Can You Fight City Hall?
Just ask U.S. Marine Corps veteran David Hassan (pictured at right) who, after five years of effort and some recent national publicity, appears to have finally succeeded in getting New York City's government to acknowledge that he was born male, not female.
David Hassan, a bearded Iraq War veteran, was born in Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital 29 years ago. There was never a reason to doubt he was a boy.
But it was only in 2003 that it came to Hassan's attention that the hospital had deemed him to be female on his birth certificate, his lawyer said.
Hassan was not bothered by the mistake until he moved to New Jersey after serving in Iraq with the Marine Corp, and tried to get a New Jersey driving license.
His birth certificate identifying him as female raised eyebrows with the authorities, and the license was not issued, Peter Madison, Hassan's lawyer, said in an interview.
In a bid to set the record straight, Lenox Hill Hospital gave Hassan a letter in 2007 to show to the city's Department of Health, which explained that he was male and not female - although his problems were far from over.
"The city for reasons known only to themselves said that in the letter the hospital must state that it was their mistake," Madison said. "Lenox Hill would not admit that it was their own mistake."
Bureaucrats in the Age of Obama never make mistakes, only demands. If the form says you are female, then you are obviously a woman, notwithstanding all the facial hair. And if you can somehow prove that you aren't a woman now, then you nevertheless must have been a baby girl back then. Somehow.
Let's recap: Mr. Hassan, returned from fighting for freedom in Iraq, is for years denied a driver's license at home because he cannot either 1) pass for a woman, or 2) convince New York bureaucrats to admit that someone made a simple clerical mistake on his birth certificate 29 years ago.
You think this is bad? Just wait until a few years hence when the NY City motor vehicles people somehow lose track of the receipt proving that Mr. Hassan purchased a new Chevy Volt as mandated by President Obama's Affordable Motor Vehicle and Global Warming Prevention Executive Order of 2013.
And the fun is going national. Imagine New York City levels of efficiency at each and every hospital across the fruited plain once the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act [sic] kicks in and NYC's Department of Records personnel win the no-bid contract for updating your government-mandated electronic medical record.
And how will the inevitable medical transcription errors ever get fixed? In the coming years, as bureaucratic victims proliferate by the thousands, how many of us are likely to win the national attention that is the sole reason Mr. Hassan is now no longer officially Ms. Hassan?
At least the San Francisco officials tormenting Ms. Pries through her multi-year battle to open an ice cream shop admitted that she was, in fact, a she.
So how about it, Ricochet: Care to share some bureaucratic horror stories of your own? Have any of my fellow members actually fought City Hall and won?
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Comments :
Jul '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
Was it Buttle or Tuttle. The movie Brazil from Terry Gillam gives us the Ministry of Information which is horrifically inefficient and utterly indifferent as to mistakes. If it gets worse I suppose we'll have to take a stand and as De Niro says in the movie, " We're all in this together".
Edited on Feb 9 at 11:55pmMar '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
My tale of bureaucratic woe isn't on the scale of Mr. Hassan's. In 1986, I moved from Georgia to Los Angeles, quitting the job I'd had in Ohio ( I was temporarily relocated from Ohio to Georgia to support a project). Because the tax year was going to involve three state and one city (hiya, Dayton!) income tax returns, plus relocation expenses and a host of other things, I retained the services of a tax preparer.
All went swimmingly until 1987. California took it into it's head that the money that I'd earned from my previous employer (whilst in Georgia, working out of Ohio) was to be counted as Californian income.
"Nuts," I replied helpfully.
This happy crap continued for twelve years! I sent moving receipts, tax returns from other states, affidavits from the former employer, and the occasional jeremiad scribbled in crayon, all to no avail. Eventually, having moved to the other side of the country and sick to death of hearing from them, I cut the check for $64 dollars which I included with a note that said I hoped they choked on it.
Wow. I guess that worked better than I imagined.
Oct '10
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
This reminded me of an old SF short story I read once. And, lo and behold, here it is: Computers Don't Argue, Gordon R. Dickson.
Feb '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
Well, at least he can marry in a few states, as either party A or party B.
