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Thứ Hai, 25 tháng 3, 2013

Rallies held to protest ND anti-abortion measures

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — More than 300 abortion-rights activists attended a rally at the state Capitol in Bismarck to protest a package of measures that would give the state the toughest abortion restrictions in the nation.

They carried signs and chanted "Veto! Veto! Veto!"

The newly formed Stand Up For Women North Dakota also planned rallies Monday in Fargo, Grand Forks and Minot.

Organizer Robin Nelson says the intent of the rallies is to show solidarity for women's rights issues.

The Legislature has passed several anti-abortion measures this session. Most await the signature of Gov. Jack Dalrymple, who hasn't indicated whether he supports the measures.

The Republican has three legislative days to act on them.

The demonstration took place outside the Capitol and inside the building while lawmakers held floor sessions in both chambers.

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Why Georgia is claiming control over a slice of Tennessee

A centuries-old land dispute gains new life during a severe drought

Feeling the pinch of a severe drought, Georgia lawmakers have devised an ingenious way of bringing more water into their parched state: Redraw the state lines.

On Monday, the Georgia Senate approved a resolution that would redraw the state's border with Tennessee to give Georgia control over a small strip of land along the Tennessee River. Under the change, Georgia would gain access to the river, but no Tennessee residents living near the state border would be affected.

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According to supporters of the measure, Georgia should have been in control of that land all along. They say an 1818 federal survey erroneously marked the state border one mile south of its intended location, inadvertently giving Tennessee control over a swath of Georgia's land.

"The Tennessee Valley Authority has identified the Tennessee River as a likely source of water for north Georgia. Yet, the state of Tennessee has used mis-marked boundary lines to block our access to this important waterway," Georgia State Senator David Shafer (R) said in a statement.

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According to the United States Department of Agriculture, most of Georgia is currently experiencing a period of abnormal aridity, with parts of the state afflicted by a

Georgia's lawmakers say they're being generous with the offer. They're asking only that Tennessee return a small part of the allegedly misappropriated land, not the whole chunk, so that Georgia can draw water from the river to hydrate the region.

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The resolution calls on Tennessee to accept the new land terms, something lawmakers there have not yet addressed. Should they reject the request, the resolution specifically calls for Georgia's attorney general to pursue legal action to reclaim all of the contested land, not just the sliver Georgia is currently seeking. The federal government has weighed in a few times before to settle land disputes between states.

It's not the first time Georgia has tried to reclaim the disputed land. In 2008, a drought prompted similar legislation, though Tennessee rejected that plan. The state has pursued other reclamation efforts since as far back as 1880, though those also stalled.

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The resolution now heads back to the Georgia House of Representatives for final approval. The Senate lightly amended a previous House-passed bill, and the revised version is expected to pass in the lower chamber as well.

In the unlikely event that it is ultimately accepted by both states, it would go on to the U.S. Congress for ratification.

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"For Ukraine to move forward with its democracy, the time has come for opposing forces on important issues to find a way to compromise over seemingly intractable issues," says influential conservative commentator and long-term senior advisor to President Ronald Reagan

Can computer geeks save the GOP? Meet the guys trying to give the party a digital edge

Power Players

If only Mitt Romney had had a few thousand more Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

So say Bret Jacobson and Ian Spencer, millennial techies and co-founders of the conservative digital strategy group Red Edge. The high-tech entrepreneurs believe the failed GOP presidential nominee could have defeated President Obama simply with a better showing on social media.

"If you had run a really competent, really aggressive digital campaign, you probably could have won an Electoral College vote,” says Jacobson of the 2012 election. “The difference is roughly 450,000 in a couple swing states and you could more than make up for that difference.”

Bold claims from a dynamic duo now leading the charge for a Republican Party reboot. Jacobson and Spencer say they are convinced that despite previous failed attempts, the party can surpass Democrats' social media machine by the 2016 presidential race.

