My little Runaround. A run, run, run, run Runaround. A run, run, run, run Runaround.

[captainsblog]

For all the jabbering that goes on by conservatives about Big Government, I find that, by far, some of the biggest abuses of governmental power arise when they farm out their authority to the private sector. I spent a goodly portion of the past two days dealing with that.

My car was due for inspection this month. It's still new enough that I don't dread the exercise, or go racing in on the first of the month to get it over with before something else breaks, but I didn't want to put it off until the end of the month, either- on my trip a few weeks ago to points east, state troopers were camped out in the EZ-Pass lanes, slowing people to a crawl just to check their registration and inspection stickers- so when I got out of court relatively early yesterday, and it turned out to be a beyootiful day, I ran the car over to a place close to my office to get it taken care of while I walked over to review my mail and whatnot.

An hour later, I came back to abject failure. One of the grounds wasn't a total surprise: Eleanor had, understandably, backed into my car two Marches ago, on the day we'd suddenly and unexpectedly needed to put down Biggsy, one of our cats who was only five years old or so and who had the absolute mostest of kitty soul. In so doing, the driver-side mirror on my car got jostled; she did a marvelous job of fixing it with some anti-jostle glue, and it passed inspections both that March and a year ago. This time, though, the tire store inspector saw the traces of glue residue on the edge of the mirror frame and rejected it out of hand.  He also told me that both of my left-side tires had failed, being down to their "wear marks." I'd just replaced all four tires on this beast less than 18 months ago, with 50,000 mile high-end Goodyear tires, and had driven less than half of those 50k miles since, so my BS meter started tingling. I paid the state fee and made an appointment for late this morning at the place I'd bought the tires.

Eleanor, bless her, went straight out and re-stocked her Bondomatic brand glue and re-applied it to the mirror late yesterday. By this morning, hydrogen molecules couldn't slip underneath the seal. We first took care of a vet appointment for our older dog, which went swimmingly (her account of it is as lovely as any I could repeat here); we then had a late home-cooked breakfast (Tasha couldn't eat before the physical , so neither of us ate in front of her either) and I headed over to drop off the car a second time.

This time, the second time was the charm. Mr. G couldn't find anything wrong with the tires as they now sit; he agreed there was unusual wear on two of them, but passed them just the same because they were well above the state limit and he'll replace them for 50% off when they're a bit closer to being, well, 50% off. He also found the glue to be perfectly lovely. Part of me wants to sic the Attorney General on the place I visited yesterday, but then he's got bigger fish to fry at the moment and I'd hate to get him off his game.

Because private-sector assholes abusing the power of government? I've always....

well, you know....

Comments

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

Ok, "hated it" about made me jump out of my office chair.

Ah the joys of car inspection. May I just say that I LOVE Tennessee which has neither car inpsections nor state income tax. We DO have a 10% sales tax, but that's OK, because I get to decide what and when I buy. I lived in NC for 2 years and never did get my inspection sticker renewed, because I wasn't used to having one. I was never caught, because the state troopers were too busy looking for pot plants amoung the tobacco leaves.