The GA Files

The “We Can Do Better” Project

We Can Do Better

Georgia’s biggest decisions — how its money gets spent, how its politics actually work, how its policy gets made — too often happen fast, unaccounted for, and out of public view. This project takes the issues that shape the state, does the homework everyone else skipped — digging into the primary records and showing the work — and lays out a better, more accountable way. The subjects range widely, from data centers to AI governance to campaign money to wherever the next fight over Georgia’s future leads. What ties them together isn’t a topic; it’s a standard: sourced, honest, and built to be useful.

The essays

The HUMAN Act: A Model Federal AI Bill

Not a think-piece — an actual model bill, drafted section by section. Independent oversight, a safety-and-security floor, worker protection, market-stability guardrails, and public ownership when taxpayers fund AI data centers. Read the summary or the full text.

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Georgia's state-legislative funding gap: Georgia's State-Legislative Funding Gap

We matched every November nominee in all 236 Georgia House and Senate districts to their disclosure records. Democrats have nominees in 205 races to the GOP's 186 and hold 33% of the money — but the median Democratic nominee has $19,664 to the Republican's $123,079. Only 16 seats are real money races. (Corrected Sept. 14.)

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The S-Word: What Socialism Actually Is

The textbook definition, the honest failures, and the ownership test that settles almost every argument. Then the Georgia receipts — $7.64M in forgiven PPP loans held by 14 officials, three of whom opposed student-debt relief — and the $4.3 billion in untraceable political money nobody calls a threat.

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Watching the Watchers: Georgia's Surveillance Network

An Atlanta company built America's largest surveillance-camera network — 100,000+ cameras, 4,800 agencies searching it, under 1% of scans tied to a crime. What has gone wrong, in Georgia and nationally, and a framework to keep it from becoming a dragnet. Every claim sourced and labeled.

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Counting What We Can Verify: Georgia Election Security

Not the rigged machine one side imagines, nor the flawless system the other insists on. What actually protects a Georgia ballot, where the state has cut its own corners, and a nonpartisan way to do elections better.

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Building the Data Centers Without Breaking the Community

A $5 billion, 900-megawatt project approved in one evening — no signed tenant, no water permit, no honest accounting. A Central Georgia case study, and a better, more accountable way. Every claim sourced.

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The Flourishing Compact: A New Ruleset of Robotics

Asimov’s laws were built for obedient robots. Real AI is learned, not programmed — this is a ruleset where humans and the minds we make can both thrive.

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More on the way — each one digs into a specific Georgia issue and shows its work. Have one worth digging into? Email [email protected].