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. ...
13 comments:
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. 👏
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.
Hey it would be pretty cool if SSA decided to support its employees with paychecks
Hey, what’s a paycheck?
Not much chance of that. If Bisignano had his way, he'd be taking the oxygen away from them.
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.
It’s actually a violation to have the office as part of a news article/social media post like this. My hope is that everyone will turn a blind eye to it and allow the office to have a moment. We had to turn down a free lunch offer during covid because the restaurant had a condition that it be posted on social media and when it was determined we could not, they rescinded the offer.
I've been waiting for someone to flag the ethics issues here. Nice job 10:10am! You've got an impermissible gift given because of the employees' official position (and which wasn't offered to all government employees), and you've got a number of misuse issues given the photo of employees in an SSA office with a corporate mascot (misuse of gov property? maybe an appearance of endorsing Marcos?). The first comment to this blog post noted that they hope this gift from Marcos to SSA employees generates more business for the restaurant -- that is exactly the kind of sentiment that the gift and misuse rules seek to prevent. A government office engaged in behavior with a private entity unrelated to SSA business and now folks are calling for that business to be rewarded in the marketplace. Will the SSA office accept pizzas from every pizzeria in town and take similar promotional photos with them for publication in newspapers?
Agree with 11:01 about the gift issues. But to the question "Will the SSA office accept pizzas from every pizzeria in town"? I'd have to think yes! At this point they haven't been paid in a month.
Now if the 7-11 across the street wud add beer/wine we wud b all set
Trump’s ‘Great Gatsby’ Party Did Not Accept SNAP
Taco Bell once offered breakfast to a local FO; OGC quashed it because of FECA exposure over potential fecal explosions.
No good deed goes unpunished.
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