What a steaming pile of #$!@^!@#$!~!~!!

You know what really torques my shorts?  People who waste my time.  Really gets me going.  Of course, it doesn't help matters when I visit places that are geared to wasting people's time - like the DMV.  See, a while ago, I moved family and myself to South Carolina.  One of the pitfalls of such is that, at some point, I needed to get a new drivers' license from South Carolina.

The (or a) problem is, I can't just get a drivers' license, anymore.  No, I have to get a REAL ID which requires about forty-two (42) #@#^@#$!@#$!!! separate pieces of evidence that I am who I say I am.  I can't just produce 

• a passport (which has my picture on it), 
• a drivers' license from the last state I had been driving in for the last 5 decades (which happens to have my picture on it), 
• W2 statements from my employer that I am who I say I am, 
• Bill statements from the utility company that says I live where I say I live, 

No, I also have to produce another 10 !@#$!%!@$ documents which don't do anything other than tell prospective identity thieves exactly who I am and where I live so that when they go and create false documentation, they can get everything just right.

I'm guessing this is how South Carolina balances its budget. Let's make it easy for thieves to make forged documents so that when the identify thieves hack the state computer systems (and I have no doubt that thieves do it regularly) and get all that information on everyone (that everyone had to produce to get a real ID), the state doesn't have to put them on the welfare roles.  

Yeah, instead of the state maintaining the standard of living for identify thieves, they can live off monies stolen from from the insurance companies (and those citizens not clever enough to have insurance to protect themselves).

Sounds about how government works;  make it difficult for tax-paying citizens to get an ID but make it easy for identify thieves to create fake documents.

Yep, that's your tax dollars at work.