Healthcare giant disses GMOs

Gucciardi: 'The Kaiser Permanente company discussed the numerous dangers of GMOs.' (photo: unknown)

By Anthony Gucciardi, NaturalSociety

28 November 12

 
ust days after a leading genetically modified organism (GMO) researcher spoke out against GMOs and how many pro-GMO 'scientists' are in bed with Monsanto or carry their own GMO patents, the largest managed healthcare provider in the United States is now publicly speaking out against GMOs. In a recent newsletter, the Kaiser Permanente company discussed the numerous dangers of GMOs in a recent newsletter and how to avoid them.

Explaining how GM ingredients have been linked to tumors and organ damage in rats in the only lifelong rat study available, the newsletter highlighted how the only real long- term research indicates that GMOs are a serious health danger. The newsletter, which you can view here, states:

"Despite what the biotech industry might say, there is little research on the long-term effects of GMOs on human health. Independent research has found several varieties of GMO corn caused organ damage in rats. Other studies have found that GMOs may lead to an inability in animals to reproduce."

Top Health Giant Says Buy Organic for Proper Health

The newsletter then goes on to tell readers how they can avoid GMOs in their food through buying high quality organic and looking for other non-GMO indicators. It is important to remember the organic labeling meanings when shopping organic, however, which this newsletter unfortunately does not address. Make sure you know which 'level' of organic you are consuming:

• Products labeled '100% organic' - These items are made with 100% organic ingredients and are the highest quality organic products you can purchase. No GMOs are allowed.
• Labeled 'organic' - These products are to contain at least 95% organic ingredients overall. Still no GMOs are allowed.
• 'Made with 'organic ingredients' - This is the lowest form of organic content. This label is only required to contain 70% organic ingredients, meaning that the remaining 30% can be conventional. The conventional items, however, are not allowed to contain GMOs. These products don't qualify for the USDA seal, whereas the previous two do.

You can also look for the 'Non-GMO Verified' logo on food items to be sure that they are GMO free.

But why does a major corporation care that you are eating GMOs? Well the fact of the matter is that the research (and common sense - eating pesticide factories mixed with the DNA of viruses isn't going to end well) indicates GMOs are causing problematic health conditions across the board. Of course the issue lies in the fact that GMOs are not immediately considered as a cause and actually influence disease through a series of complications that are not easy to trace. But as the only lifelong study has showed us, 50% of male and 70% of female rats died prematurely when consuming GMOs.

And the bottom line is that this is costing Kaiser Permanente. If members of the healthcare juggernaut were to switch to high quality organic foods free of GMOs, pesticides, mercury-containing high-fructose corn syrup, and artificial sweeteners, then Kaiser would be dishing out millions upon millions less for healthcare costs.

More and more organizations and individuals alike are speaking out against GMOs and the effects of GMO consumption as the evidence becomes more and more clear on a daily basis. Perhaps next time Monsanto tries to push a new outlandish creation into the food supply they will be met with crushing opposition thanks to a global increase in awareness.

Buckshot Dot's tribute to Whiskey Springs

[Gazette Blog Editor's note: Those of us who make fairly regular treks to the Valley will appreciate this poem, the latest by the Rim Country's own Buckshot Dot.]

Whiskey Springs

 By Buckshot Dot, © 2012

              

(Words within quotation marks are sung to tune of Big Rock Candy Mountain)

        I was drivin’ up to Payson

                in my old Ford pickup truck,

        When I seen a sign says, “Whiskey Springs,”

                and I figured I’s in luck!

        That sign come up there on a bridge

                Acrost a dry arroya.

        (Now I said dry – no whiskey nigh!

                Now wouldn’t that annoy ya?)

        I figgered this must be the place

                where “Ya never change yer socks,

        And little drops of al-key-hol

                comes tricklin’ down the rocks!”

        I aimed to locate Whiskey Springs;

                It must be here some place!

        Because it is the Canyon’s name,

                that sure must be the case!

        So I unloaded my old hoss

                from the trailor there in back

        And we headed down below the bridge,

                Spam sandwich in a sack.

        “Where the bulldogs all have rubber teeth

                and the railroad bulls are blind.
        I’m bound to go where there ain’t no snow

                where the sleet don’t fall and the wind don’t blow,

                In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

        But I never seen no railroad tracks,

                No bulldogs way out here!

