New York State DMV
If you're a New York driver, you will be able to get a handsome license plate honoring the 2012 Super Bowl champion New York Giants. There is currently no option, though, for you to get a license plate honoring victims and first responders of the September 11, 2001 tragedy.
This has some New York residents and politicians unhappy. Jim Tedisco, a Republican New York State assemblyman, had this to say. Via the AP:
"I'm happy that the Giants won the Super Bowl as much as the next New Yorker, but who are the real heroes our state should first be celebrating with distinctive plates, the athletes on the gridiron or the first responders and the people who lost their lives on Sept. 11?"
If the question is which group of people most deserve respect and praise, obviously, it's the 9/11 victims and first responders. If license plate availability is how you choose to measure how much respect someone's getting, then yes, I'd imagine this would seem like an injustice.
So why can't New York just also make a commemorative 9/11 license plate? Because in 2004, the state issued a moratorium on new license plates because they had over 300 designs in existence. So now, they can't make any new ones. This Giants plate slides past because they say it's a reworking of a past plate that honored a previous Giants Super Bowl win.
I'm all for honoring 9/11 victims and first responders as much as we can, even today, 10 years after the fact. A license plate seems like a trivial issue, though. No one's saying that football players are more valuable than policemen or firemen. If you'd like to have a 9/11 remembrance on your car, I'm pretty sure there are options available for you.
Any time spent railing against a Giants license plate could maybe be better spent volunteering or donating to the causes one finds more important.
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