For most of its history America has had a two party political system.  It now appears we also have a two realities system, illustrated by our perceptions and trust of Fox News versus other major media. From PPP survey on TV media trust:

-Democrats trust everything- except Fox News. NBC does the best with them at +50 (67/17), followed by PBS and CNN at +49 (66/17 and 65/16 respectively), ABC at +38 (57/19), CBS at +35 (58/23), MSNBC at +33 (56/23), and even Comedy Central at +4 (36/32). Fox News comes in at -36 (25/61).

-Republicans meanwhile don’t trust anything except Fox News. PBS comes the closest to breaking even among non-Fox outlets, although not very close, at -30 (26/56).  It’s followed by CNN at -49 (18/67), MSNBC at -51 (18/69), NBC at -52 (17/69), CBS at -54 (17/71), ABC at -56 (14/70), and Comedy Central at -59 (12/71). But Fox News comes in at a stellar 73/17.

Independents are with the Democrats. They trust everything except Fox News.

For good or ill there was a long period of time when there were only a few television networks that shared a more or less common viewpoint. Most everyone shared in the same set of “facts” presented by a limited number of major news sources. Much of the country shared this view of reality, even though the two parties had different ideas of how best to deal with the nation’s problems.

It now appears we are getting a two reality system on top of our two party political system. Each partisan group has it own set of facts, its own truth, and its own set of news sources for describing and interpreting its respective views of facts and truth.  The two parties don’t just disagree on how to fix a problem; they often no longer agree even on what the problems are.

Suffice it to say, it seems a pipe dream to expect a bipartisan compromise on some bold plan of action to address the nation’s problems. That’s inherently impossible if you can’t even first agree on what reality is.

Andrew Sullivan is still trying to defend his absurd claim that Obama somehow deserves credit for growing support for marijuana legalization.  In fact, though, while the decades long trend towards greater support for marijuana legalization hasn’t stopped since Obama took office, it has continued despite the Obama Administration’s overt opposition. From Sullivan’s response:

Oh please. If you accept my premise – that he “leads from behind” for a “long game” – you can begin to see my case. Obama is not going to crusade for either cause [marijuana legalization and marriage equality]. But he is not going to oppose them either and has quietly encouraged them. Hence instructing the DEA not to interfere with state laws on medical marijuana and withdrawing a legal defense of DOMA. Yes, there’s been some regional slippage in California on allowing states to determine their medical marijuana laws, but that hasn’t apparently come from Obama’s office.

The statements that Obama “is not going to oppose [states' medical marijuana efforts] . . . and has quietly encouraged them” are simply factually wrong.

The facts here are perfectly clear: President Obama since talking office has proven to be an adamant opponent of marijuana policy reform. Despite his campaign promise to leave the issue of medical marijuana up to the states, under Obama multiple agencies across the federal government have systematically worked to impede state medical marijuana systems.

The aggressiveness of the federal government actions taken under Obama caused both the Drug Policy Alliance and Russ Belville, the Outreach Coordinator for NORML, to conclude that Obama has been worse than Bush on the issue of medical marijuana. Similarly Rob Kampia, the executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, wrote about Obama, “he has become arguably the worst president in U.S. history regarding medical marijuana.”

Obama did in fact oppose Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana in California. His administration also seriously undercut the campaign by saying the DOJ would disregard the will of the electorate even if Prop 19 passed, promising to “vigorously enforce” federal laws against marijuana.

Sullivan’s statements are not consistent with these facts. There is no proof at all that Obama has been “quietly encouraging” the idea of marijuana legalization.

By repeating these claims, Andrew Sullivan has only offered more evidence proving my point that he lives in a fantasy world where Obama deserves credit for good things even if Obama had nothing to do with them or is actively fighting against them.

I half expect Sullivan to next claim that Obama, like some ancient King, also deserves credit for good aspects of the seasonal rains and making the sun rise every morning in the East.

Update: The Mayor’s office is telling callers the occupation has been “caught five times” breaking the “agreement” regarding propane heaters, but they can’t seem to produce any written citation to that effect, which the ACLU lawyer is asking to see. If Mayor Miner thinks it’s a “serious problem” now, why did the city just blow it off at the time? Is that her typical response to five separate incidents of what she now considers a critical health problem for the city?

Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner showed up to Occupy Syracuse at 8:00 AM today to announce they had 24 hours to vacate the park or face eviction.