        And I never found no Whiskey Springs,

                Nor even found no beer!

        I think the guy what named it

                Musta been a basket case.

        I’ll tell ya sure, this canyon ain’t

                No Big Rock Candy place!

       

Where not to buy your guns and ammo

According to a recent column in The Arizona Republic, a guy named Cope Reynolds owns a gun shop in Pinetop called Southwest Shooting Authority.  Following the election he posted a sign at the store that reads: "If you voted for Barack Obama, your business is not welcome."

In the column, Reynolds refers to the majority of Americans as "dimwits" who should know that the president is a "militant Islamist spy out to destroy the United States."  He said a bunch of other crap as well, but you get his drift.

We suspect few Rim Country residents stock their armories at a Pinetop gun shop, but we do think something needs to be said about this exercise of bigotry and stupidity in our own backyard.  Reynolds' ignorance needs to be exposed for his neighbors to see.

And while he says business is booming as a result of his position, we would remind Reynolds that only 47 percent of the country agrees with him and that number is getting smaller by the day.  The end is at hand according to some Republican diehards.  Let's hope the Southwest Shooting Authority is among the earliest casualties.

People like Cope Reynolds are the real problem with America. 

Writing about divorce may hinder healing

By Alexis Blue
University Communications | November 28, 2012

For those searching for deeper meaning in a failed marriage, writing about their feelings soon after divorce may lead to greater emotional distress, according to new research.

Following a divorce or separation, many people are encouraged by loved ones or health-care professionals to keep journals about their feelings. But for some, writing in-depth about those feelings immediately after a split may do more harm than good, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.

In a study of 90 recently divorced or separated individuals, UA associate professor of psychology David Sbarra (in photo at left) and colleagues found that writing about one’s feelings can actually leave some people feeling more emotionally distraught months down the line, particularly those individuals who are prone to seeking a deeper meaning for their failed marriage.

The findings, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Clinical Psychological Science, came as a surprise to Sbarra, who initially set out to compare the effectiveness of two different styles of expressive writing on the emotional healing of recently separated or divorced individuals.

“There are very few known interventions to promote adjustment and healing after marital separation,” said Sbarra, who also is director of clinical training for the UA psychology department. “So our basic starting point was that we need experimental data on how to improve people’s lives and how to promote wellness after this difficult event.”

Sbarra studied individuals who had physically separated from a spouse on an average of three months before the start of the study. After completing an initial assessment to determine their emotional baseline, participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Members of one group were asked to write about their feelings about their relationship through traditional expressive writing. Another group was asked to practice a technique known as narrative expressive writing – to write about feelings but within the framework of a narrative with a beginning, middle and end, effectively telling the story of the marriage. The third, the control group, was instructed to simply keep a journal of basic daily activities, without writing about emotions or opinions.

The participants were asked to write in a journal, using their prescribed style, for 20 minutes a day for three consecutive days. Eight months later, their emotional state was re-evaluated in a follow-up assessment.

The goal was to see if those who practiced narrative expressive writing would experience greater healing benefits than those assigned to do traditional expressive writing.

The unexpected results suggest expressive writing of any kind can actually hinder emotional recovery for certain individuals, whereas non-expressive control writing might actually be a more effective intervention.

This was found to be true specifically among those labeled in the initial assessment as “high ruminators” – those with a tendency to brood over the circumstances of their separation in search of answers.

“At the eight-month follow up period, high ruminators actually reported the least distress in the control condition, suggesting that control writing for these people may actually be the beneficial thing,” Sbarra said.

Although not what he expected, Sbarra says the study’s findings make sense in retrospect.

“These are people who are essentially searching for meaning in their experience or who have a tendency to ruminate on their experience, brood on their experience and go over it and over it and over it again,” he said.

“If a person goes over and over something in their head, and then you say, ‘Write down your deepest darkest thoughts and go over it again,’ we will intensify their distress,” he said.

Further research is needed, Sbarra said, to measure whether non-expressive control writing provides healing benefits over not journaling at all. But he can imagine how journaling about mundane tasks might be helpful to some.

