It's only the barest hint of something to come, but Attorney General Sam Olens may be investigating whether daily fantasy sports sites run afoul of state prohibitions on gambling:
"The issue is pending in our office," Olens said in an e-mail to The Augusta Chronicle, without elaborating.
The rumbling from the AG's office comes weeks after Georgia Lottery officials sent a rather blunt letter to the fantasy football gurus at
probing their legal arguments for how they contend they can operate in Georgia.
What action the state can take is unclear. Gov. Nathan Deal, in a recent interview, said there's only so much the state can do to target the controversial daily fantasy sports sites without federal help.
Said Deal:
"I know that the Lottery is obviously concerned about the loss of revenue that's associated with that. We'll probably see members of Congress asked to look at this issue and, if appropriate, take the next steps to regulate it. … I'm not sure that states have the authority or even the ability to police it."
The New York Times last week offered a glimpse at what other states are exploring, however:
The cease-and-desist order by the attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, is a major blow to a multibillion-dollar industry that introduced sports betting to legions of young sports fans and has formed partnerships with many of the nation's professional sports teams.
Given the New York attorney general's historic role as a consumer-protection advocate, legal experts said the action was likely to reverberate in other states where legislators and investigators are increasingly questioning whether the industry should operate unfettered by regulations that govern legalized gambling.
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Heidi Cruz, wife of GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, is in Georgia today making the rounds. She was in Cobb County on Monday, sayeth the Marietta Daily Journal:
"Last night, it was a little bit hard for her to see me go again, so we pulled out a map and studied Georgia together, and so they got to hear about the peanut industry, about the peach industry, about your incredible role in the Civil War," she said.
And this:
"Things have gone way out of hand. They're now in our neighborhoods, in our doorstep, in our restaurants, in our theater halls, and we must, we must do the right thing. And Ted's foreign policy is very clear — it is protecting U.S. National Security interests and for our enemies who say they want to kill us, he always says we should believe them. We should go get them before they get us."
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Over at Get Schooled, the AJC's education blog, Maureen Downey has a post on U.S. universities that depend on student fees to fund their athletic enterprises. Georgia State University is the poster child of a study conducted by the by the Chronicle of Higher Education and Huffington Post. One paragraph:
The Panthers, now in their sixth season, haven't given fans much reason to celebrate. In the 2013 and 2014 seasons, competing at the highest level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the team recorded just a single victory. Average attendance last year was among the 10 worst in the NCAA's top level. Yet Georgia State's 32,000 students are still required to cover much of the cost. Over the past five years, students have paid nearly $90 million in mandatory athletic fees to support football and other intercollegiate athletics — one of the highest contributions in the country.
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Speaking of higher education. The Associated Press is out with a piece on faculty diversity at major state universities:
No state's "flagship" public university campus had a black faculty population approaching that level, and only a handful topped even the 5 percent mark, an Associated Press analysis of 2013 federal data found.
The ones that do are primarily in the South:
The University of Georgia had the next highest percentage of black faculty at 5.76 percent with a 7.83 percent black enrollment while the University of South Carolina-Columbia's faculty was 5.18 black compared to 10.56 percent of the students.
At no other school was the percentage of black faculty above 5 percent.
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The chairman of the powerful U.S. House Armed Services Committee was in Cobb County on Monday.
And local officials used the opportunity to pitch the lawmaker, Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, on the importance of Dobbins Air Reserve Base.
They are worried about the fate of the base and the nearby Lockheed Martin factory as Pentagon officials consider another round of base closures.
Our AJC colleague Scott Trubey was there:
Metro Atlanta lost Fort McPherson, Fort Gillem and Naval Air Station Atlanta (the Naval facility attached to Dobbins) as a result of process to last decade to streamline the military. No such formal Base Realignment and Closure or BRAC process is underway, and Cobb leaders want to make sure that if it does come back, Dobbins is nowhere near it.
Thornberry said the new budget prohibits a new BRAC, but couldn't rule out the possibility in future budget years.
"But when you see all of these threats multiplying around the world, I think we ought to be very careful about giving up some installations or training range because we may well regret it someday," he said.
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Last week, we told you of a mysterious, new electric car company that had named Georgia one of four states in the running for its manufacturing plant. The Associated Press has found a few more clues:
Headquartered in a low-profile office just south of Los Angeles, Faraday is holding a lot of details close. Though it won't confirm the source of its funds, documents filed in California point to a parent company run by a Chinese billionaire who styles himself after Apple's late Steve Jobs.
Based on the few other public clues, Faraday is following the path blazed by Tesla Motors, its would-be rival hundreds of miles away in Silicon Valley.
Like Tesla, Faraday's car will be all-electric, and debut at the high end.
The startup of about 400 employees has poached executive talent from Tesla and also draws its name from a luminary scientist — Michael Faraday — who helped harness for humanity the forces of nature.
Even Faraday's public announcement that California, Georgia, Louisiana and Nevada are finalists for the factory mirrors the approach Tesla took to build a massive battery factory. Nevada won that bidding war among several states last year by offering up to $1.3 billion in tax breaks and other incentives.
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The new president of the American Banking Association, Dan Blanton, is the CEO of Augusta-based Georgia Bank and Trust. Blanton was elected last week at a conference in Los Angeles.
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GQ sent former ESPN personality Bill Simmons to interview President Barack Obama and the conversation -- worth reading in full -- naturally touched on sports. At one point, Obama compares himself to Aaron Rodgers, but when making a Michael Jordan comparison he's careful not to say he is Jordanesque. Even POTUS won't reach that far:
Obama: [laughs] He does. So do I. [laughs] Yeah. Or maybe [Aaron] Rodgers in the pocket, in the sense of you can't be distracted by what's around you, you've got to be looking downfield. And I think that's a quality that I have—not getting flustered in what's around me. ...
Obama: If I'm working out in the gym, sometimes I'll go to NBA Classics and watch some of these old classic games—
Simmons: The lack of HD really hurts—you can barely see anybody.
Obama: It's true—and the graphics at the bottom are terrible. But a thing that you're reminded of, watching those old Bulls games, is Jordan had some stinker games in the playoffs. But he would get that out of his mind, and then the next moment comes and he's right there. He could have a terrible game for the first three quarters and then suddenly go crazy the fourth. Or he might miss a free throw, and then the next play is he's stealing the ball and hitting the game-winning shot. Part of what I try to do—not at the level that Jordan did on the basketball court, but part of what you aspire to as president or any of these positions of leadership—is to try to figure out how to be in the moment, make the best decision you can, know that you're going to get a bunch of them right, but a bunch of times you're also not going to get it exactly the way you want it.
Other tidbits: Obama's favorite Game of Thrones character is Tyrion Lannister, and he thinks Jade Helm 15 -- enacting martial law in Texas, to jog your memory -- was the most ridiculous conspiracy theory about him.
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