I decided to join FDL’s Occupy Supply project after defending the OWS movement to some friends on Facebook. I figured if I felt so strongly about it, I’d better walk the talk. I also realized that my fair city was the site of the Republican National Convention this year, and I wanted to see Occupy Tampa survive to welcome them.

“Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Secures $18 Billion California Commitment for Struggling Homeowners,” the headline blares. But wait: the foreclosure fraud settlement is only a total of $25 billion. Even if you believe HUD Secretary Donovan’s figures about principal reduction credits being worth more in actual principal reduction, you don’t get higher than $40 billion. How did Harris get so much?

For those who thought that, with the new year, nuclear power had turned a page and put its “annus horribilis” behind it–as if the calendar were somehow the friend America’s aging reactors–let’s take a quick look at January 2012.

Mitt Romney won Florida partly because he was able to bury his opponents with negative ads. In Florida Romney and his allied SuperPAC outspent Newt Gingrich and his SuperPAC by a margin of four to one. Looking at the FEC filing report data, Romney has the money, if needed, to continue a strategy of crushing opponents with overwhelming spending on negative ads.

In a recent filing in Nevada, mortgage servicer LPS used the whitewash IG report from Florida — after the Fla. AG dismissed the two attorneys gathering evidence on LPS — to justify the dismissal of their lawsuit in Nevada. LPS lobbyists more recently urged the Florida AG’s office to intervene on their behalf in a criminal case in Michigan. The connections between the Florida AG’s office and LPS just continue to grow.

Early last week it looked like Newt Gingrich had gotten a bump out of his large victory in South Carolina. But since then the momentum in the state has swung strongly to Mitt Romney, who now appears heading to a solid victory tonight. All recent polls have him with significant leads and differ only on just how big the lead is.

While in Florida momentum has quickly shifted away from Newt Gingrich and to Mitt Romney, on the national level Gingrich is still going very strong. Two national polls out today both give Gingrich a solid nine point lead over Romney.

During Thursday night’s GOP debate, a woman from Florida told the candidates she’d lost her job and with it her health insurance. What would each of the candidates do to get her covered or otherwise provide the health care she needed?

You had to listen carefully, but the effective answer they all gave her was, “this is your problem, not ours.”

A new poll from Quinnipiac shows Mitt Romney’s lead over Gingrich in Florida has grown to nine points from just a two point lead earlier in the week. The size of the Romney lead in the Quinnipiac poll is nearly identical to the lead three other recent polls released yesterday found.

Somebody really wants this foreclosure fraud settlement to go through. So much so that California was offered a sum to participate in the settlement sure to piss off the other 49 AGs across the country. Only California was guaranteed earmarked funds from the settlement. Earlier we heard they would get $8 billion out of the $25 billion pot, or 32% of the total (California has roughly 10% of the population). Now, Shahien Nasiripour says they were in line for $15 billion, or a whopping 60%.