“If you’re someone who tends to be totally in your head and go over and over what happened and why it happened, you need to get out of your head and just start thinking about how you’re going to put your life back together and organize your time,” Sbarra said. “Some people might naively call this avoidance, but it’s not avoidance; it is just re-engagement in life, and the control writing asks people to engage in this process.”

Those in the study identified as “low ruminators” – those not brooding over their marital separation – had similar emotional outcomes regardless of what type of writing style they were assigned.

Sbarra is quick to note that expressive writing has proved in numerous studies to be an effective intervention for individuals who have experienced stressful life events, and it should not be discounted. However, his recent findings suggest it may not be the best approach universally.  

“I think many, many therapists have a tendency to believe that journaling unequivocally is a good thing to do, especially when people are trying to figure things out in their head,” he said.

“This study is important because it challenges our notions about what might be the thing to do to promote healing after a divorce,” he said. “It makes us reconsider the things we do to try to put our lives back together.”

Poetic justice: Romney finishes at 47%

Mitt Romney addresses supporters during a campaign rally, 04/24/12. (photo: Getty Images)

By Greg Sargent, The Washington Post

21 November 12

readersupportednews.org

hen all the votes are counted, could Mitt Romney really end up achieving perfect poetic justice by finishing with 47 percent of the national vote? Yup. Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says new votes in from Maryland put Romney at 47.56 percent. He predicts with certainty that with all of New York and California counted, Romney will end up below 47.5 percent of the vote.

Rounded, of course, that would put the final tally at 51-47. Anticipating this moment, Markos Moulitsas has inaugurated the 'Romney 47 percent watch.

At risk of piling on, a 47 percent finish would represent a perfect conclusion to the Romney political saga. If Romney ran a campaign of unprecedented dishonesty and lack of transparency, virtually all of it was geared towards misleading people about the true nature of his - and his party's - actual beliefs and governing agenda. This was the case on multiple fronts, from Romney's dissembling about the size of the tax cut he'd give to the rich, to his evasions about the overhaul he and Paul Ryan planned for the safety net, to the obscuring of the massive upward redistribution of wealth represented by the Ryan agenda - the GOP's central governing blueprint for nation's fiscal and economic future.

It was fitting that Romney himself unmasked his own apparent beliefs and the broader ideological implications of the larger GOP agenda and the ideas driving it - in private remarks to those who would likely benefit from his policies most. As Jonathan Chait put it at the time:

This is not a random gaffe, a joke gone bad, or even a terrible brain freeze. It is Romney exposed for espousing a worldview that is at the heart of his party's mania. The idea he summed up at that fund-raiser was a combination of right-wing fever dreams ...the Ayn Randism, the fact-free class warfare, the frantic rage at a changing America. The Republican Party is going down because its candidate was seen advocating exactly the beliefs that make the party so dangerous and repellant.

Romney's widely criticized post-election remarks - in which he claimed Obama won by giving core Dem constituencies gifts - were essentially a reprise of the 47 percent remarks. Romney reiterated in overly blunt terms what many Republicans and conservatives have been saying for years - and got disemboweled by his own party after detailing these views out loud, a fitting coda to his candidacy.

And consider the numbers themselves. The Romney victory was always based on the hope that a whiter-than-2008 electorate would ensure that Obama's victory was a demographic fluke. Yet Obama's constituencies - many of whom make up Romney's fabled 47 percent - turned out to add up to the majority, confirming that these ongoing changes are real and inexorable, a sign of what America is really becoming. If Romney's described electorate - the job creators and the makers of America who were supposed to be enraged at all the moochers and the takers - ends up totalling 47 percent, we will have come full circle.

McCain: Misleading public is our job

epublicans Blast Susan Rice for Misleading Public: “That’s Our Job”

Posted by Andy Borowitz

• 
  

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/11/republicans-blast-susan-rice-for-misleading-public-thats-our-job.html#ixzz2DYbEVZ1u

By Andy Borowitz
 

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A trio of Republican senators today blasted U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for misleading the American public, which, in the words of Sen. Lindsay Graham (R., S.C.), “has traditionally been our job.”

“Ambassador Rice has been engaged in nonstop lies and double-talk,” said Sen. Graham, one of three Republican senators who had a closed-door meeting with Rice. “If she really wants to do those things so badly, she should run for the U.S. Senate like the rest of us.”

