life comes at you fast most of it is just smoke and mirrors we're here to clear the air whether
it's the can't make this up moments or the hard truths hitting our streets in our state
we're finding the signal and all that noise no spin no nonsense just the facts the fallout
and a little bit of humor. Grab your coffee. It's time for The Morning Drip on WRTO.FM, Radio Free Georgia.
Hey, good morning. Welcome to another broadcast of The Morning Drip. It is Wednesday, the 12th
of August, 2026. It's me, Grady D, with Mike B in the house. Word up. You know, every time I say
in the house. And whenever I do the summarizations of this, the AI thinks, I mean, you're actually in
studio and I'm having to train it to go. That doesn't necessarily mean that you are in the
studio, you know? Yeah. But I mean, I guess it does mean when you do have somebody in the studio
and you go, we have so-and-so in the house, it's going to assume the wrong thing again.
Well, then I'll just have to.
Just make sure you make sure you say in the studio with us.
In the studio with us.
Yeah.
Yep.
It's Wacky Wednesday.
Or as you say in German, it's what?
Mitfock.
Ah, yes.
That's not naughty at all.
Oh, phone lines are open.
229-520-5957.
Again, 24-7 text as well.
229-520-5957.
shoot us an email, morningdrip at wrto.fm. You know what? What's going on? What'd you do yesterday?
I worked all day, like all day long. Did you work or did Claude work?
I mean, I. You managed. We worked all day long. And then Claude worked all night long.
Oh, wow. Oh, wow. You just let it go off just on his own, huh?
I say, yeah, finish this tonight. And it goes, got you, boss. And then, you know, a couple hours later, it just stops with something it can't, it can't finish by itself.
Yeah.
It's like, I'm not going to do this without your approval. And so it waits eight hours for me to get up and.
I know, I know that's, I'm, I'm, I'm doing a kind of a pet project right now. And, uh, it's going, it's already done the planning phase and now it's broken everything into.
And I love how it does this sometimes. I don't know where it gets this from, how it decides to, to name the sections that it does. But it's this, this project, it started with m.0. And then when it finished that, it was like, are you ready to do m.1, m.11, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4. And apparently there's going to be an m.2 and further and further. And I'm just, it does each one of those phases. And then it waits on me to tell it to move forward.
Yeah. If you can pull up that markdown plan file and you'll see what M1 and M1.2 and all of that are.
Yeah. Yeah. What I've started doing is I create anytime I'm doing a new project, I create a folder.
I've got a folder in the dev server called projects.
And up under that, I create subfolders based on what the project is.
And then in that subfolder, I create a project.md where I use the markdown to basically name
the project, describe what it is, what I would like to see as far as the tech stack, but then
basically, you know, leave some things up in the air that it needs to, you know, essentially
the last line is ask any questions you have.
And then whenever I start the project, I tell it, read the project.md file and let me know
when we're ready to get started and then we just go through a series of q a yep so what a time to
be alive yeah yeah what a time to be alive talking about what time to be alive on this day in 1909
georgia lawmakers urged congress to offer five million dollars to anyone who could eradicate
the boll weevil this is the cotton killer that wasn't fully eradicated in the state until 1990
which is good and it's a it's a good thing that it doesn't need a vaccine because otherwise it
probably it probably come back well it's funny in 1909 what uh how much of what percentage of the
entire economy was five million dollars you know i need to that's actually something i need to look
up let's do this on the fly uh what is five million dollars in 2026 money five million in 20
what no no no you gotta go you gotta go from it i didn't do that i mean in 1909 yeah my brain said
i typed it but apparently my fingers did not you have the second part right um holy bejesus
How much would that be today?
$183,490,109.90 in 2026 when adjusted for inflation.
That's because inflation has grown from 1909 to today at 3,569.80%,
which means it's roughly 36.7 times higher than it was in 1909.
So 183 million, you say?
Yeah.
That's worth 81 years of work.
Yeah, I guess so.
I guess so.
I can't complain.
I mean, I'm not a farmer.
I don't raise or grow cotton.
My dad was a farmer up until I was six.
So, and honestly, I don't remember what crops.
I think he grew soybeans and peanuts.
That's what I remember most.
He may have done some corn, but I want to say that the majority of what they grew and granted, you know, this I'm relying on four year, five year old me trying to remember this stuff at 56.
but yeah, I do remember peanuts. I do remember, uh, soybeans. I remember being a young kid
out in the hot sun, having to manually me, my mom and my dad out manually weeding a field.
That was not a fun time for a kid. Probably once what you, what you get, if you want organic.
I know, right? I know. This would have been, this had to be like 74, 75, somewhere in there.
So, yeah, but I have a recollection of, you know, sitting on the tailgate of a truck
and it being hot, me being miserable. You know, I was probably whiny as a four or five-year-old
could be because why am I out here? Um, which is probably the reason why whenever I got older
and we, we would have a garden on our property, which was almost, the property was almost two
acres. So at one point our garden was almost half of that. And my summer vacation sucked
for several summers because we'd be getting up at the crack of dawn, getting out there
so that it's not so hot going down those rows of peanut, uh, of, uh, butter beans and, um,
potatoes and all kinds of [bleep] like that, and that dew coming off. And another pet peeve I had,
okra. Number one, I can't stand the taste of okra. I can't stand the texture of okra,
but then the physical touch of okra and, you know, picking it was like, just made my skin crawl.
