After expressing his frustrations over firearm politics in D.C. on Thursday, President Barack Obama began a four-day trip to California.
One of his first stops Thursday was at a fund-raiser hosted by Tyler Perry, where he confessed that the Charleston shootings highlighted the degree to which his presidency hadn't changed the nation's capital. From the Washington Post:
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Wholly by coincidence, Hollywood on Thursday was still digesting Gov. Nathan Deal's recent trip to California to plug his state's tax breaks for TV and film production. From a detailed description of Georgia's advantages laid out by Variety:
Georgia's 30% credit is not only more generous than that of most states, including California's; it also allows producers to count salaries of directors and actors in addition to below-the-line crew as part of their qualified expenses, as long as the payment is for work performed within the state.
Moreover, while California is hopn tripled the size of its incentives program to $330 million annually, Georgia has no cap on the amount it is prepared to dole out in credits — which also happen to be transferable, i.e., they can be sold to other entities that may have a greater tax liability.
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A University of California San Francisco study has found that a Georgia law banning abortions after 22 weeks has limited access to the procedure throughout the South, Midwest and parts of the Northeast – even though the statute hasn't been wholly implemented. From the UCSF website:
Georgia is one of only two states in the Southeast, including Florida, where women can get outpatient abortion care after 20 weeks. Before Georgia's ban took effect in January2013, it was the only state in the Southeast or the Midwest where a woman could get outpatient abortion care after 24 weeks.
The researchers looked at the abortions done at 20 weeks or more in four of the five abortion facilities in the state and found these procedures fell by 40 percent from 2012 to 2013, from 1,269 to 758. Overall, half the women who had procedures at 22 weeks or more were from out of state, while two-thirds of those at 24 weeks or more were from out of state.
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An energy firm has asked a judge to reverse the state's decision to reject a proposed $1 billion petroleum pipeline from Florida through Georgia to South Carolina.
Kinder Morgan filed a complaint in Fulton County Superior court this week seeking a review of the state Department of Transportation's decision to reject the 360-mile pipeline. The DOT said in a letter to Texas-based that there is "substantial evidence showing that the pipeline would not constitute a public convenience or necessity."
The move comes as little surprise - the company president said in a statement last month that he was disappointed with the decision but that the firm wasn't giving up on the pipeline.
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U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Monroe, is challenging the notion of separation of church and state. In a video message to the Future Conference, picked up by Right Wing Watch (part of the George Soros-funded People for the American Way):
"There's excuses like God is sovereign or we're living in the Last Days and there is nothing we can do to change what's happening, and listen, those things may be true, but those things never are a reason for us to not engage in what's happening in our culture,"
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