Friday, August 1, 2025 - MAGA town suffers from Trump 2.0 & Collins' chief of staff is hot for nepotism

Not in chronological order as you (I hope) listen along, but the LEAD story for this chapter is and should be this: New Georgia US Senate hopeful Mike Collins' chief-of-staff - the ⁠dog-kicking Brandon Phillips⁠ - also seems to have ⁠a nepotism problemL namely that he hired & paid his girlfriend for work she allagedly never did⁠. If that's not bad enough, he fired the whistleblower. On Collins' watch. So uh, all those ⁠Georgia Republicans bucking Brian Kemp's endorsement-in-waiting for Derek Dooley siding with Mike Collins⁠ ... what will become of them? ------ David Eichenthal has worked in - and with - state and local governments for more than thirty years, including in New York City and Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he now lives. Eichenthal recently worked with the Domestic Policy Council and the Treasury Department in the Joe Biden administration, and ⁠penned an op/ed in Friday's AJC bemoaning Democrats' looking to build a "Project 2029"⁠ and not addressing "left behind" Americans in "left behind" communities - you know, "drive through" counties and "flyover country" locales I've long said Demcorats have to at least try to campaign in to win. Something about it reminded me of the 'scanda' Jane Fonda found herself in, here in Georgia, in the late 1990s when ⁠she likened parts of the state to a 'third world' country⁠. I've traveled all over this state and she wasn't wrong then and wouldn't be wrong now, but she backtracked. Anyhow, while miffing the very people who feel "left behind" in making such a statement, at least she paid attention to them. Something Eichenthal (and I) note, Democrats haven't done enough of. MAGA is literally HANDING Democrats opportunities dotting the map - in rural, ruby-red MAGA hotspots. One such example (one I've mentioned before because I'm very familiar with it) is Cedartown, Georgia in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district. A ⁠recent New York Times piece⁠ did some in-depth coverage of a story I'd made mention over before: that the Trump-coveted "big beautiful bill" that MTG voted for herself has likely cost that town of 800-1200 good-paying jobs. An influx of jobs and in a vital and longterm industry that commuinity leaders and developers were banking on to transform that struggling small city.