Why?  Because fire marshalls visited Perseverence Park over the weekend and complained that occupiers were using propane without a permit — the latest tactic being used to silence occupiers all across the country.  The occupiers immediately complied with all of the fire marshall’s requests.  Since it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend and city offices were closed, they did not have a chance to apply for a permit until today

But before they had the chance, Mayor Miner says they must go.

It’s clear that Mayor Miner and the city of Syracuse are selectively invoking laws meant to protect public health as a means to deny the first amendment rights of Occupy Syracuse. Just as the Supreme Court found in the case of Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham during the civil rights era, governments cannot use the pretense of public health and safety to stifle free speech that is critical of them.

The park is controlled by the Syracuse Urban Renewal Agency, and its dysfunctional board includes Mayor Miner, Common Council President Van Robinson and Finance Commissioner David Delvecchio. Can you call and tell them you stand with Occupy Syracuse and demand they stop abusing their authority to evict occupiers at Perserverence Park?

Call Mayor Miner, Common Council President Robinson & Finance Commissioner Delvecchio and stop the eviction of Occupy Syracuse from Perseverance Park.

Click here for phone numbers and a sample script.

Local residents say that Occupy Syracuse has “unexpectedly reintroduced some peace and stability into Perseverance Park” — a place that represents the complete personal failure of Mayor Miner and her ability to manage public spaces.   Their occupation essentially reclaimed the park for residents and reduced the amount of crime and clutter in the area.

Now Mayor Miner and her colleagues want to evict the local community members who have made a positive impact on the very park she allowed to deteriorate. The members of Occupy Syracuse, who have complied with every request the city has made, are currently in violation of no laws.

Mayor Miner’s abuse of power to silence her critics and deny free speech were the same tactics used against civil rights protesters.  These tactics will continue to be used to strip government critics of their first amendment rights until the public demands that they stop. Please help us put an end to this petty abuse of power by calling Mayor Miner and her fellow board members and let them know:  you’re watching.

Thank you for standing up for Occupy Syracuse.

Call Mayor Miner, Common Council President Robinson & Finance Commissioner Delvecchio and stop the eviction of Perseverence Park.

The Obama administration’s new budget for fiscal year 2013 (begins October 2012) is apparently going to be so bad they have decided to start warning some liberals ahead of time. From The Hill:

Top White House officials are warning liberal and labor leaders to brace themselves for President Obama’s budget proposal.

[...]

“A senior White House person said we weren’t going to be happy with the budget, but they’re doing the best they can” given the spending caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act, said one source.

This just makes me shudder. When I think of just how unacceptably conservative some of the “accomplishments” the Obama administration believes liberals should be bragging about are, I can hardly imagine how terrible this budget must be if even the Obama team is warning that it is bad.

While the Obama campaign is going to try to pivot to talk about jobs, this bad budget is a direct result of Obama’s incredibly misguided pivot last year to spending cuts and deficit hysteria. That was a massive political and policy mistake,. We will continue to feel the negative repercussions from it whether or not Obama has an election year conversion to populism.

Andrew Sullivan attempts to mount a defense of President Obama’s record from the standpoint of achieving liberal objectives.   But on some key items, he gets the President’s record and positions wrong, even backwards.

Sullivan starts by declaring that Obama’s critics from both the left and right are unhinged from reality.  He then goes on to give Obama credit for things he had nothing to do with or even things that happened in spite of Obama’s opposition. From Sullivan:

They miss, it seems to me, two vital things. The first is the simple scale of what has been accomplished on issues liberals say they care about. A depression was averted. The bail-out of the auto industry was—amazingly—successful. Even the bank bailouts have been repaid to a great extent by a recovering banking sector. The Iraq War—the issue that made Obama the nominee—has been ended on time and, vitally, with no troops left behind. Defense is being cut steadily, even as Obama has moved his own party away from a Pelosi-style reflexive defense of all federal entitlements. Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact of American life. Gays now openly serve in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act is dying in the courts, undefended by the Obama Justice Department. Vast government money has been poured into noncarbon energy investments, via the stimulus. Fuel-emission standards have been drastically increased. Torture was ended. Two moderately liberal women replaced men on the Supreme Court. Oh, yes, and the liberal holy grail that eluded Johnson and Carter and Clinton, nearly universal health care, has been set into law. Politifact recently noted that of 508 specific promises, a third had been fulfilled and only two have not had some action taken on them. To have done all this while simultaneously battling an economic hurricane makes Obama about as honest a follow-through artist as anyone can expect from a politician.

