RDSNWST
License Plate Redesign Wastes Taxpayer Dollars

I got a letter earlier this month from the Missouri Department of Revenue informing me that due to a design change with all Missouri license plates, my vanity plates were also going to change. The letter said that I needed to let them know by January 31 if I wanted to keep mine.

My first feeling was one of disgust over the waste and stupidity of stamping out new plates for the thousands of Missourians who have personalized plates just so they can match the design-du-jour.

The letter even revealed that "the changes will not significantly impact the appearance of the plate."

So what is the point? Why the heck is the state wasting taxpayer money and my time on this kind of frivolity? Just so that everyone matches?

Hello, Earth to Jeff City! If you haven't noticed, the state already has close to 200 specially branded vanity plates that mark the holders as supporters of various organizations and causes. We're never all going to match, so quit trying.

In all fairness, the Department of Revenue did not dream up this plate change on their own. They're just following a mandate from our illustrious General Assembly who decided that Missourians' plates needed "improving."

I've had the same personalized plates for almost 20 years. This will be the third set of plates I've had to get because the bureaucracy in Jeff City thought they needed spruced up.

You know, like adding a squiggle that symbolizes the Mississippi River and changing the color scheme. Real mission-critical stuff.

Personally, I wish we had nice big old-fashioned plates with 4-inch letters that you can read a football field away.

Then everyone could see from down the block that I was STUDMUFFIN.

No, I'm just kidding.

STUDMUFFIN is too many letters for a vanity plate. You can only use up to 6 characters. However, STDMUF is frankly, just confusing.

What the heck would a STDMUF be if there were such a thing? Sounds like something a carpenter might use if he was framing a house in the dead of winter.

As a cold wind blew out of the north, Jim used his stud-muff to hold the two by four in position while he nailed it in place.

It certainly is not something you would stamp on a license plate and slap on your car.

And STDMFN was either already taken or determined to be too risqué by the Missouri Personalized License Plate Morality Police. I don't know which. As I said, it's been 20 years since I originally got my plates. I'm pretty sure they didn't bother to tell you the status of a given plate back then.

You provided three choices and crossed your finger that your first pick was both available and not subject to be blacklisted by whomever the acting censor was in Jeff City.

I'm actually considering letting my current vanity plate lapse and getting one that is more pertinent to my personal state of being in 2009.

I'm sick of the idiocracy that is running both this state and this country financially into the ground, wasting money on trivialities that really don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

I wonder if the vanity plate POdBRD is available?