So, yeah. I don't know why I always liked okra. Really? Yeah, but my wife hates it,
So I'm not sure I've had it more than five times in the past quarter century.
If it's, if it's buried inside some type of stew or possibly a soup, then I'm okay with it because I don't really detect it.
But for those folks out there that, that like to, you know, have it as a, as a good side, whether it's, I don't know how you cook this, this [bleep].
I guess you can boil it, you can fry it, you can deep fry it, you can bake it.
I don't know, but you guys are mad [bleep] if you eat that [bleep].
You know, I get the texture thing.
I can't stand chicken fat.
Yeah.
If I get a piece of chicken fat or a tendon or something, I don't know.
It just sets me off.
But for some reason, okra doesn't bother me at all.
It is unique.
It's the only slimy plant that I'll eat.
But see, that's like it is different.
That's like coconut.
My daughter and I both love the flavor of coconut.
We can't stand the texture of coconut.
So if you can get coconut flavoring into something like a dessert or whatever, but you don't think they figure that out.
Well, yeah, but I mean, there are still recipes that actually use real coconut, you know, and I'm like, no, no, I don't.
I don't know what it is, but it's a mouthfeel thing that, as you say, just sets me off.
And I'm like, nope.
I mean, I'll accept that.
I can't empathize with you because just to me, it's just a crunchy, you know, it's like
sweet paper.
Sweet paper.
Oh, that's funny.
I like that.
I'm eating sweet paper.
Oh, well, I guess we probably should get to some news.
And of course, you're going to get sick of me covering this flock stuff, but it keeps cropping up.
It's because your algorithm's still feeding it to you.
Actually, no, it's not an algorithm.
I'm getting a lot of this stuff from other newsletters and those newsletters.
I mean, maybe it's their algorithm.
I don't know how they're sourcing their stuff.
But, you know, I'm not I'm not getting this from any algorithmic feed or RSS feed or anything like that.
But this one, this one is right here in Georgia.
You've got three former Bibb County Sheriff's deputies.
That's up in Macon area.
We're arrested after allegedly using flock license plate cameras to repeatedly track people with whom they had personal relationships.
And the misuse was uncovered after repeated searches of the same license plates were flagged despite having no connection to legitimate criminal investigations, which led the sheriff's office to audit more than 200 accounts.
And then they tightened up access requirements.
Sheriff David Davis says that Bibb County will continue to use Flock because of its value in solving crimes and locating stolen vehicles and missing people.
The searches must now be tied to an active case and documented law enforcement purpose.
Of course, privacy advocates say the arrest illustrate the potential for abuse of license plate surveillance technology.
And they're calling for the county to stop using FLOC altogether.
So this goes back to something we said yesterday about accountability.
Yeah.
Well, my question is, why was the association with an active case not required to begin with?
I mean, if you want to search DCIC, you've got to have a good reason.
Yeah.
And cops have been fired for looking at people, you know, in their in-car computers or at the office that have nothing to do with a criminal case.
They're just snooping.
Yeah.
And they get fired for that.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
I agree.
So, Flock is the same thing.
It is.
And I still come back to the fact that, to me, there's two areas of accountability that are failing.
One is at the local level.
And when I say local, I mean the local, you know, sheriff's department or police department or whatever, local law enforcement.
So, like in this case, Bibb County Sheriff's Department.
Number one, as you pointed out, why wasn't this already a requirement?
You know, you should have to, the system should be set up in such a way that when you go to do a search, you have to enter an active case number.
Because, I mean, I've never been in law enforcement, but, you know, we've been around law enforcement.
We kind of have an idea of how these things work.
And whenever you work in a case, there is a case file.
There is an identifier that is associated with that case.
Yeah. You know, short of putting in a BS case number when you go to do a search, why wasn't that already a requirement? And if it's not a requirement, then why doesn't Flock have that built into their system to make it a requirement?
Well, they don't. Flock doesn't make the policy. They doesn't make the platform.
Yeah, but they still they're still culpable.
What?
And Microsoft's culpable for every attack on the Internet.
They are whenever it's using a Windows computer.
They are whenever it's a vulnerability or a feature that wasn't, I guess, thoroughly thought out that allowed it to happen.
Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying.
You know, at what point does this responsibility shift away from the company that makes the technology to the people that actually use it?
And I do agree with that.
That's the reason why I said I think there's accountability in two areas that have failed.
There should be a requirement, a policy requirement at the Sheriff's Department that you always have an active case when you're doing a search.
But how do you maintain that?
Well, that goes to Flock, where their searching system should say, enter case number here, and you must enter it in.
Now, it doesn't necessarily have to connect back to the local system and go, uh-uh-uh, that's not a valid case number.
But at least it'll be in the audit trail that someone should.
I mean, if it could.
And, you know, we're technology people.
We know it's possible.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
These things just keep cropping up and it's turning the tide.
I've got another story that we're not going to cover today and probably put it off till next week.
But this is actually starting to become a bipartisan issue in federal government where they're looking at pulling funding from cities that are actually using these flock camera systems.
But we'll we'll we'll see how that works out.
But on the heels of that, this technology right here, I am dead set against.
It's it's called Signal Trace.
It's a new surveillance system.
Oh, yeah.
Where it turns a person into an air tag.
Kind of.
Yeah, it's it's designed to work alongside license plate readers by detecting wireless signals from nearby phones and smartwatches and other devices.
