for US Senate...

 

[Kyriakos]

So uh apparently Biden called himself a candidate for US Senate...

I do feel sorry for him. Time to just drop out - maybe pick up some delegates at SC if it is that important to him, then quit.

 

[amadeus]

So uh apparently Biden called himself a candidate for US Senate...

I think anyone in their seventies would have a slip-up like that. But he’s also Joe Biden, Obama’s answer to Dan Quayle.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

We are just not yet in the "evacuate the planet" stage, is all.

Monosolarians, with poor tech as well.

Monitoring climate change and emissions requires space technology.


Anyway, yesterday on PBS they said that Bloomberg has spent more on his election so far than Obama did for his entire 2012 campaign. I just saw an ad where he had a bunch of women say how awesome he is. LOL damage control

 

[AmazonQueen]

So uh apparently Biden called himself a candidate for US Senate...

“My name is Joe Biden. I’m a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate. Look me over, if you like what you see, help out. If not, vote for the other Biden.”

So who is the other Biden?

 

[Birdjaguar]

It's the long lines. 'Everybody' has to go there, because so many people have cars. Once your 'number' is called you're done in 5 minutes or less, it's the waiting to be called that is the pain.....unless you are missing some document you didn't know you needed, them it's "go home, get document, return to DMV and to the back of the line for another 3 hours".
50 different states, 50 different rules and procedures of what is required for registering vehicle, getting license, ID card, etc. DMV doesn't have any competition (unlike the post office), so there is not much incentive to speed up the lines.
Sure, "hire more people" is an easy fix, but 'lower taxes' gets more votes than 'shorter DMV trips'.

Personally, it isn't too bad for me. DMV trips take me 30-45 minutes...when I need to do it. I mail in my vehicle registration (and it saves $3 too). Edit: I mean my license plate renewal. Vehicle registration I do when getting new car, which I certainly don't do every 'year or two', more like once a decade.

NM allows private contractors to also provide DMV services. They charge double the price and you are in and out in 15 minutes or less.