The Obama campaign was "incredibly good at empowering people to receive and share information" on the web, Facebook in particular, which allowed the organizers and fundraisers to build individualized voter profiles based on people's profile information, Jacobson says.

"They were able to specifically reach out and… help identify these people who need to register to vote,” he says. “And it turns out that after a million people logged in, they actually yielded a million real world voter registrations and votes from those people, which is really powerful stuff.”

For Republicans to match, the Red Edge guys want an extreme makeover: bringing "Internet culture into the Republican culture," but ultimately tapping a tech-savvy candidate who can build a strong digital following.

Who among early 2016 candidates has an early edge? “Rand Paul,” says Spencer of the Kentucky Republican senator.

"In terms of the grassroots support his father [Ron Paul] has enjoyed, many of whom also support him, I think he's in a kind of unique position to really make some waves online...because there's so many small dollar donors who, who went to Ron and who may now go to Rand," he said.

To hear more about how Red Edge wants to buff up the GOP's digital strategy, and to hear how they think the RNC's "autopsy" of the party missed the mark, check out this episode of Power Players.

ABC's Eric Wray, Betsy Klein, Freda Kahen Kashi, Jim Martin, and Mary Quinn contributed to this episode.

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Governor Corbett Issues Statement on Resignation of Justice Orie Melvin

HARRISBURG, Pa., March 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Governor Tom Corbett today issued the following statement on receiving a letter of resignation from State Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin:

"I believe the decision by Justice Orie Melvin to resign is the correct one. This will save taxpayers the time and expense of impeachment proceedings in the House and Senate, and allow legislators to focus on other important issues.''

Corbett has 90 days from May 1, the date the vacancy occurs on the state Supreme Court, to submit a nominee to fill the vacancy. This nominee, upon confirmation by two-thirds of the Senate, will serve until Jan. 5, 2016. A successor will be elected in November 2015.

"I will submit a nominee to the Senate as soon as practical within that time frame to bring our Supreme Court back to its full complement of seven justices," Corbett said.

Media contact: Janet Kelley, Governor's Office, 717-783-1116
Ron Ruman, Department of State, 717- 783-1621

SOURCE Pennsylvania Office of the Governor

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Ex-Im Bank Signs City/State Partnership With California Trade Association, Supporting Thousands of Jobs

WASHINGTON, March 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) announced a new marketing partnership for the Monterey Bay International Trade Association (MBITA), a non-profit organization in northern California. The City/State Partners program contract will accelerate export business by connecting Bank products and services to MBITA's network of entrepreneurs and financial institutions in the counties around San Francisco and its ports.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110414/MM83673LOGO )

Members of MBITA represent small and mid-sized businesses throughout the tri-county region of the Monterey Bay and Silicon Valley. This association helped start the BAYTRADE program in 1995, which generated more than six thousand new jobs during its first five years. MBITA also manages the TradePort Collaborator, an intranet of more than 140 trade promotion service professionals who represent more than 60,000 exporters, importers, trade promotion service providers, and private investors.

"By entering this partnership with MBITA, Ex-Im Bank joins forces with thousands of experienced businesses that share our aim of expanding U.S. exports and creating jobs," said Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg. "For eighteen years, MBITA has linked business resources with clients throughout the world. Now through our partnership, the Bank adds expanded access to its services and products to help accelerate export sales and job growth."

Tony Livoti, president of MBITA, explained why Ex-Im Bank's City/State Partnership is a boon to high-tech exporters: "MBITA's and TradePort's clients and members tend to be on the cutting edge of technologies," he said. "Sometimes they feel an export-financed transaction into a new foreign marketplace gives them a better footing to grow their companies, as opposed to using their own financing to break into our very competitive domestic markets."