And so that by recognizing those devices that repeat repeatedly travel together and then they can associate those patterns with particular vehicles and locations, then investigators could potentially track a vehicle or develop leaves leads without even knowing that it's the license plate or the identity of the people that are involved.
Now, the company that's behind Signal Trace says that it collects electronic signatures rather than personally identifying people.
But of course, researchers, privacy researchers are warning that those supposedly anonymous signals can become identifying when they're combined with vehicle registrations and locations and other records.
And of course, this technology raises significant privacy and Fourth Amendment questions because people could potentially draw police attention simply because their devices repeatedly appeared near a person or a vehicle, a protest or a group that's under investigation, even though they themselves were not originally suspected of any wrongdoing.
just basically wrong, wrong time, wrong place. But instead of that just being a visual thing
where it's like, okay, I'm walking along the sidewalk and yes, there's a protest here.
I'm not part of this. And some people do get caught up in getting arrested for that kind of
stuff. Usually they get out of it when they can prove, look, I was just going and getting,
I was just going and getting my 16 ounce cup of alcohol during our, you know,
Dillio here in Tifton, but this is, I don't like this at all, at all.
It's nuclear technology.
Nuclear technology.
It can do great things, but it can cause lots of havoc too.
Depending on whose hands it's in.
See, everybody should be living by the Spider-Man edict.
With great power comes great responsibility.
I mean, if we're all more like Spider-Man.
We should just be like Stranger Things.
Which part?
what's a cell phone? Yeah. We just don't have them. You know, I've talked, we talked to people
face to face. Shocking. What is that like? You know? Yeah. I've, I've, I've often on considered,
and I don't know, it's one of those things I'm like, it'd be very difficult for me to give up
my smartphone right now. Is it impossible? No. But I have considered buying a $60 flip phone and
just putting it on a, you know, a Mint Mobile or something, $15, $20 a month plan, just so that,
you know, maybe if I want to go somewhere, not that I'm looking at doing anything
illegal or anything, but, you know, if I want to leave my smartphone at home and, but I still want
to have a way of communicating if, you know, I, you know, break down on the side of the road or
something like that, at least I have a phone. But the problem is even some of these smartphones,
They're running Android.
So I don't know at what point they're not trackable too.
And it's not like you can go back and get an early aughts Motorola Razr
and it work on any network today.
That just doesn't happen.
Yeah.
So just don't carry one.
I mean, how, how much do you believe in this?
I don't know.
I mean, it's one of the, it's one of those things where, you know,
18-year-old me, 16-year-old me, you know, we went everywhere.
We didn't have a cell phone.
Cell phones weren't, I mean, they were a thing, but only in like large metropolitan areas,
but they were not even handheld.
They were usually car phones.
I mean, Miami Vice, he had one in his Ferrari.
And, you know, 16 to 17, 18-year-old me wouldn't have had a second thought about going anywhere
without being able to communicate.
It's kind of like, I think you pointed out yesterday, you know, we'd go out and do whatever.
And then as long as we were home by, by dark, it's not like anybody had any way of communicating with us.
I mean, even in stranger things, the most they had was two way radios, which ironically in the show worked greater distances than they actually do.
But okay, I let that one go, you know, nerd.
I know. I know. I mean, I don't know.
It's one of these things that's like, look, I see the potential that we're veering into, but what am I willing to give up?
You know, can I really put my money where my mouth is kind of thing?
Yeah. How closely related are your thoughts to those of Kaczynski?
I don't know.
Because, I mean, he was pretty serious. He was dedicated.
True.
To not being tracked.
True.
Well, you know, I win the billion-dollar Powerball tonight.
I won't have to worry about it.
Yeah.
I mean, just pick your battles.
Turn your Bluetooth off.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
But then again, well, that's a good question.
Let me ask you that.
Do you have yours turned off most of the time?
No.
Yeah, me either, because I think Bluetooth is required for my AirPods to actually work in sync.
Yeah.
And then like yesterday, I was driving my son's truck and a check engine light came on.
And so he's got one of these code readers.
It's called Blue Driver.
And so I was like, well, let me read the code so I can tell him what's going on with the truck.
And of course, it connects over Bluetooth.
So I don't think you can get away from this kind of stuff anymore.
It's just, I guess you guard yourself as best you can.
And I hate this line.
Well, if you ain't doing anything illegal, you got nothing to worry about.
Shut the hell up.
i hate that saying because it's not true well we keep pretending that uh people in the government
and law enforcement aren't people who can actually just make sense of of things well yeah your phone
was near this protest but then you walked right past it so we won't even talk to that person
that that's what we need that's what we need people people with common sense and the ability
to go, no, we're, we're good. Yeah. But that's the problem. We don't, we're, we're sorely lacking
in, in the pool of people with common sense. It's our education system. I, I believe that.
I really do. I really do. And our politics. And our politics, unfortunately. Well, we're going to
take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about a little bit more about some politics,
but not really, you know, we got to get back on that whole data center thing, which, man, I don't,
I don't know. It's just, I don't know what to do with this anymore. I really don't.
Let's go to a commercial and get to it.
All right. Well, y'all can weigh in. Phone lines are open. 229-520-5957 or text 24-7-229-520-5957.
Email morningjep at wrto.fm. We'll be back.
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Weekdays, only on Radio Free Georgia.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Morning Drip for Wednesday, August 12th, 2026. Grady D and Mike B in the house with you.
Yep.
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All right.
