Shove It Up Your Tailpipe!

Crazy State of Affairs.

I received a notice in the mail the other day from the great oppressive State of Maryland letting me know that I neglected to get my emissions test done. Now I don’t remember even getting one in the first place but they seem to think I should have and of course in this day and age you are guilty until they tell you your aren’t. The neighborhood I live in has numbered streets and there is a house with the same number as mine on ever street. Now because of this the people that work at our local Post Office routinely get confused. We routinely get mail from other people, not an occasionally occurrence but fairly regular and we either put it back in the mailbox or have one of the kids deliver it. I have to wonder how many times our mail gets delivered to other houses and the occupants don’t even bother trying to get it back to us because they don’t just don’t care. Although the failure of the Post Office is not what this is about.

With the failure to comply notice from the State, not only do I find they want another fifteen dollars from me, but if I fail to comply with their demands my registration on my car will be suspended, which to me sounds vaguely like blackmail. This I find to be absolutely tyrannical behavior in a number of ways. For one, older cars are not required to get their emissions test and yet they are more likely to pollute as I often see black clouds of noxious gas belching out the tailpipes of old jalopies running down the road. Second, why would they need to charge more? Is the test more expensive after a certain day or is this just another way for the State to steal money because I am a miscreant and they need to punish me for not jumping at their command. The whole thing in fact is one big ripe off of the citizens. It is a money making scheme and a way it seems for the state to employ people that do nothing but stick things up peoples tailpipes. Normally a car will not deteriorate in two years to make a difference in it passing or failing an emissions test, but of course if they required it every five years they would not make as much money now would they.

Third why would they suspend a registration, do they think the car is polluting the ever so fresh air that we breathe? No, of course not but demonstrates to us all that our personal is really not our property but the State believes it belongs top them. This is not the behavior of legitimate government.

However, this is really not the point of this post. The main problem I have with all this is that this State knows exactly when I fail to get my emissions test done in their allotted time frame, yet they let children like Bryanna Harris die because they cannot perform their jobs properly and keep track of parents that are a known danger to their children. Of course they do not make money off keeping unfit parents from harming their children but they do make money off of the requirement for an emissions test. How many other children have died because of their failures to keep tabs on known irresponsible parents? Yet they will come after me with threats and fines, imposed without due process of law because I failed to let them stick a tube up my tailpipe and know exactly when I fail to comply, something just does not add up in all of this. After all what is more important to them, making money or keeping defenseless children alive?