The Monterey Bay trade association started in 1984 as a volunteer-run business, and upgraded to a 501 C-6 corporation in 1995 when it became a founding member of a public-private sector export promotion program called BAYTRADE. The U.S. Department of Commerce helped to support the program, which researched the international trade needs of employers across sixteen Congressional districts. BAYTRADE consolidated its large service and knowledge network into an established global trade website managed by MBITA as TradePort.org for the past six years. MBITA now is a self-sustaining organization funded by memberships, corporate sponsorship, events, and fee-based trade promotion services. It is developing new services such as the California Industrial Cluster Tour and MBITA Strategic Alliance Service.

The purpose of the City/State Partners program is to ensure that the Bank's export finance programs are more accessible to small and medium-sized business through the help of local, state, and regional economic development and business support organizations.

Ex-Im Bank offers to Bay-area enterprises expanded access to products such as its Global Credit Express, which helps exporters acquire low-cost working capital up to $500,000, as well as Express Insurance, which simplifies small business access to export credit risk insurance on their foreign accounts receivable. The Bank has designed an array of low-cost loans, guarantees, export credit insurance, and supply-chain financing structures to enable both small and large businesses to export globally without fear of nonpayment.

ABOUT EX-IM BANK:

Ex-Im Bank is an independent federal agency that helps to create and maintain U.S. jobs by filling gaps in private export financing at no cost to American taxpayers. In the past five years (from Fiscal Year 2008), Ex-Im Bank has earned for U.S. taxpayers nearly $1.6 billion above the cost of operations. The Bank provides a variety of financing mechanisms, including working capital guarantees, export-credit insurance and financing to help foreign buyers purchase U.S. goods and services.

Ex-Im Bank approved a total of $35.8 billion in authorizations in FY 2012 – an all-time Ex-Im record. This total includes more than $6.1 billion directly supporting small-business export sales – also an Ex-Im record. The Bank's authorizations in FY 2012 are supporting an estimated $50 billion in U.S. export sales and about 255,000 American jobs in communities across the country. For more information, visit www.exim.gov.

SOURCE Export-Import Bank of the United States

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Fourth accuser urges Herman Cain to ‘come clean’ about harassment

Sharon Bialek and Gloria Allred (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A fourth woman has accused Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain of sexual harassment--this time in public. Sharon Bialek told reporters in a press conference Monday that Cain groped her and exhibited "sexually inappropriate" behavior toward her when he was head of the National Restaurant Association.

Bialek, a former NRA employee who worked for the association in between 1996 and 1997, said the encounter occurred shortly after she was laid off from the group's education fund in July 1997.

She said she had approached Cain for help in looking for a new job and had traveled to Washington, D.C., where she had dinner with the then-NRA head. She told reporters that upon her arrival in D.C. she discovered that Cain had secretly upgraded her hotel room to a suite.

After dinner, the two were sitting in his car when she claimed he "suddenly reached over and put his hand on my leg under my skirt and reached for my genitals" and moved her head toward his crotch.

"I was surprised and shocked, and I said, what are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend," Bialek recalled saying. "This is not what I came here for."

Bialak claimed that when she protested, Cain replied, "You want a job, right?

She told reporters Cain backed off after she asked him to stop, and he drove her back to her hotel.

Bialek, who identified herself as a stay-at-home single mom who lives in Chicago and is a registered Republican, said she didn't file a complaint with the NRA in part because she was no longer formally employed by the group--and also because she was "very embarrassed." She was joined at the press conference by her attorney, celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, who offered sworn affidavits from two friends to whom Bialek spoke shortly after the alleged encounter.

"I was very very surprised and very shocked," Bialek said, adding that she had come forward to be a "face" for women who had been harassed by Cain. "I want you, Mr. Cain, to come clean. Just admit what you did. Admit you were inappropriate to people ... I implore you. Make this right."

The Cain campaign issued a statement denying Bialek's claims.

"All allegations of harassment against Mr. Cain are completely false," the campaign said in a statement. " Mr. Cain has never harassed anyone."

Bialek is the fourth woman to accuse Cain of sexual harassment when he was head of the NRA, but she's the only accuser who has spoken publicly.

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