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.) agreed with Sen. Graham’s assessment, saying of the meeting, “I heard Susan Rice spew nothing but half-truths, distortions, and complete fabrications. It felt like I was watching Fox News, except that she’s black.”

The third senator, John McCain (R., Ariz.), said that he found Ambassador Rice’s story profoundly disappointing: “Considering that the C.I.A. was involved, I thought there’d be more sex.”

Striking Walmart workers make history

[Gazette Blog Editor's note: So many Rim Country residents don't get the big picture regarding Walmart.  They only see low prices.  But there is another side as the following article points out.]

By Dave Johnson | November 27, 2012
Campaign for America's Future
ourfuture.org 

There is a crack in Walmart’s anti-union wall. There were demonstrations by workers and their supporters at more than 1000 Walmart stores on Black Friday. Walmart workers have taken the first step, raising awareness; in state after state Walmart workers have been informed of their rights and shown that they are not alone.


This is a huge breakthrough for Walmart workers. Walmart has been viciously anti-union and is known for intimidation and retaliation. And of course, exploitation of workers and suppliers. The fact that there were 100 stores affected (with more than 1000 demonstrations in support) cracks open the anti-union wall, empowering workers to take further steps.

Josh Eidelson, in With Biggest Strike Against Biggest Employer, Walmart Workers Make History Again at The Nation, writes,

For about twenty-four hours, Walmart workers, union members and a slew of other activists pulled off the largest-ever US strike against the largest employer in the world. According to organizers, strikes hit a hundred US cities, with hundreds of retail workers walking off the job (last month‘s strikes drew 160). Organizers say they also hit their goal of a thousand total protests, with all but four states holding at least one. In the process, they notched a further escalation against the corporation that’s done more than any other to frustrate the ambitions and undermine the achievements of organized labor in the United States.

“I’m so happy that this is history, that my grandkids can learn from this to stand up for themselves,” Miami striker Elaine Rozier told The Nation Thursday night. Before, “I always used to sit back and not say anything…. I’m proud of myself tonight.”

Walmart Business Model Leads To

Fabulous Wealth For A Few

Walmart pioneered a predatory business model that is stripping America of its middle class, while enriching a very few. The elements of this model are vicious intimidation and suppression of worker rights, abusing size to squash competitors and squeeze suppliers, and using wealth and power to capture government entities and get the rules shifted to further their interests over the public interest.

Walmart and other giants move into a community (often squeezing tax breaks out of local governments,) undercut the prices of the local businesses to put them out of business, take advantage of high unemployment to pay minimum wages, and then ship the profits away to a few billionaires. They use their massive size to squeeze their suppliers as well. They move manufacturing out to “business-friendly” countries where people have no say and can’t say they want decent jobs and wages and hours and safety.

One result of this business model: Wal-Mart heirs worth as much as bottom 41.5% of American families (LA Times),

The Walton family, heirs to the founders of the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. superchain, are worth nearly as much as the bottom half of American households combined.

The Waltons’ value — $89.5 billion in 2010 – is equal to the worth of the 41.5% of families at the lower end of the income ladder, according to an analysis by Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute. That comes out to 48.8 million households.

Wages So Low They Get

Government Assistance

Walmart pays so little that their employees qualify for government assistance. Walmart employees get Food Stamps, Medicaid and other support from taxpayers, while lobbying to keep minimum wages low. (Conservatives complain about how many people are receiving government help, and complain that Walmart workers are trying to do something about it.)

In many states Walmart employees make up most of the state’s Medicaid recipients. Good Jobs First, in Hidden Taxpayer Costs, lists the taxpayer costs of Walmart’s low wages in state after state. For example, in Alabama Walmart employees had 4,700 children in the state’s Medicaid program. Arkansas had 3,971 Walmart employees and families on public assistance, mostly Medicaid. Skip to Tennessee with 9,617 on TennCare. 

PHS drama presents Acts of Christmas

Click on image to enlarge.

 
The Longhorn Theatre Jr. Thespians along with the High School Longhorn Theatre Company will open their first play of the season on Dec. 6.

“Acts of Christmas” are three short plays that will warm your hearts. “A Star in the window” is about a shopkeeper’s kind heart who gives Christmas a special meaning. 