Data centers, we can't,
it's just like flock cameras.
We can't seem to get away
from everything about data centers.
OpenAI plans to build
a $20 billion data center campus
in Effingham.
Is it Effingham or Effingham?
It's your choice.
Okay.
I usually say Effingham.
Effingham.
But they probably say Effingham.
Yeah.
You know, it's like Jeff Dunham.
Anyway, that's a.
Well, I mean, it's there's Birmingham, Alabama.
Yeah.
But over in England, people live in Birmingham.
Birmingham.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
I guess that's like around around here.
A lot of people pronounce it Albany, but I pronounce it Albany.
They say theater.
I say theater.
Theater.
So anyway, it's Effingham County, one of the largest private investments in coastal
Georgia history known as Project Camellia. And I checked to make sure I was pronouncing that right.
I wanted to say Camellia, but it's Camellia. It's four syllables. The facility is expected to create
about 400 permanent jobs, generate substantial tax revenue that local officials say could help
reduce property taxes. I love it. That's how you get people. It's like, look, we know that this
thing is going to probably destroy the environment, but don't worry. We can reduce or possibly
eliminate your property taxes if you'll just stop [bleep] and whining about it being here.
How about that? And then they go on and say, and additional funding and opportunities for schools
and local businesses, right? There aren't enough people in Effingham County.
I didn't look it up.
I don't know how big it is.
Well, I mean, it's pretty close to Savannah.
So there are people there, but it is kind of rural in parts.
What is the population?
See if I can get this one right.
Effingham County, Georgia.
Georgie.
73.15.
So about 73,000 people.
I don't know what Savannah is as compared.
Probably more.
Let's see.
What is Savannah?
A few hundred thousand.
Savannah.
311,000 as of 2025.
So, yeah.
So, this campus will require roughly 3,200 megawatts of electricity.
Open AI has agreed to pay the infrastructure costs and reduce demand during peak periods
under a 25-year agreement with Georgia Power.
Of course, you got residents that are concerned about the project's potential impact on those
electricity rates and the water and traffic and other infrastructure. And of course, local leaders
argue the economic benefits and safeguards built into the project will make it a long-term benefit
for the county. I don't know if I've actually asked you this. What is your actual take? Like,
if it were to come out that OpenAI or Google or anybody, because there is one that's going in,
I don't know where it stands, but I know several months ago, one of my friends asked me what I knew about data centers.
And he was telling me all the rhetoric and BS that was being told to them about the one they want to put in Irwin County.
So if they were going to come and say, well, we want to put one in Tiff County, what would your feeling be?
Bring it.
Really?
Well, it's going to make money.
It's going to provide some jobs.
Not enough.
Look, I'm talking here.
so it's going to provide some jobs of course no not enough we're not going to erase unemployment
in tiff county if that happens but there there will be infrastructure improvements
uh that will have to go in for something like that uh and that would kind of bring us
up to speed a little more a little bit faster um and if it doesn't go here it's going to go
somewhere and do the same thing it's going to provide benefits somewhere else if it's not here
i guess my biggest issue is the fact that the way these things are are typically sold
to the areas that they're trying to put them in is the first thing that you said was it's going to
be it's going to bring jobs and the problem with that is on the front end yes you're going to have
people coming in. You got construction crews, you got all of this stuff. And I mean, there's going
to be an uptick in employment, money going through the local economy because people are
buying stuff there. They're working in the area. But once the thing is up and operational,
I call BS even on this one where they're talking about 400 permanent jobs. I looked at the one,
the size of the one that they were looking at putting in Irwin County. At most, 25 jobs. At
most, 25 jobs. Because once these things are built and up and operational, they're pretty
much automatic. You don't need a [bleep] ton of people working in the facility to, oh, we've got
a server that's dead, DRack it, put in a new one and move on with your life. You don't need 400
people doing that so they never said it would open uh open ai would be directly hiring 400 people for
permanent positions he said the facility is expected to create about 400 permanent jobs
that but they never said they would work at open ai they well then what what's the point of the
facility creating 400 permanent jobs what because it sounds good they're selling it i know it's a
lie that's not a lie well it's uh over exaggeration it's lofty and it can be calculated in a number of
ways so in other who will the people who will work at the facility the people who will build the
facility um and then with everything with all the people that it brings in and by the way they won't
be able to hire local people to run the data center they're they're going to move people there
true um so the their the um increased traffic will cause them uh the locals to put in more gas
stations uh there may be another shopping center and you know those 400 jobs will include everybody
who works at the circle k and the wawa and and the walmart so that that's what you're that's what
you're saying is is they're glossing over those i think those are the jobs that they're saying will
be created by this project because there's no way it's going to take 400 people to run a data center
you could probably do it with 50 yeah and that would be too many yeah okay i i get what you're
saying and i don't disagree with you on that i just don't like the way it's presented i don't
like no it's it's never presented properly it's it's twisted yeah i just think i'm not i'm not
against data centers per se. You know, we've got to have them, you know, email. I mean, everything
we do nowadays has got to have some data center. There's got to be a location where, you know,
fiber's going in, tons of fibers going in, and tons of servers are sitting there. And as long
as these companies will do what they say, like this one says, look, we're going to pay the
infrastructure costs and we're going to reduce our demand during peak periods for the next 25 years.
