Saying NANOG = ARIN is like saying Middle East = Terrorist. That kind of generalization is never useful. ARIN is one of many non-Government organizations that make decisions regarding the Internet.
As for your reference to "Obama-style" I'm not sure if you're trying to pay homage to, or insult the POTUS, either way it's not piratically constructive to the conversation; especially on a technical mailing list. Please check politics at the door.
qed, eh? yes, the op conflated a bunch of crap with the valid technical problem s/he raised. but can the rest of us please try to stick to technalia?
As mentioned by several others, if you have a problem with changes made by ARIN, an independent non-profit corporation, then it seems logical to contact them and not a community of network operators who have little or no control over ARIN.
arin says they serve the community. this change affects the community, they broke my fingers and a few scripts. for others, such as suresh, they broke a *lot* of software. and discussing it here seems to be having useful effect, thanks john. randy