Somebody's a bit touchy in the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles...
From the NY Times:
The phrase that came to his mind was evocative, to the point, and in perfect conformity with the eight-figure character as allowed by the Custom Plate Unit of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. His muse had surely blessed him, he thought; it seemed that he had achieved a kind of license plate haiku.
He typed in his phrase, sent it to the department's online service, and imagined the day when he would join the ranks of anonymous poets whose license plate musings linger in the thoughts of readers for a moment or for an hour, depending on traffic flow and exhaust fumes. Early indications were that Noah Lamy was indeed about to become a man of letters. The Department of Motor Vehicles sent him a registration card and a sticker bearing his chosen phrase, which suggested that residents of the state correctional facility in Auburn would soon be imprinting his poetry upon two rectangles of cheap metal.
Once the plates arrived in the mail, he would fasten them to the bumpers of his 1987 Toyota 4Runner, and forever after would be a published author in one of the most narrowly defined genres in all of literature, a genre in which so much - from pride in one's grandchildren to pride in one's Lexus - must be said with so little.
Alas, in mid-January, he received a Dear Noah rejection letter. "The Custom Plate which you requested - DUMPBUSH - cannot be issued at this time for the reason(s) indicated below,'' the letter said. The reason: "Others may view the plate as obscene or offensive.''
...
It turns out that proposed phrases of a political nature are held to a slightly different standard: generally speaking, they should be positive, upbeat - nice. "We don't censor plates for political content or if they're politically related,'' Mr. Picchi said. "We do if they're politically offensive. If they said HATE somebody.''
In other words, DUMPBUSH or DUMPDEMS are negative, and therefore unacceptable. But YES2BUSH, or IM4KERRY, might be allowed, since they would conform to an Up With People view of Thruway motoring.
Now that makes it a challenge. Can you be positive while being negative, with 8 characters? IM4NOGW. 4GWBLOSS. NOGWGOOD. It's difficult...