And as long as Georgia Power and all the other co-ops that are dealing with this don't do a
bait and switch and suddenly, you know, your power bill has gone up by $50 a month because they're
having to subsidize infrastructure costs. Okay. You know, as long as those are in and people will
follow it. Okay, let's have a discussion. I'm with you on how the fact that it could potentially
spawn off all these other businesses, all these other support businesses that is what accounts
for these 400 permanent jobs. Just present it like that. Don't say, we're going to create 400
permanent jobs. You're not doing it directly. Explain it to the general public that says,
look, we put this in, we're going to have potentially X number of employees working
around the clock in this place, but it also has the potential to create all these other
industries around it. So that's all I'm saying, but they never present it that way. They basically,
I still call it a lie. It's a lie of omission, but it's still a lie.
Figures don't lie, but liars can figure.
So moving on to some other Georgia news, this one I thought you might, I'll pick your brain
about it because you do travel up toward Atlanta more than I do.
Heck, the last time I was even up there close to that was when my son and I went up there
for him to buy his, this truck that he has, this 2003 Ford Ranger, which I think was in
2021 or 2022.
But anyway, so Georgia is moving ahead with a $3.5 billion project to build 41 miles of
barrier-separated, toll-free, truck-only lanes along northbound I-75 between Macon and McDonough.
Construction is expected to run from 2027 through 2032, with the lanes designed to move most
commercial truck traffic away from regular interstate lanes along a corridor, while trucks
account for nearly 30% of the vehicles. The Georgia Department of Transportation says the
project should reduce congestion, improve safety, and speed freight movement through one of the
nation's worst truck bottlenecks. And while the proposal has generally received public support,
there are concerns about traffic merging back onto the interstate near McDonough and disruptions
during the five-year construction period, which at last part, disruptions during the five-year
construction period, I-75 is in a constant state of construction. That's not going to be anything
new. I say that kind of tongue in cheek, but I'm also being serious. I mean, how many days
do you go, whether it's down to Valdosta or where it's up north to Macon and Atlanta,
some section of I-75 is being worked on. Oh yeah. Every, every single time.
What do you think about this? You think it's a good idea? Because like I say,
you're someone that goes up there more than I do. Hell yeah. And put the RVs on there too.
That would be good. And I, I saw that and I saw, I saw the 41 miles. I was like,
what's that going to do? But the more I think about it, that is a terrible place to be a driver
between, um, between South Atlanta, uh, like exit two 38 down to, uh, McDonough, like exit
two 12, um, Locust Grove. So yeah, if they, if the truckers get to skip that,
That will take so many off the road and that would speed up a whole lot because the traffic backups are caused by everybody trying to get on or off the interstate.
Mm-hmm.
They're busy, especially at Locust Grove and where everybody lives in McDonough because they don't want to live in Atlanta.
So they just choose another congested area to reside in.
um so it's on and off the interstate with the trucks yeah so that it'll stop the right lane
and then people go try to go from that one over to the left and so it just kind of mucks everything
up but if we get rid of the trucks i think that would go a lot smoother if we get rid of the rvs
i think we just outlaw rvs on interstate
i'm not sure you could do that but i'm i'm in agreement with you let's you know how you got
you got neighborhoods in certain sections where you got the signs that says no no trucks and i
always thought growing up i was like well what's what's wrong with my daddy's truck driving up in
here no they they mean semis and and things like that and big box trucks and what have you
yeah but yeah i i think i agree with you you know if you're going to allow semi-truck trailers and
what have you move the rvs over there too and and just let that section of interstate be for
regular size vehicles if you will and we along that whole thing we put in flock cameras and we
find any rv driver who's not in the right lane oh god does it have to be flock can it just be
regular surveillance come on man well come on flock's better at spying on people than anybody
as evidence according to sources according to sources that's true you know what's interesting
talking about um bypasses and what have you like this one years ago probably let's see 26
15 15 to 20 years ago there was talk and i actually saw the plans because we were going
to have to reroute some infrastructure and what have you for the cable and broadband system.
But there was a talk of a bypass that would go, you would get off of it at 319 or onto it at 319
and it would literally take you over to 82 East. And I think they may have looked at it. Well,
I mean, you're already over there for 82 West. So you could literally, if you were coming in
the westward lanes on 82, you'd be able to get on this bypass, bypass all of downtown Tifton,
all the major sections of Tifton, and the bypass would take you over to 319, where you could either
then go however you needed to go on 319 or come off of 319 and get back on 82 headed west again.
So it would lessen the congestion that we have basically of 82 all the way through Tifton.
But they never did it.
I thought it was a great idea, but they just never did it.
Every time you go through town in the middle of the day on 82, you think, you know, these trucks probably don't like doing this.
Especially that when you get up to the intersection of 82 and, oh damn, what is that?
Is it TIF?
Virginia.
Or is it Virginia?
Well, I'm thinking about the one right there.
Downtown.
You get past the end mark.
You get to the wings place right there on the right.
And then as you go through that one
and you come up to that furniture store place on the right
where you basically have an incline.
That's Main Street.
Yeah, they probably don't like that one
because you have to sit there on an incline and idle.
I know whenever I was driving a standard shift,
I hated it because you'd have to you'd have to sit there and play this game with your accelerator just pushed up down enough that the the vehicle would stay engaged.
Because, you know, if you're if you're holding the brake in the clutch and as soon as you try to get get to the accelerator, you're going to roll back unless you're really damn good.
And I mean, I drove a stick shift for a couple of decades and I was really damn good, but I still hated it.
