The golf carts roaming the streets of Fayette County could soon be joined by driverless cars.
The Fayette County Commission has adopted a resolution allowing the county to be a pilot site for the vehicles, and chair Steve Brown said he's talked to Google about using Fayette as a test site. Now he's hoping for a meeting with Gov. Nathan Deal to hash out the plans.
"We (Georgia) missed a lot of opportunities because we weren't prepared for the Internet boom, but I think with this, we'd be out in front," Brown said.
He's got competition. Google and other firms testing self-driving cars are preparing to expand across the nation, and the Decaturish blog reports that Avondale's mayor is also pushing for the DeKalb County town to be a test site for driverless cars.
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Georgia's actually in the middle of the pack when it comes to statewide advertising spending. At least when the metrics only involve the governor's race.
An analysis by The Center for Public Integrity shows that some $5.3 million has been spent on statewide races in Georgia this year, about 78 cents per eligible voter. It doesn't include the heaps of advertising spent on the race for the open Senate seat, a federal contest not included in the analysis.
Gov. Nathan Deal and Democrat Jason Carter have both spent about $2.2 million on ads boosting their candidacy. The center' estimates show about $380,000 of Deal's ads that in some way target his opponent, while Carter has spent about $200,000 on those "mixed" ads.
The heavyweight in the race so far is the Republican Governors Association, which has already spent $1.6 million and unleashed another round of campaign ads yesterday. The Center's analysis showed about $780,000 worth of TV ads from the GOP group, all of them negative.
About $120,000 was spent on TV ads for legislative campaigns, much of it boosting the candidacy of Republican John Kennedy for a state Senate seat.
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The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund endorsed Democrat Michelle Nunn's Senate campaign, citing her work conserving"iconic landscapes and protecting wildlife."
The green group's endorsement comes despite her support for the controversial Keystone pipeline, long a bugaboo for environmental activists.
"Georgians want leaders who will create jobs in renewable energy that can't be outsourced and who will protect Georgia's natural landscapes with common sense and a collaborative spirit," said Nunn.
Republican David Perdue's campaign depicted the group as liberal and out-of-touch with everyday Georgians and tied her, as it is wont to do, to President Barack Obama and his "failed energy policies."
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Republicans seized on a WXIA telecast where Michelle Nunn tried to sidestep a question about employment discrimination complaints filed against her nonprofit.
The campaign's infamous leaked memos , released over the summer, identify two complaints as a potential vulnerability. But the documents haven't been released and Nunn's campaign seems in no hurry to do so.
WXIA's Doug Richards asked her about the complaints in the above video.
"I'm hearing this from you for the first time," she told him.
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