“A Tree to Trim” is about a stodgy professor who comes to understand the joys of Christmas with the help of his trusted assistant and the children next door. Lastly 

“The Christmas Visitor” is about an orphan who shows a rich but unhappy couple the true meaning of Christmas.

The plays are produced through Plays, the drama magazine for young people. All three shows will play in the High School Auditorium Dec. 6 and 7.  Tickets are $4 for adults, $3 for Students and Senior Citizens.     

Florida voter law revelation

Former Florida Governor, Charlie Crist. (photo: Getty Images)

Former GOP Leaders 

Admit to Voter Suppression

By Dara Kam and John Lantigua, Palm Beach Post

27 November 12

readersupportednews.org

new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.

Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law's main purpose: GOP victory.

Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.

"The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates," Greer told The Post. "It's done for one reason and one reason only. … 'We've got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,' " Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.

"They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue," Greer said. "It's all a marketing ploy."

Greer is now under indictment, accused of stealing $200,000 from the party through a phony campaign fundraising operation. He, in turn, has sued the party, saying GOP leaders knew what he was doing and voiced no objection.

"Jim Greer has been accused of criminal acts against this organization and anything he says has to be considered in that light," says Brian Burgess, Florida GOP spokesman since September.

But Greer's statements about the motivations for the party's legislative efforts, implemented by a GOP-majority House and Senate in Tallahassee in 2011, are backed by Crist - also now on the outs with the party - and two veteran GOP campaign consultants.

Wayne Bertsch, who handles local and legislative races for Republicans, said he knew targeting Democrats was the goal.

"In the races I was involved in in 2008, when we started seeing the increase of turnout and the turnout operations that the Democrats were doing in early voting, it certainly sent a chill down our spines. And in 2008, it didn't have the impact that we were afraid of. It got close, but it wasn't the impact that they had this election cycle," Bertsch said, referring to the fact that Democrats picked up seven legislative seats in Florida in 2012 despite the early voting limitations.

Another GOP consultant, who did not want to be named, also confirmed that influential consultants to the Republican Party of Florida were intent on beating back Democratic turnout in early voting after 2008.

In 2008 Democrats, especially African-Americans, turned out in unprecedented numbers for President Barack Obama, many of them casting ballots during 14 early voting days. In Palm Beach County, 61.2 percent of all early voting ballots were cast by Democrats that year, compared with 18.7 percent by Republicans.

In 2011 Republicans, who had super majorities in both chambers of the legislature, passed HB 1355, which curtailed early voting days from 14 to eight; greatly proscribed the activities of voter registration organizations like the League of Women Voters; and made it harder for voters who had changed counties since the last election to cast ballots, a move that affected minorities proportionately more than whites. The League and others challenged the law in court, and a federal judge threw out most of the provisions related to voter registration organizations.

Various voter registration organizations, minority coalitions and Democratic office holders are now demanding investigations either by state or federal officials.

On Oct. 26, The Post published a story citing a deposition by Florida GOP General Counsel Emmett "Bucky" Mitchell IV in litigation between Florida and the U.S. Justice Department over HB 1355. Mitchell described a meeting near New Year's Day 2011, in which he was approached by GOP staffers and consultants to write the bill that would become HB 1355.

He said the meeting had followed other conversations with those same GOP officials and consultants since the fall of 2010.

Crist said he was asked

to curb early voting

Crist said party leaders approached him during his 2007-2011 gubernatorial term about changing early voting, in an effort to suppress Democrat turnout. Crist is now at odds with the GOP, since abandoning the party to run for U.S. Senate as an independent in 2010. He is rumored to be planning another run for governor, as a Democrat.

Crist said in a telephone interview this month that he did not recall conversations about early voting specifically targeting black voters "but it looked to me like that was what was being suggested. And I didn't want them to go there at all."

About inhibiting minority voters, Greer said:

"The sad thing about that is yes, there is prejudice and racism in the party but the real prevailing thought is that they don't think minorities will ever vote Republican," he said. "It's not really a broad-based racist issue. It's simply that the Republican Party gave up a long time ago ever believing that anything they did would get minorities to vote for them."

But a GOP consultant who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution said black voters were a concern.