You know, that incline.
But yeah, I think anytime, and not only that, but hey, let's go back to, you know, the open AI thing.
That would have created all kinds of business opportunities on that bypass route.
You know, new stores and gas stations and et cetera, et cetera.
I think it would have been good for the economy, but I don't know.
They just didn't do it.
Didn't do it at all.
Because somebody whose family's been here for 400,000 years didn't want it.
probably. That's a guess. Yeah. I'm not an insider. That's like I-75. I have it on. I think I've told
you this one before, but as it comes in here, you know, Tifton is kind of like, we're, we're this
nexus point because we have 41, 319 and I-75 that all come in and corridor Z, if you will, with
82, all come into this nexus of Tifton, Tiff County. I-75 originally was not going through
tifton it was going through albany but it made more sense a certain mayor if i remember correctly
he's either the mayor or he was the city manager at the time who is related to someone we know
managed to get it moved from albany to tifton whenever it was being constructed and coming
down this way it's like their great great grandfather or something or some relation to them
so you know you never know money talks yeah i mean the only reason not to do it is feelings
and somebody just had feelings somebody didn't want somebody mad at somebody what's the adage
now you know facts don't give a [bleep] about your feelings yeah anyway all right we're going to take
another break call in line is 229-520-5957 or you can text 24 7 365 the same number
or shoot us an email, morningdrip at wrto.fm.
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Hey everybody, welcome back to The Morning Drip
for Wednesday, the 12th of August, 2026.
Grady D might be here with you
as we get into our final segment.
Again, our call-in number is 229-520-5957.
Text the same number or shoot us an email,
morning drip at wrto.fm. Follow us on Facebook at wrto.fm and on blue sky at wrto.fm. So we have
a new GAO report. That is the Government Accountability Office, I think is what that
stands for. Finds that millions of Americans rely on Medicaid and SNAP despite being employed,
including 13.8 million working adults enrolled in Medicaid and 10.6 million living in households
receiving SNAP in 2024. About two-thirds worked full-time, although many had inconsistent hours
or did not work full-time throughout the entire year. About 88% of these workers were employed
in the private sector, particularly in transportation, food service, and retail.
Data from 11 states also found thousands of benefit recipients working for some major employers,
including 17 companies ranked among the nation's 50 largest Fortune 500 employers, highlighting how
many working Americans still earn too little or have insufficiently consistent employment to meet
basic needs without public assistance. And one of those 50 largest Fortune 500 employers is Walmart.
Amazon is also one of them, I'm fairly certain. Regarding those who actually work in, say,
like the warehouse and stuff like that.
They're AWS people, completely different story.
I know how much those people make.
They're not living on food stamps.
Yeah, I don't think they would qualify.
No, no, no, no, no.
I think the cheapest you get off there
is probably $175,000 a year or something like that.
And even if you're living in Washington state,
and I know stuff is a heck of a lot more expensive there,
You're you're unless you're managing your money terribly, you should not need benefits of any any type.
But yeah, it's kind of sad because and this is a recurring thing that I've seen, especially when it comes to Walmart.
People, people working for Walmart, even full time jobs and still cannot afford to put food on their table.
And, you know, we're not talking about the fact that they're making seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour.
But even today, a living wage of $15 is really not a living wage anymore.
It needs to be closer to $20 or $25 an hour, which I know that's hard to get to, especially
for small businesses.
And honestly, I think the cities in the states that have actually done $15 to $20, I want
to say California is raising theirs to like $27.
It's either $22 or $27.
I can't remember.
But I think there should be a carve out for small businesses, you know, just like there was or is for insurance.
You know, if you've got a small business of 50 or less, then you don't have to meet certain requirements when it comes to insurance.
Probably the same thing should be.
And I don't know if there is a carve out for this in these places that have minimum wage of $15 and up.
You know, if you're less than 50 or less than 25, then maybe you don't have to meet that.
You know, I don't know, but I think that's, I think that's something that, that always
needs to be looked at because I can, I can tell you if I had to hire somebody to work
in my business, I could not afford to pay them $25 an hour.
I don't think I could afford to pay them $15 an hour.
No, I couldn't either.
So, but it's a problem.
Yeah.
It's a problem.
It is, and I don't think increasing the minimum wage is going to solve it.
I don't think I don't think it will solve it in its totality, but I think it is a part of the overall process that needs to happen.
I mean, I think it's 2009 is the last time that the national minimum wage was actually adjusted.
And that's the reason why states do it themselves or municipalities do it themselves.
I mean, I remember back in the early 90s, I thought I was doing great because I was making 10 cents above minimum.
And at that time, I think the minimum was $5.35 or something.
Yeah.
When I went to Walmart Distribution Center, I mean, I was an eye cotton.
I was making $6.10 an hour.
You know, so.
Yeah.
I was in a management position.
I think I was making $6.80 an hour.
Oh, wow.
Back in the 90s.
Oh, wow.
I started with the city making $3.6.
I started with the city making 20.
Yeah, that's, you know, that's because we didn't pay the underlings enough.
I'm kidding.
I wasn't surprised.
I think this requires some knowledge.
Hey, it wasn't until, and I don't know if you were still, I don't think you were there at this time, but they.
No, I didn't stay any longer than I had to.
Oh, I know, I know.
They actually brought in a company to do a survey to look at every single department within the city of Tifton as to pay scale.
And when they got to the city net slash IT department, they looked at it and went, you guys have got a problem.
