Posted on 04/17/2007 5:52:20 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
Proposal Would Sanction Retailers Who Sell To Children
(CBS/AP) ALBANY, N.Y. -- Gov. Eliot Spitzer will take a shot at violent videos and video games as part his remaining 2007 legislative agenda that includes campaign finance reform, streamlining the courts, and energy development.
Spitzer said he will soon provide a bill that would target the ratings of video movies and video games "that are often violent and degrading" and can hurt children who repeatedly use and view them.
Spitzer said he wants to restrict access to these videos and games by children, similar to motion picture regulations which prohibit youths under 17 from being admitted to R-rated movies without a parent or adult guardian.
Under Spitzer's proposal, retailers who sell violent or degrading videos or video games to children contrary to the rating would be sanctioned.
The Democrat said his approach would be similar to greater enforcement in recent years to stop the sale of cigarettes to minors.
"It's certainly going to be one of our priorities," said Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. "We have bills that address that."
But Bruno said Spitzer's top priority should be reviving the upstate economy.
"When the governor ran for office, he traveled this whole state and did remarkably well," Bruno said. "And, everywhere he went he talked about the upstate economy."
Bruno's priorities include construction aid for new businesses and $1.3 billion in tax breaks for manufacturers and small business.
Spitzer noted he got most of his property tax cut plan enacted to help upstate; has created an upstate co-chairman for the state's primary economic development agency; and is requiring bidders for the state's thoroughbred racing franchise to prove they will boost that industry upstate.
Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver also supported the idea of targeting violent video games and DVDs, along with Spitzer's priority to fight childhood obesity and diabetes through nutrition education and healthier menus in schools.
Silver said his priorities include reinvigorating the Power for Jobs program that subsidizes energy costs for businesses to help them grow and locate in the state.
He also wants to see legislation to further reform public authorities, which have been criticized as unregulated agencies that can borrow hundreds of millions of dollars with little oversight.
Silver also hopes to further curtail long Rockefeller-era drug sentences for comparatively small amounts of drugs, and supports Spitzer's proposal to reform the Wick's Law, a pro-union measure blamed for driving up the cost of public construction.
Spitzer's other priorities for the legislative session scheduled to end June 21 include:
--Campaign finance. He wants to dramatically decrease the limits for contributions, which can be $50,000 by an individual and some businesses to a single candidate.
--Redistricting. He wants to pass a law that would lead to a constitutional amendment to change the way legislative districts are drawn. Good-government groups say the current system, in which the Legislature draws up the districts, protects majority parties and incumbents and limits the chances for challengers.
--Energy. He wants to revive the state's law that would allow the building of new, cleaner burning power plants needed for business to expand. Environmental groups opposed previous measures. He also wants to increase the number of wind-power facilities.
--Judicial raises. He wants to increase judges' salaries, but not "hold them hostage" to raising legislators' pay. As part of that, he wants to reorganize the courts to make the system more efficient, as proposed by Chief Judge Judith Kaye.
Not in his priorities for this session are some other campaign pledges, including legalizing same-sex marriage and the death penalty for police officer killers and terrorists.
There are lots of crucial issues.
However, violence is a problem. And, many games are a problem—especially for some personality types reared in some types of homes.
Not sure what the solution is.
Bah. I grew up playing Mortal Kombat and watching Jason hack people to death with an axe and I turned out fine. Just ask the guy in my freezer.
LOL.
I really can’t see violent video games having the impact that the guv says they do. Kids that play these games enough to have their brains scrambled are lazy losers; they’d never find the motivation to go out into the real world to engage in real mortal kombat.
For a sobering look at the issue of video games, see Army psychologist David Grossman's book "On Killing" ... the conditioning process present in many of these games makes the point-and-shoot reflex automatic.
Excerpt from review (bold mine): Grossman argues that the breakdown of American society, combined with the pervasive violence in the media and interactive video games, is conditioning our children to kill in a manner similar to the army's conditioning of soldiers: "We are reaching that stage of desensitization at which the infliction of pain and suffering has become a source of entertainment: vicarious pleasure rather than revulsion. We are learning to kill, and we are learning to like it."
Link at Amazon fyi:
link
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316330116
Just doing what he knows how to do. Suing, not governing.
ESA awarded attorneys fees in fight against Louisiana video game law
A Federal Judge has awarded the Entertainment Software Association attorneys' fees after a Louisiana law regulating the sale of violent video games was found unconstitutional.For those keeping tabs on the financial costs of failed video game legislation, the Louisiana decision runs the total tab to over $1.71 million in attorneys' fees that have been awarded to the ESA, including $182,349 in Michigan and over $510,000 in Illinois. That $1.71 million covers nine rulings over seven years.
$1.71 million of taxpayers' money has gone to the "Entertainment Software Association" so far -- just to cover the attorneys' fees of states losing in court.
Imagine the settlements if the ESA were to sue states for actual civil rights violations.... there could be billions in damages, caused only by the effort to ban certain videogames.
Thanks thanks.
No trouble convincing me.
Interesting how so many forces are converging toward violence and chaos.
I hope they dont try to stop Manhunt 2 from coming out.
I think two forces are driving such things:
1. GREED.
2. An evil desire to flood our culture and the globe with evil.
Can Bat Jack be far behind?
I’d like to see this turkey try to play something basic like doom or quake. He probably could miss with the BFG9000.
Spitzer go AWAY. God, please take these jerks out of the gene pool...
Something was going to get these kids one way or another. There is just bad seed amongst us, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Spitzer is a FAGGOT
I hate, hate, hate to admit it . . .
But on a functional level . . . I think you are going to be proven far more right than I’d ever dare imagine. The era we live in . . . has lots of horror scheduled for it.
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