Feb '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
This is great. How have I never seen it before??!!
Jul '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
Maybe he should claim he had a sex change operation while away in another country and have his sex legally changed to the correct one. If the government still has issues then he can get the LGBT community to attack them for their gender judging ways.
Oct '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
Here in Wisconsin a significant number of public employees show up to their jobs with Recall Walker t-shirts and buttons on. It makes you very confident that if you meet the profile of a conservative or Republican voter that you will get good fair service/treatment from them.
May '10
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
Just wait till we have our national healthcare database in place and someone enters something erroneous in it. You can be sure the process to get it corrected will be sisyphean. Look what happens when the Feds decide you are dead.....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23378093/ns/us_news-life/t/resurrected-still-wallowing-red-tape/#.TzUq23KLJTY
Aug '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
A few years back I got a letter from the IRS indicating an error on my tax forms. All my income at that time was from self-employment, and they were certain that I had made more than I had indicated. They referenced one of my clients who said she paid me a particular amount, x, and insisted that I failed to include that amount when I showed my income as y. Therefore, they said, I owed about $1000 more dollars.
I had to write back and explain to the IRS how math worked. In other words, my income, y, was greater than x, and therefore x was included in y.
Eight weeks later I got a letter back informing me that I was correct about how math worked.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot to add, this same deal happened the following year, requiring another letter to the IRS to once again explain how y is greater than x. Hasn't happened since, though. I guess someone at the IRS bought a calculator.
Edited on Feb 10 at 11:36amRe: Can You Fight City Hall?
Percival: This happy crap continued for twelve years! I sent moving receipts, tax returns from other states, affidavits from the former employer, and the occasional jeremiad scribbled in crayon, all to no avail. Eventually, having moved to the other side of the country and sick to death of hearing from them, I cut the check for $64 dollars which I included with a note that said I hoped they choked on it.
Wow. I guess that worked better than I imagined. · 6 hours ago
Percival, yes our state government is certainly well along in the fiscal choking process. But I seriously doubt you are the proximate cause.
Jul '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
My senior year of med school I was supposed to be at a local hospital in Hawaii for four weeks. They sent me instead to the Army hospital with a savage Japanese med student who volunteered us for 7 am to 7 pm duty mon-fri. Well that was not what I signed up for at all, talked to UH administration and got shot down, so I disappeared for 9 business days, faked a virus with a great tan, and finished up while getting credit. Those were the last days I have ever not gone to work even for health reasons.
Sep '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
Friends--this is precisely the issue with Barack Obama's birth certificate. This is why the state of Hawaii is adamant in refusing to release some/all of the details--the paperwork clearly has an embarrassing error.
Years ago I applied for a passport, and had to get a copy of my birth certificate. I was born in an Army hospital in Massachusetts, and the base had closed--the records were maintained by the state. The state eventually sent a copy of the form--and the fun began.
My mother's name is misspelled, and the form reports that she and my father were living in Cambridge, Ma. In fact, my father had been dead for 3 months.
Suppose I run for president--and some nutjob decides to quibble about my qualifications to run for president. Would the birth certificate pose a potential problem? Yup.
(The birth certificate isn't the real problem. Somebody deciding that if (a) life--and constitutional protection--begins at conception, then (b) only those conceived in the U.S. are natural citizens. My parents were stationed in Germany in the winter of 1958, and I was the product of a long, cold night.)
Apr '11
Re: Can You Fight City Hall?
John Murdoch:
Suppose I run for president--and some nutjob decides to quibble about my qualifications to run for president. Would the birth certificate pose a potential problem? Yup.
(The birth certificate isn't the real problem. Somebody deciding that if (a) life--and constitutional protection--begins at conception, then (b) only those conceived in the U.S. are natural citizens. My parents were stationed in Germany in the winter of 1958, and I was the product of a long, cold night.) ·
Oh, fiddle-faddle. You're thinking like a Ninth Circuit judge. NBCers are strict constitutional constructionists. They think "born" means born. Go ahead and run. You'll be fine.
Hawaii has not released Obama's birth certificate because it is illegal for it to do without his permission.