And what they did, I thought it was the funniest thing.
They they went to management and counsel and said, you do realize that this organization is an upside down pyramid.
And at the very bottom of that pyramid, the point of that pyramid, it sits on top of your IT department, because without your IT department, you're in your entire business doesn't work and you're not paying them enough.
So I suddenly went from making sixty two thousand dollars a year.
I got a ten thousand dollar pay pay rates.
So basically everybody in that department got a pay raise at some percentage.
And I was like, well, it's about damn time that somebody recognizes the importance of of certain departments within this organization.
So, you know, that doesn't happen often.
No, I was I was pleasantly surprised.
I had no idea that that was even going to happen, but I was like, wow.
I mean, I remember talking whenever the guy came in to do the assessment to figure out how much they could spin out or sell the department for.
He told me, he said, you're still not making enough.
I said, what do you mean?
He said, as a general manager of a broadband cable system, your minimum should be about $125,000 a year.
And I looked at him and I said, dude, that's what the city manager makes right now.
he's like, oh, I know, I know. He said, your position is more important than his. I'm like,
oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not going there. But I would agree.
Personal question. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to. Have you ever been on,
on a food stamps or SNAP benefits? We, when my daughter was born, I had just lost my job.
Like I got fired on a Friday and my daughter was born that Sunday morning.
oh [bleep]. So, um, my mother worked with, you know, county officials and whatever she interacted with
those kinds of people in her job. So she knew people and somebody came out and said,
you guys would qualify for WIC. And so we got, we got WIC. Um, cause I didn't have a job.
Yeah. And we had a baby. Um, and we took advantage of it. We got, uh, we got formula
when we needed formula when um when we're done breastfeeding yeah i said we didn't we switched
the formula when um when i got the job in uh with the city of tifton and we moved to tifton
and couldn't take care that's when we that's too long of a story um no i understand that's that
That's all. Yeah. Otherwise, no, no food stamps or snap or we, we had, of course I have three kids. They're all adults now, but we use, and at the time, I mean, I was working, but I wasn't making a lot of money.
I think I think whenever our first child was born, I was probably making four hundred dollars a week at best.
So all of in every one of our pregnancies, we qualified for WIC.
Matter of fact, we paid nothing for any of our children to be born.
No hospital bills, nothing.
It was all covered by the government or whatever.
Medicaid? I guess, uh, you know, this was 90, 92 and 94 and heck even in 97, we, uh, and, and,
and 97, I was still making about the same amount of money, $400 a week. And, uh, so all three of
my kids, every bit of their, you know, we had to pay for like pediatricians and stuff like that
whenever we go, but some of it was also covered, but yeah, we did the WIC thing. Um, been on,
We've been on Snap once and it's when I lost my job in 2012 and we did it for six months, I think.
And we managed to, we were getting $600 a month on the EBT card and we actually found,
because my wife was very frugal, we actually found it difficult for a family of five to
actually use all $600 each month. Nowadays, it'd be easy. You know, two grocery
runs $600 so oh yeah yeah my wife went to sam's a couple months ago and when she swipes the card
i get an alert on my phone and uh your transaction for $680 was approved i was like what
[bleep] we better be eating good
yeah i know i track our grocery our our i haven't looked at it in a couple of weeks
but i've been comparing from 2024 2025 and 2026 and so i put it in a spreadsheet and then i let
it average out so that i can see what our average monthly is and we are for a family of three right
now, we're averaging about $640 a month. And again, we don't, you know, I try to target $150
a week. That's my target. We don't always hit it. You know, some, there are just some weeks where
it's like, okay, well, I'm going to have to eat into this target and it's going to be 170 or 180
or whatever. But yeah, it has definitely edged up, I would say easily by 20% from 2024 to 2026.
Yeah. Food's a huge cost anymore. It is. It is. I mean, hamburger meat. If you get if you get the [bleep] hamburger meat, it's still it's still going to run you for four dollars a pound.
We buy one pound of grass fed beef every week and just keep it stored. And it's between seven and eight dollars for that one pound.
but you want some inexpensive meat that works just as well, get turkey. I don't know why,
but one pound of turkey in a turkey roll frozen is like $2 and something. And you can make turkey
burgers out of it. You can substitute it pretty much into anything that you use beef. You may have
to season it a little bit more because of the fact that turkey kind of like chicken is bland
without any seasoning, but it is a good substitute. It is an expensive substitute.
Now that I've said that, they'll probably jack the price on it, but that's what we've discovered.
Well, if you have a texture issue, turkey's not the same.
That's true. Turkey bacon is an abomination. Oh, trust me. There's only one kind of bacon,
and that is the bacon bacon. I do not care for turkey bacon. I will tolerate it, but no,
Give me, give me just, give me just good old hog bacon the way God intended.
Yeah.
I don't, why call it bacon?
If it's, if it's not, if it's turkey, why call it bacon?
Yeah.
I mean, bacon means pig, right?
Bacon.
You could just call them bacon flavored.
Turkey sticks.
Turkey strips.
Oh, all right.
Let's move on to the last thing.
Despite shrinking production budgets and growing competition from other states and countries,
Georgia's film and television industry remain relatively steady for fiscal year 2026.
280 productions spent about $2 billion in the state.
Georgia continues to attract productions because of its tax incentives.
Experienced crews, studio infrastructure, statewide support network, and television and streaming
series remain particularly important with more than 440 episodic productions filming
in the state over the past three fiscal years.
