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Oklahoma Politician Wants To Tax Violent Video Games
dotarray writes "According to an Oklahoma politician, video games help cause many problems affecting the youth of today, but they can also help solve those same problems. Representative William Fourkiller, a Democrat, has proposed a 1% tax on every video game sold which has a Teen, Mature or Adults Only rating. He explains that half of the money would go towards helping to get kids playing outside, while the other half would be placed into a bullying prevention fund."
I suggest a conditional tax.
1% of total politician networth every time they say something stupid. The deficit would turn to a surplus in a week, especially now during campaign season.
Bullying is not something that can be solved by just money. Give the schools/teachers enough rights to be able to deal with the problematic children, expect them to do so and hold them responsible when they don't.
Well, before we do that, we need to decide that we are not going to support the current bullying system.
I can think of dozens of different people who have all been punished for eventually standing up for themselves after getting bullied for months. Myself included. I had a bully sitting behind me in 9th grade who would hurl insults at me all the time, thump me in the back of the head, punch me from behind, and generally make me miserable all year long. Finally one day toward the end of the year, after he had done something again I turned around and told him to lay off. He hit me in the eye with a pencil. That was the last straw. I jumped out of my seat and started hitting him. He probably was a foot taller than me and outweighed me by half, but I didn't concern myself with that. The teacher came running it and broke us up. I was sent to the principal's office, my mother was called. She told them how I had been coming home with stories every day about how this kid was picking on me and that she was glad I finally stood up for myself. They gave me swats and sent me back to class where I had to put up with his crap, still sitting right behind me, for the rest of the year.
But I learned a valuable lesson. The authority is on the side of the bullies, so just let them walk all over you, or you will be punished.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
But I learned a valuable lesson. The authority is on the side of the bullies, so just let them walk all over you, or you will be punished.
Actually, you learned the lesson most kids (including myself long ago) learn about the school system: the authorities don't give a crap what goes on so long as they don't have to do anything about it.
I had a situation with much the same problem as you - I was "in a fight" and didn't even throw a punch, just backed against a wall and tried to keep my face covered. The result was that we both got the mandatory 3-day inschool suspension for "fighting." The difference? The kid who bullied me spent more time in suspension than he did in class. He regularly targeted the kids with the best grades, because he knew being in class actually mattered to us. I got left out of the advanced honors science class the next year, because the asshole teacher who ran it had a "no kid allowed in my advanced class who has a fighting demerit on their record" policy.
I learned the hard way too what schools really are, and any respect I have for teachers (or worse, school administrators, and even worse, the sort of right wing retards who came up with "zero tolerance and mandatory punishment" policies) has been tempered by that experience ever since.
Cities all over the country have "thrown" money into free, supervised, municipal skate parks that just happened to be outside. The kids didn't need convincing.
Building infrastructure is (alomost) always a good thing for government to do. Pity that's such a tiny percentage of what governements do these days.
But when a given governemnt's spending is 10% infrastructure, 90% buying votes, any notion that a new tax is going to actually help out is, well, 90% wrong. No new tax is needed fo stuff like this - doubling the infrastructure spending would rarely be a significant increase in overall spending. And yet many cities today can't even keep the streetlights on (despite that being a really small % of their revenue).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
But I learned a valuable lesson. The authority is on the side of the bullies, so just let them walk all over you, or you will be punished.
Then you learned the wrong lesson. What you should have learned is that the culture of coddling bullies and refusing to allow students to stand up for themselves, and forcing the administration to find out what actually caused this to come to the front is a serious issue.
Let's look at the administration, and the policies that have been forced on the school system right? That violence is never the answer, that the social aspect is always correct, that 'feelings' and 'bullies' are misunderstood, and all the rest. There's a whole pile of touchy-feely-and all the other rot that goes on along with bury your head in the sand, that schools do. Because they're instructed to do it. I don't trust the left-leaning establishments ideas of everyone needs a hug, and everyone needs to be punished over something like this. That is where it came from. Rather, I'd like to see that teachers and principals are fired when these issues have already been brought to light, and they've done nothing.
I'm with you on this. I was bullied myself, until I snapped and broke the other kids nose. If you have kids, you should support them if they stand up against bullies, especially if you've been bullied yourself and you trust your kid. Learning to stand up for yourself is important. The lesson that's been taught for the last 30 years is, standing up for yourself is bad.
Om, nomnomnom...
Quite correct. The progressive solution to a fight is avoid punishment all together. Sit the involved children down, spend some time to find out what really happened in a calm non-confrontational manner. Attempt to find the root cause of the problem and threat the problem not punish the result of the problem.
So for school bullies, find whether the problem is as a result of parental abuse or an inherent psychological defect. In either case that child needs to be placed under greater supervision and their opportunities to act out against other students limited.
So rather the the victims requiring closer parent\ guardian supervision, being picked up and dropped off to school by a parent and remaining close to teachers during meal times, the opposite should be true. Troubled offenders should be forced to remain close to adult supervision during meal times and picked up and dropped off to school by a responsible adult.
All in all, of course video games remain the safest form of entertainment for children. Need exercise buy them a Wii http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/news/2011/45337.html or the various other more exercise bound games and monitor their scores. Of course parents could also join in. Want them outside, point the TV screen out the back patio door (at least the screen will be protected from flying nunchuks).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen