Their are days the Dems remind me of the Jason lookalike commercial from Geico

Schumer- Let’s hide in the Attic.

Manchin- No in the basement.

Progressives- Why cant we just get in the running car?

Pelousy- Are you crazy? Let’s hide behind the chainsaws.

Schumer,Manchin,Pelousy Smart, Yeah, Thats a good idea

Jason lookalike shakes his head in disgust

If your a centrest Dem you make poor decisions. It’s what you do.

Republican primary winner is ex-felon who never applied for the right to hold office

Corbin Bolies
Thu, November 4, 2021, 1:34 PM
The winning Republican in this week’s congressional primary in South Florida is a convicted felon who did not go through the state’s process to restore his civil rights after his imprisonment, interviews and records show. That step is required under Florida law for a candidate to hold political office.

Jason Mariner, 36, of Palm Beach Gardens, an advertising executive and self-described “America First” conservative candidate, won Tuesday’s GOP primary with 58 percent of votes in the heavily Democratic 20th Congressional District.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the election’s outcome would be challenged. The general election will be Jan. 11. Democrats have held the seat — one of the most Democratic districts in Florida — for more than two decades.

Mariner had served roughly two years total in the Palm Beach County Jail over 2007 and 2012 on charges that included felony theft, burglary, cocaine possession, obstruction and violently resisting arrest, records show. He was open during his campaign about his criminal background, telling voters, “Before running for Congress, I ran from the law.” He also promised he would be tough on crime.

Under new clemency rules Gov. Ron DeSantis announced earlier this year, ex-felons are automatically entitled to have their rights restored — including the right to hold political office — but must submit to a formal process administered by the Florida Commission on Offender Review and Office of Executive Clemency. Under a constitutional amendment that Florida voters approved in 2020, ex-felons can register to vote once they serve their prison terms and pay any court fines.

Mariner confirmed Thursday in an interview he did not go through the process to restore his right to hold office. “No, nothing,” he said. He said later he was confident he was a lawful candidate. “No, it’s not going to be an issue,” he said.

Mariner said he followed the same process as other candidates and noted he was a registered voter. “As I am not an attorney or official in state government, it is not really my place to answer your legal or procedural questions about Florida law, applicable scenarios, etc., or advise you legally,” he said in an email.

No evidence that he applied
Florida records this week did not include any evidence that Mariner’s rights had been restored. Mariner signed a sworn statement in August he sent to the Florida Division of Elections attesting that he was qualified to run for Congress in Florida.

“All forms of clemency, should they be granted, would be searchable in that database,” said Angela Meredith, a spokeswoman for the Florida Commission on Offender Review. She said privacy rules prohibited her from discussing Mariner’s case specifically.

The new clemency rules describe restoring the civil rights of ex-felons — including the right to hold public office and serve on juries — “automatically upon processing and without a hearing,” but also specify that, “A clemency application is required for the restoration of civil rights.”

It wasn’t clear whether Mariner could retroactively apply to restore his rights after he already won this week’s congressional primary — as long as his right to hold political office was restored prior to Jan. 3, 2023, when the 118th Congress would convene in Washington.

The press secretary for Republican Gov. DeSantis, Christina Pushaw, said Thursday that, in response to questions from a reporter, lawyers in the governor’s office were trying quickly to determine whether the state’s rules requiring restoration of civil rights would apply to a Florida candidate for federal office.

A spokesman for Florida’s secretary of state’s office, which is responsible for ensuring candidates are eligible to run, did not return phone calls or emails over two days this week.

Mariner on Tuesday night defeated Republican Greg Musselwhite, a former pipe-fitter and welding inspector who also lost the election in 2020 to incumbent Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., who died earlier this year. Over two months, Mariner’s campaign committee raised $22,553 and spent $18,310 ahead of the two-person primary, including only modest support from the Republican Party.

Musselwhite laughed Thursday when asked about Mariner’s eligibility. He said he was unsure whether he would contest the outcome. He said he trusted Florida’s officials to confirm his opponent was qualified to run for office.

“I guess I trusted the system a little too much,” he said. He later added: “Best case, they call another special election. Worst case, there will be no Republican on the ballot.”

On the Democrats’ side, election officials were recounting ballots Thursday after Dale V.C. Holness led Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick by only 12 votes, or two-tenths of a percentage point, out of more than 49,000 votes cast.

Ex-felons have to follow specific process
The deputy director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, Neil Volz, which supported passage of the constitutional amendment and pushed for the new clemency reforms earlier this year, acknowledged that ex-felons under the new rules must submit to a process before they can legally hold political office.

