OBSERVATIONS THAT I MADE TEN YEARS AGO, IN THE HOPE THAT GEORGIANS WOULD 'WISE UP'.....AND THAT, MORE CURRENTLY, THE TIDE MIGHT CHANGE.... THAT THE NEST OF CORRUPTION AND DONALD TRUMP AND HIS ACCOMPLICES WOULD BE DRAGGED, IN CHAINS AND ORANGE JUMPSUITS .....TO PRISONS, AS 'BETTER HUMANS' TAKE ON THE 'WORK' OF BETTERMENT.....

 The Public, in small part, seems more cynical about politics and government, the military and police......I was just thinking......in this sliver of Atlanta history.....you know, just a brief window of the 'news of the moment': .....Screw the public trust....

Reginald Eaves -- Bounced in 1978 from the since-dissolved job of city public safety commissioner for supposedly helping cops cheat on their promotion exams, Eaves bounced back with his election to the Fulton Commission. Ten years later, he was convicted of selling his votes in dozens of zoning cases.

Pat Swindall -- With a name like that, politics was his destiny. The Bible-thumping GOP congressman earned a year in prison for lying to a grand jury about his role in a money-laundering scheme.

Ira Jackson -- The city councilman was nailed on 130 counts of bribery and fraud in 1994 for taking kickbacks from an airport concessionaire, who testified that he slipped Jackson and fellow Councilman D.L. "Buddy" Fowlkes each $500 a week over breakfast. It makes one yearn for the days before airport graft became so complicated.

Lillian Webb -- The Gwinnett Commission chairwoman was dumped by voters after leading a 26-person, $52,000 pub crawl through Manhattan in 1988 in the guise of a bond-rating mission. Unable to abandon the public trough, Webb is now mayor of Norcross.

Bill Campbell -- During Atlanta's best economic times since Sherman left town, Campbell still managed to drain city coffers dry by turning the mayor's office into an employment service for his poker buddies; leaning on department heads and even judges to throw contracts to his supporters; treating Hartsfield like his own personal fiefdom; and overseeing a culture of civic corruption so pervasive that even folks low on the food chain felt their hands were welcome in the public cookie jar.

NOW.....multiply these unsavory episodes by the number of towns, counties, states and countries then multiply that number by....say......40 or 50....(you know...the number of times that graft, payoff and gov't corruption is in the news, on the average...in a year.....on your local news station) and the numbers get rather staggering, don't they? There must be an 'official' equation for this computation, derived after a federally-funded study project that cost the public some millions of bucks.....