"I know that the cutting out of the Sunday before Election Day was one of their targets only because that's a big day when the black churches organize themselves," he said.

GOP spokesman Burgess discounted Crist's statement to The Post.

"Charlie Crist speaks out of both sides of his mouth," he said.

Former Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning, a Republican, has spoken favorably about HB 1355, because he believes its 12-hour early voting days - the law previously limited them to eight hours a day - give voters more flexibility to vote before or after work.

"But reducing early voting days does not attack voter fraud and given the longer days, it certainly does not save money," Browning has said.

In a 2011 deposition in the litigation over HB 1355, Browning said that while he was always concerned with voter fraud, he did not see it as a large problem in the state and that was why he did not include any mention of it in his legislative goals for 2011.

"It wasn't an issue that rose to the level to place it in our package," Browning said.

Greer told The Post that people who attended the GOP's behind-the-scenes meetings on early voting included: Andy Palmer, former state GOP executive director, now a Tallahassee political consultant; Bret Prater, head of party development; Randy Enwright of Enwright Consulting, a veteran Tallahassee political consultant; Jim Rimes, former state GOP executive director and now a consultant with Enwright; Kirk Pepper, a former top aide to House Speaker Dean Cannon; and Rich Heffley, a former top aide to Crist.

The Post contacted all of them. GOP spokesman Burgess responded for Palmer and Prater and also for Frank Terraferma, director of state House campaigns, who had been named in the Bucky Mitchell deposition as attending the meeting about the drafting of 1355.

"If what Greer said had happened, that would be wrong and he should have fired those men," Burgess said. "Why didn't he fire them? They said they were never in any meeting with Jim Greer of that kind. They never had meetings of that kind."

The other four did not respond.

Ex-House speaker:

Law meant to curb fraud

Cannon, who took over as House speaker in 2010, said he had no conversations about early voting with GOP strategists and that he believed HB 1355 was aimed at voter fraud.

"I don't recall anybody talking about some tactical advantage or need to curtail early voting," said Cannon, who has launched a lobbying business in Tallahassee since his term as a state representative ended this month.

But Crist, who extended early voting hours in 2008 by executive order to address long lines during that presidential election, said he was approached about early voting but told the GOP consultants and staffers that he would veto any proposed legislative changes that would reduce early voting.

"The people that worked in Tallahassee felt that early voting was bad, " Crist said. "And I heard about it after I signed the executive order expanding it. I heard from Republicans around the state who were bold enough to share it with me that, 'You just gave the election to Barack Obama.'"

It wasn't until Gov. Rick Scott took office in January 2011 that the idea went anywhere. It passed the legislature that session and Scott signed it into law.

"I assume they decided, 'It's 2011, Crist is gone, let's give it a shot,'" Crist said. "And that's exactly what they did. And it is exactly what it turned out to be."

Before signing the law, Scott said he wanted to make voting easier and to eliminate voter fraud. Recently, he asked Secretary of State Ken Detzner to look into problems with the November election and to recommend changes if necessary.

Purging of non-citizens

off voter rolls discussed

Besides early voting, Greer said other issues discussed at the behind-the-scenes meetings were voter registration organizations, attempts to have Florida Supreme Court judges defeated at the polls and the purging of voters on the rolls who might not be U.S. citizens.

"There is absolutely nothing with their absolute obsession with retaining power that they wouldn't do - changing the election laws to reduce early voting, to keep organizations like the League of Women Voters from registering people, going after the Supreme Court justices," Greer said of his former colleagues.

HB 1355 greatly reduced the time voter registration organizations had to hand in registration applications and imposed hefty fines for any violation of the time guidelines, which forced the largest voter registration organizations to suspend activities, afraid they might incur fines they couldn't afford. The League of Women Voters suspended its activities in Florida for the first time in nine decades.

A federal judge subsequently struck down those parts of 1355 and registration organizations resumed their activities over the summer of 2012.

The Division of Elections under Scott also issued purge lists for non-citizen voters, which several county elections supervisors have criticized as being filled with errors. The attempted voter purge resulted in several lawsuits against Scott's administration, and nearly all of the state's elections supervisors abandoned the effort in the months leading up to the presidential election.

And the Republican Party of Florida waged a campaign to defeat three Supreme Court justices this fall. Voters chose to retain all three.