A Bus Trip, A Penny, And A Rifle Pin

Santos critics head to his offices as financial oddities mount

Janet Burns

jburns@antonmediagroup.com

It’s been another busy week in the world of U.S. Representative George Santos (NY-03), with plenty of symbols and keywords cutting through the near-constant buzz.

On February 7, for example, local members of Courage for America, Concerned Citizens of NY-03, and Make the Road Action took a bus trip to Washington, D.C. for a press conference on Capitol Hill calling for Congress to expel Santos. While there, they also delivered a petition to that end to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as they did a few days earlier at Santos’ New York office (which still names former Rep. Tom Suozzi on its awning).

That week, multiple news outlets also reported on a peculiar finding in the campaign finances of Santos as well as another familiar political face in Nassau County. As CNN’s Fredreka Schouten, Kara Scannell and Gregory Krieg explained, “In the fall of 2020, then-New York Rep. Lee Zeldin’s campaign submitted a report to federal regulators with a series of unusual expenses: 21 payments on a single day of exactly $199.99 each. The outlays – each just one penny below the dollar figure above which campaigns are required to keep receipts – all went to anonymous recipients ... a pattern that has emerged recently in the filings of [George Santos].”

Both men’s congressional campaigns had the same person, Nancy Marks, as treasurer.

Starting February 1, Santos has also been getting public heat for wearing a shiny metal pin shaped like an AR-15 rifle on his jacket in Congress.

According to fact-checking website Snopes.com, Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia has taken credit for handing out such pins to Santos and Rep. Ana Paulina Luna of Florida, who were both pictured in the House with the rifle pins on their lapels.

As Alex Kasprak noted for Snopes, “Clyde is the owner of a gun store in his home state of Georgia. As reported by The Washington Post, the AR-15 pins were not the first weapons-based souvenir promoted by some GOP members of the 118th Congress: ‘Clyde’s distribution of the gunshaped pins comes after newly elected Rep. Cory Mills passed out dummy grenades stamped with the GOP logo last week to other members of Congress, along with a note on his office letterhead emphasizing that the ordnance was made in Florida.’”

Other Recent Highlights:

• In early February, news broke that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into Santos’ actions with regard to allegations from a formerly homeless veteran that Santos kept the $3000 they’d raised to save the man’s service dog.

• Patch.com’s Jacqueline Sweet reported on apparent, strange and mispelled Facebook comment by Santos posted in 2011 that seems to both insult/incite harm against Jewish and Black people and give the impression he sat on the keyboard.

• A former job-applicant to Santos’ campaign recently accused the freshman congressman of sexual harassment.

• According to Bloomberg, Santos previously told some potential campaign donors that he had been one of the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, a famously money-losing and

Letter To The Editor

Governor Hochul Vetoes Wrongful Death Bill

Governor Hochul deserves praise from the medical community in Nassau County and New York State for giving legislation to increase wrongful death awards significant consideration. “This broad, far-reaching law has serious unexpected repercussions, particularly for our already troubled healthcare system,” as Governor Hochul observed in her New York Daily News op-ed.

Together with the Medical Society of the State of New York,

Nassau County is prepared to collaborate with the Governor and the Legislature to create updated laws that guarantee legal recourse for bereaved families while safeguarding the capacity of doctors, hospitals, and healthcare professionals to continue giving our patients the care they expect and deserve. If our prices significantly increase, we will not be able to do that because we are the state with the highest liability insurance expenses. Physicians practicing in underserved communities would be disproportionately affected by the fees.

Despite having a top-notch healthcare system, New York is one of the least desired states for doctors to practice medicine. We must take action to guarantee that our state recruits and keeps licensed doctors who can offer our residents high-quality medical treatment.

We would like to recognize and express our gratitude to Dr. Parag

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• Nassau County Legislator Joshua Lafazan released an op-ed on his proposed G.E.O.R.G.E. (Get Egregious Officials Removed from Government Elections) Package, featuring proposed laws “to safeguard against individuals like Mr. Santos from ever getting elected in the first place.”

• Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (NY04) told NPR in early February, “Close to 80 percent of people polled think [Santos] should not be in office.”

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Mehta, President of MSSNY, for his fearless determination and to the staff, partners, and doctors of our great state who worked tirelessly to achieve more equitable results.

Again, we are grateful to Governor Hochul for her request for a modified version of this law that safeguards the healthcare requirements of every New Yorker.

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The Streak Is Over

The streak lasted 961 days.

My wife and I did our best to avoid getting it. We took all the precautions, including wearing masks out in public when required.

In the beginning, we self-quarantined and avoided large crowds, even after some restrictions were lifted. I’ve been working from home, so my exposure to the general public has been limited. My retired wife spent plenty of time outdoors, at the barn with our horse Stormy and walking Louie the Labrador.

I worried about getting it before my surgery in June and having it canceled, but that never happened. We suffered through the loss of a loved one at the hands of this terrible sickness that has claimed the lives of over a million people across our country.

We even attended a wedding where more than 20 people were infected (none seriously), and somehow, it missed us. Virtually everyone in our circle of family and friends came down with it at some point, a few of them twice.

There were times when I thought about the Stephen King novel The Stand and how the virus in the story killed 99.9% of the population, with the other 0.1% being immune for no apparent reason. How else would you explain us not catching it?

My wife has been visiting her mother in a rehab center or nursing home, on and off, for the past 18 months. For each visit, she needs to take a test that comes up negative before they will let her enter the building. She tested negative on a Saturday visit in early November.

But she tested positive the next day.

When she called to tell me, I grabbed one of the home tests we had stashed and read the directions. I stuck the swab up both nostrils, swirled it around in the liquid, then put a few drops into the testing device. There were two lines marked “C” and “T.” If you got a red line only on the “C,” you were negative. If you got a red line on both the “C” and “T,” you were positive.

The testing instructions said to wait 20 minutes for the results. I set my phone timer to 20 minutes.

Having no patience, I checked the device after just a few minutes – two very red lines had already formed. I had no illusions of grandeur that after 20 minutes, they would disappear. I had taken a home test earlier in the year when I didn’t feel good and got only the “C” line. Two red lines appearing almost immediately were not a good sign.

I checked again after 10 minutes and saw the same result. When my phone timer went off at 20 minutes, I didn’t even have to look.

The streak was over.

Although I felt a little fatigued, I wasn’t exhibiting any other symptoms, like congestion, sneezing, or coughing. I went to see my doctor that Monday and got an official “PCR” test, confirming the positive result of the home test. Without any debilitating symptoms, I was told to keep taking Tylenol and call them if things worsened.

Unfortunately, the timing could have been better. I had scheduled a much-needed week of vacation time from work. With both of us sick, we can’t go anywhere.

We are so thankful that we were up to date on our vaccines, which may have helped keep the virus in check. Since I was on vacation anyway, I had planned on sleeping late during the week, so that mission was accomplished thanks to the virus. Instead of going out to dinner a few times, we ordered in.

I just can’t believe it finally caught up with us after 961 days. Since it was scary movie season, I fired up the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In that movie, you became a walking zombie only if you fell asleep.

After 961 days of avoiding it, that’s all I felt like doing…