Nov 2, 2025

That's Nice

      From the Coosa Valley News:

As the effects of the ongoing government shutdown continue to ripple through local communities, one Rome [Georgia] restaurant stepped up this week to show appreciation for federal workers feeling the pinch. Marco’s Pizza, operated by local franchise owner Claude Corbin, provided lunch to employees at the Social Security Office in Rome as a gesture of support and solidarity. ...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great gesture by Marco’s Pizza and I hope they get additional business for setting an example since this administration is more interest in a ballroom and Great Gasby parties. 👏

Anonymous said...

t was a feast fit for a king – and any billionaire willing to be his subject. From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream.

On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m. That the federal government had shut down two weeks earlier scarcely seemed to matter.

But two weeks later, the shutdown is starting to bite – and throw Trump’s architectural folly into sharp relief. On Saturday, with Congress still locked in a legislative stalemate, a potential benefit freeze could leave tens of millions of low-income Americans without food aid. Democrats accuse Trump’s Republican party of “weaponising hunger” to pursue an extreme rightwing agenda.

Images of wealthy monarchs or autocrats revelling in excess even as the masses struggle for bread are more commonly associated with the likes of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France, who spent lavishly at the court of Versailles, or Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos of the Philippines, who siphoned off billions while citizens endured deepening poverty.

But now America has a jarring split-screen of its own, between an oligarch president bringing a Midas touch to the White House and families going hungry, workers losing pay and government services on the brink of collapse.

Anonymous said...

Hey it would be pretty cool if SSA decided to support its employees with paychecks

Anonymous said...

Hey, what’s a paycheck?

Anonymous said...

Not much chance of that. If Bisignano had his way, he'd be taking the oxygen away from them.

Anonymous said...

Of the nation’s 2.1 million federal workers, more than 750,000 have been furloughed - sent home without pay - for a full month. Hundreds of thousands more are working without a salary, even as President Donald Trump has found ways to pay some law enforcement agents and active-duty military personnel.

Adding to some workers’ anxiety, the administration is threatening to deprive furloughed staffers of back pay, even though Trump signed a 2019 law during his first term guaranteeing it after the last shutdown.

At the Social Security field office in Albany, New York, workers set up a makeshift donation table to share household supplies, said Jessica Sweet, a claims specialist and union representative for AFGE Local 3343. Among the recent offerings were mac and cheese, oatmeal, and canned soup, she said, along with a sheet of paper that workers can fill out to anonymously request necessities.