“The nightmare scenario is, someone is eligible but the government bureaucracy is holding hostage the ability for them to move forward with their lives,” said Volz, who had been monitoring Mariner’s political campaign because of his criminal past.

It wasn’t clear why no one raised questions about Mariner’s eligibility as a candidate until after he won the primary. The supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County, where Mariner first registered to vote in March 2020, said the state Division of Elections in Tallahassee — under the secretary of state — was supposed to determine whether federal candidates are eligible.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel endorsed Mariner in the Republican primary and noted that he had regained his right to vote through the constitutional amendment, but its endorsement did not specify whether it had confirmed that Mariner could hold office if elected.

Mariner is the manager of Adskinz LLC, a small advertising firm in West Palm Beach he started in 2017 and pays drivers to affix logos and slogans to their vehicles on behalf of paying advertisers. The U.S. government in April forgave a $24,700 loan it provided to Adskinz under a program to help small businesses during the pandemic.

In his email Thursday, Mariner described himself as “a father, businessman, someone who has turned their life around, and now as a U.S. congressional primary race winner,” and said he understands those who try to overcome past struggles.

Police in Delray Beach said they watched Mariner buy crack cocaine at a home in April 2012, and he tried to swallow it when an officer pulled over his car for speeding moments later, according to court records. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 months in prison and fined $2,792.

In December 2011, Delray Beach police said Mariner stole a Greyhound Bus sign they found in his apartment and accused him of stealing four brass urns from a cemetery and selling them for $30.

In May 2014, police in Riviera Beach said Mariner spit at and tried to punch another driver, and damaged the other driver’s pickup, during a road rage incident in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts.

Mariner also has a history of traffic violations, including tickets accusing him of speeding 93 mph on Interstate 95 last year and careless driving earlier this year. His license was suspended during the summer until August, just before he began campaigning for Congress.

Another case of voting the R no matter what. He’ll fit right in with a lot of the congress crooks. I have higher expectations on whom i vote for. I wonder how Death Sentence will keep this guy in office and not break the law

For the first time in modern day R history their in favor of workers rights, the catch being Byedones vax mandate is what their opposed to and defending workers. Any other worker rights forgeddaboudit 🙂

Whats not to love about our craprate health care system Only in America…..

A woman was billed $700 for a trip to the emergency room after sitting in a waiting room for 7 hours and leaving without treatment

Taylor Davis was billed nearly $700 for an ER visit. She said she waited seven hours and wasn’t seen.

Davis, who’d gone to the ER for a head injury in July, said she was told the bill was a facility fee.

Davis said she’s now reluctant to go to the hospital and considers it a “last resort.”

A woman said she went to an emergency room in Georgia seeking treatment for a head injury in July but was kept in the hospital waiting room for seven hours and left without being seen, the local news station WAGA reported on Friday.

A few weeks later, she received a nearly $700 bill for the visit.

“I sat there for seven hours. There’s no way I should be sitting in an emergency room … an emergency room for seven hours,” Taylor Davis told WAGA, a Fox affiliate in Atlanta.

She added: “I didn’t get my vitals taken, nobody called my name. I wasn’t seen at all.”

Convinced it was a mistake, Davis called the hospital, Emory Decatur, about the bill. She said the representative who answered the phone told her that it was hospital protocol “even if you’re just walking in and you’re not seen.”

“When you type in your social, that’s it,” Davis told WAGA. “You’re going to get charged regardless.”

Davis said she was told the charge was an emergency-room visit fee, or facility fee, a common expense on some hospital bills to cover the facility’s overhead. Ted Doolittle, a healthcare advocate in Connecticut, told NPR in 2019 that the facility fee was “somewhat akin to a cover charge” at a club.

The WAGA report said an Emory Healthcare patient-financial-services employee told Davis in an email: “You get charged before you are seen. Not for being seen.”

Davis told WAGA that she was reluctant to go to the hospital for treatment again and considered it a “last resort.”

“Seeing that they’re able to bill you for random things, it doesn’t make me want to go,” Davis said. “So that’s not good.”

A spokesperson for Emory Healthcare said that it “has been working with the individual to address this matter, and correct inaccuracies that may have been assessed or communicated.”

“Anyone who needs emergent medical care should seek a health care provider as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said in an email to Insider. “Emory Healthcare, like hospitals around the country, treats all emergency room patients irrespective of their ability to pay.”