Category: General
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An overdue update on Georgia’s premature death performance
My 15-year trip down this Trouble in God’s Country rabbit hole started as the result of the almost accidental discovery of a massive gap in population health between Georgia’s most and least healthy counties. I was conducting some research for a public health-related campaign my public relations firm was managing, and I was looking specifically…
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CNBC puts out latest “Top States for Business” rankings, and guess what …
CNBC, the nation’s leading business network, came out this morning with its 2025 list of “America’s Top States for Business” and awarded top honors, once again, to Geor — Oh, wait. No. Not Georgia. North Carolina. Georgia, whose leaders have been crowing for about a decade now about the No. 1 state for business award…
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Rural Georgia voters apparently believed Trump wouldn’t cut Medicaid. Oops.
I was motivated by a couple of things when I started working on “Trouble in God’s Country” more than a decade ago. The first was that I was convinced by research I was conducting that the socioeconomic divide between Georgia’s haves and have-nots was bigger than generally understood and getting worse year after year after…
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Bill Shipp is still right
I’ve written a couple of pieces over the years detailing the educational attainment gaps between the various parts of the state. The main hook I used for those pieces was an old Bill Shipp quote that without Metro Atlanta, the state of Georgia would be more poorly educated than Mississippi. As a native Mississippian, I…
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Jimmy Carter’s forgotten legacy as a champion of rural causes
In the flood of tributes following Jimmy Carter’s passing, one major aspect of his legacy was largely overlooked: his unwavering commitment to rural America. As the only president in modern history to hail from a small farming community, Carter brought a unique perspective to the White House that shaped his policies and priorities in ways…
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Carter’s funeral and Trump’s inaugural: Bookends to a troubled half-century
After nearly two years in hospice care at his home in Plains, Ga., Jimmy Carter passed away Sunday afternoon at the age of 100. His family had said a few months ago that the nation’s 39th president was set on hanging on until he could cast his vote for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. He…
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Decades to grow, minutes to destroy
I spent a good portion of last Saturday winding my way back and forth across at least a half-dozen southeast Georgia counties battered by Hurricane Helene. I’d be driving along, thinking, this isn’t all that bad. Then I’d top a hill or round a bend and it was like I was on another planet. Long…
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Helene depressed Georgia’s early vote by about 100,000 votes; impacted both parties but probably hit GOP hardest
An analysis of the impact of Hurricane Helene on early voting in Georgia.
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Sorting through Georgia’s early voting numbers with political algebra and fuzzy math
A second look at Georgia’s early voting data.
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Is Mother Nature voting in this year’s presidential election?
Could the weather gods be messing with our politics? Maybe even engaging in election interference? Probably not, but it’s hard to study a map of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Helene and not conclude that somebody is highly annoyed with Republicans. Even Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who represents northwest Georgia, noticed the political…