One thing I will note, I put a comment in here.
I do remember reading an article several years ago that after Marvel wrapped up their original saga with the with Endgame, basically the work up in North Georgia for the studios and all of the extras and everybody that worked on these productions just kind of went away because it was like, you know, think about it for a period of roughly 10 to 15 years because pretty much all the Marvel movies were filmed in North Georgia.
They had steady work because they would move from one film to another or they'd work on, you know, television series that were being streamed on Disney Plus and that kind of stuff.
And then after Endgame, it was like, yep, OK, we're done.
And all of that work just started drying up and people were actually having to leave and go to other places to find work.
So I find this interesting.
And I mean, granted, you know, we've got a whole new Marvel saga that's coming with Doomsday and all of that.
That's that's that's cool. Stranger Things was primarily filmed in North Georgia. The Vampire Diaries back in the day, not True Blood, but Vampire Diaries back in the day was filmed up in, I think, northeast Georgia.
So and they also point out here that independent filmmaking is growing rapidly. Georgia indie productions increased 83 percent from the previous year and beyond production spending and jobs, filming continues to benefit.
And this goes back to something about the open AI thing, benefits to restaurants, hotels, and other businesses while generating tourism in communities featured on screen with shows such as Stranger Things, continuing to draw visitors long after the production has ended.
So, yeah, that's another thing.
When you've got all these support businesses and industries that are there to support this production, and then the production goes away, all these other industries start getting hurt.
Same thing happened in the automotive industry.
You know, when you have when you would have a car plant closed down in a city, it wasn't it wasn't just a few hundred people that were working in the plant that were affected.
It was all the ancillary support businesses that supported that that provided like the widgets and the bolts and this and that and the other or maybe catering services or food services and restaurants and fast food and all of that.
It's like, I mean, it's almost like the economy is an ecosystem.
Am I right?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, and even with like a major car plant where you've got thousands laid off when the place closes, you'll even see changes in the school.
They'll close schools.
Yeah.
Because there'll be nobody, no kids left around to attend them.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
And so teachers have got to go find something else and janitors and all that.
And then it starts affecting property values and property taxes.
And yeah, it's it's amazing how how one industry can totally gut an entire area when they when they leave or how they can really prop it up and make it exponentially prosperous when they come in.
And, you know, I'm not I'm not dead to the fact that that's what a lot of data centers could potentially do.
But I just I think there needs to be more discussion about them and safeguards put into place because water is a big issue.
And, you know, we we're now officially, quote, officially out of a drought here in Georgia.
But there are other places in the United States.
I mean, the Colorado River and those those states over there, they're fighting.
They're having to reduce the amount of consumption because all the reservoirs are down lower than they've ever been in like 50 or 75 years or some nonsense.
Well, when when we were there 20 plus years ago, they they had watering restrictions in place even back then.
Yeah.
You can only water your lawn on like even days or something.
That is still a pet peeve of mine.
When we were still under a drought here in Georgia, the number of people that I would see in this neighborhood I live in have a sprinkler going, you know, trying to water their grass.
And I'm like, would you rather have water available to nourish your body and your family's needs or do you want green grass?
I like green grass, but I like drinking water better, you know.
It's always awesome to have water to drink.
yeah it is so it you know i remember we had restrictions here at one point where it's like
you can only water your lawn on if you if you had an even address or not address it was like
on tuesday and thursday you can't wash your cars except on mondays and friday it's some
nonsense like that and i'm like yeah i i get that it aggravates some folks but
you know again i i think having water to drink is important so anyway all right well unless you
got anything to add i think that's going to wrap up today's broadcast of the morning drip right
here on wrto you ready to get out of here i think uh several years ago when i heard about
the influx of of movie production going coming to georgia there was supposed to be
um a studio facility built in effingham county really i don't know if that ever happened
but that's that's what i heard so well even if it didn't happen they could still
uh produce a new reality show focusing on the community resistance to the data center
i'm just tossing ideas oh there's actually somebody would watch it somebody would watch
There actually is a studio over in Ben Hill County because they were part of the Bruce Willis, I think it was Gasoline Alley or whatever that was filmed here in Tifton.
But, you know, and I know Bruce suffers, he doesn't really know who he is anymore, but, and it's not Alzheimer's, it's this other aphasia thing.
But you look at the last five or six movies that he was in, they are horrible.
They are absolutely trash.
I think it was more than five or six.
Probably.
Like everything in the last 20 years.
Well, the last Die Hard movie, that was probably the last good one.
I mean, honestly, I don't know.
He was in Unbreakable, and that was in 2000, because we were just looking at this.
And then he was in Glass, which wrapped up the whole, that whole M. Not Shyamalan storyline.
Because you had Unbreakable, then you had Split, and then Glass brought all of the characters together.
And I think that was 2018. I never watched it.
So yeah, that was after The Sixth Sense.
Oh yeah, way after that.
Yeah.
Yeah, so.
Anyhow, all right, well, we're going to get out of here.
This has been the Morning Drip for Wednesday, the 12th of August, 2026.
Phone lines are now closed, but you can still call and leave a voicemail, 229-520-5957.
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Everybody have a great, wacky Wednesday, or how do you say it again? What's Wednesday in German?
Mittwoch.
We're going to get out of here before I screw up anymore. Everybody take care. Have a great Wednesday. Good morning, everybody.
We'll see you next time.