A proposal to tax video games to pay for rehabilitating teenage criminals is a classic example of a mismatched government tax.State Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, wants to place a 1 percent surcharge on video games and consoles sold in Wisconsin. He would use money collected from the surcharge to pay for costs associated with moving non-violent 17-year-olds out of the Wisconsin adult court system.
Instead, 17-year-olds charged with non-violent crimes would enter the juvenile justice system, which tailors treatment, education and supervision to young minds.
The trouble with Erpenbach 's proposal is that video games don 't cause juvenile crime. So he 's unfairly sticking a group of people with the cost of paying for services they won 't get special benefit from and aren 't responsible for.
The Legislature should reject Erpenbach 's bill unless a solid and sensible funding source can be found.
State government already has a bad enough habit of unfairly applying fees or raiding their proceeds for inappropriate uses.
Led by Gov. Jim Doyle, state leaders raided $200 million from a patient compensation fund last year. The fund, which gets its money from medical professionals, is supposed to cover malpractice claims that exceed the limits of insurance policies. Instead, the $200 million is being diverted to pay for general expenses in the state budget. It also has prompted a lawsuit.
Two years ago, again led by Doyle, state leaders raided transportation dollars intended for roads and bridges. The money was diverted to help fund K-12 education.
Other examples include state raids on recycling, conservation and petroleum inspection funds to pay for unrelated expenses.
Video games are often blamed for contributing to poor health, wasting money and depicting violence. The negative perception makes them easy targets for lawmakers.
But video games have nothing to do with law and order. And increasingly, the sophistication of video games is attracting older fans. Some doctors even prescribe such games as simulated golf and bowling to encourage exercise.
Fees and taxes should match their purpose and not penalize users, industries or agencies that have little or nothing to do with that purpose.
Rethinking ways to rehabilitate non-violent 17-year-olds might reduce crime and even save money.
But Erpenbach 's misguided tax on video games and consoles bankrupts his proposal. Comment (3)
The console wars are over, introducing the 'Winner.'
Written by Red-Blue
Friday, 11 January 2008
Quote:
An eager tipster sent in a pic and some info on what appears to be some sort of PS3 clone called "Winner" – think Vii meets PS3. While the Vii concentrated on mimicking (horribly, but still) the Wii's feature set, the Winner is all about mimicking the PS3's myriad media functionalities. That means a photo player, karaoke functions, SDHC for media storage. But it's all about the (really crappy) games, right? Winner is going to be packing 2D and 3D graphics with online and motion sensing features (note the totally not-a-Wiimote controller). How much would you expect to pay for the privilege? Did you say $600? No! Did you say $400? No! How does $120-150 sound? At that bargain basement price, these things are really going to go fast; good thing they're promising 3 million consoles for the Japanese and North American markets.
At the Consumer Electronics Show two years ago, shortly after Microsoft announced the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360, the company's then-Xbox marketing executive Peter Moore admitted that a future add-on that would play Blu-ray discs was not out of the question, if the need for one arose.
With Warner Bros. last week committing to produce Blu-ray movies exclusively, many industry watchers predicted that Sony's high-definition disc format--a prominent feature of the PlayStation 3--had scored a knockout punch on Toshiba's HD-DVD. At this year's CES, Microsoft's Xbox group marketing manager Albert Penello told Reuters today that the Warner move wasn't the end of the format wars, but acknowledged that his company is still keeping its options open.
"It should be consumer choice; and if that's the way they vote, that's something we'll have to consider," Penello told the news service.
While Penello downplayed the potential impact of the Warner deal on Xbox 360 sales, he acknowledged that it wasn't something the HD-DVD backing Microsoft had wanted to see.
"You can't say it's not a bummer, not a setback, but I've seen this battle declared over so many times," Penello said, adding, "I want consumers to have a voice in this and I think there are a lot of consumers who bought HD-DVD who are going to have a say in how this shakes out."
