Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV

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July 27, 2012

Time for common sense at the DMV

Bluefield Daily Telegraph

— — I am 84 years old and have been driving since I was 18. Now I can’t renew my driver’s license until I prove I was born and prove that I live on White Oak Creek Road. My current license is not accepted by the Department of Motor Vehicles as proof of anything, not even who I am or who my license says I am.

A radical Arab Muslim comes to the U.S.A. and has little or no trouble getting a pilot’s license in order to fly a plane into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.

I am an American citizen, a taxpayer and have served in the military, but not even my honorable discharge papers or my Form 214 showing my military service to this country is accepted as meaning anything when trying to prove who I am.

This, as I understand it, is a federal requirement, placing a hardship on the DMV to comply.

This is like the farmer who shuts the barn door after the horse gets out, then penalizes the other horses because they didn’t get out.

I think we in America could be safe without being ridiculous if we used a bit of good common sense.

Just to get my driver’s license renewed took the best of two days. I had to go to the courthouse to get a birth certificate and stand in line again at the DMV to comply with regulations. Three lines to be exact: one to present my credentials, the second to get my eyes checked and a third to get my picture taken.

Is this the price we have to pay for being a free country?

Something just isn’t right with this picture.

Robert Kessinger

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