I apparently totally missed the moment when Obama convinced the American people to support gay marriage and marijuana legalization.

The record is that Obama has repeatedly stated he opposes marijuana legalization and marriage equality. Logically Obama deserves no more credit for these trends, which seem driven by demographic changes, than George W. Bush does. After all, support for both issues repeatedly hit new record highs under Bush.

Public support for both issues continued to hit new records under Obama, simply because polls found new record levels of support basically every year for the last decade. There is every reason to believe these long term trends would have continued regardless who was elected in 2008.

Obama has not helped these trends. If anything Obama has set back marijuana legalization. Experts in the drug reform field have determined Obama has been worse than Bush on the issue of medical marijuana.

Similarly, a president almost never deserves the credit or the blame for a law passed at the state level, unless the Administration was heavily involved in lobbying for its passage. Obama no more deserves credit for New York’s marriage equality law passed “under Obama” than Bush deserves credit for Rhodes Island adopting medical marijuana legalization “under Bush.”  I would also never blame Obama for Florida’s law requiring drug testing of welfare recipients, a law also passed “under Obama.”

Sullivan concludes by saying “If I sound biased, that’s because I am. Biased toward the actual record, not the spin.”  But in these instances, the spin is claiming Obama should get credit for things that are happening in spite of Obama.

Despite the administration arguing otherwise before the Supreme Court, there is nothing about health insurances that should makes it special from a legal perspective. While it is true that every market for every product is its own unique snowflake, they are all still snowflakes.

Every attempt I’ve seen by defenders of ACA to claim a mandate for health insurance is different from a mandate for any other product/service because the insurance market is special is logically incoherent. The same arguments can equally apply to thousands of products.

Brookings Fellow Henry Aaron makes one of the best attempts explaining why health insurance is somehow legally unique from other products but his argument, like all similar arguments, falls flat when held up against actual examples.

To the surprise of many, opponents of the Affordable Care Act took the broccoli analogy literally. Not buying insurance is simply inactivity, they argued. If government can prohibit this form of inactivity by forcing people to buy insurance, it can force them to buy anything, even broccoli. If Congress can prohibit such ‘inaction,’ they argued, freedom is in jeopardy. More to the point, the constitution doesn’t allow limits on ‘inactivity.’

[...]

One would expect that, on the average, those who voluntarily go without health insurance will be comparatively light users of health care. But one would also expect that some fraction of the uninsured will incur large health costs that they cannot afford to pay. Thus, letting some people decide freely not to buy insurance raises costs in two ways for those who do buy insurance. First, it removes from the insurance pool people with lower-than-average costs, thereby boosting premiums for those who do buy insurance. Second, some of those who do not buy insurance will end up using more medical care than they can pay for. Those unpaid bills will also boost costs for the insured.

Thus, the decision not to buy insurance affects the insurance market, which Congress indisputably has the power to regulate. Furthermore, repeated Supreme Court decisions have established that Congress can regulate actions outside the web of commerce that indirectly affect commerce, such as the decision by a farmer to grow wheat for his own consumption is subject to regulation under the commerce clause.

To be sure, this is the position that the government has advanced in its brief in defense of the Affordable Care Act

Nothing about this is unique to health insurance, it could be applied to a whole range of products and services.

For example, the people currently choosing not to buy gym memberships are mostly people who don’t like going to the gym. If these non-gym users, who use few gym resources, were part of the pool of people paying for gym memberships it would allow gyms to significantly lower membership rates. Thus the decision not to buy a gym membership significantly affects the market for gym memberships, workout equipment makers, personal trainers, etc…

To go back to the broccoli example, my decision not to buy Pennsylvania broccoli means that it is probably cheaper for other people to buy it. This is basic supply and demand. If there was a mandate for every American to buy broccoli from Pennsylvania, that would radically change the market for broccoli, broccoli harvester equipments, land suitable for broccoli and possibly the market for greenhouse equipment used to produce broccoli year round to meet increased demand. Thus people’s decision not to buy broccoli is affecting many markets which Congress indisputably has the power to regulate.

Given the interconnection of our modern economy it is almost impossible to think of any product where the decision of millions of people to buy or not buy the product wouldn’t greatly affect its interstate market.

This is not to say there aren’t some legitimately strong legal arguments for the constitutionality of the mandate brought up by Aaron or the administration. It is possible to argue it is constitutional under Congress’ power to levy taxes, even though Congress and the President refused to call it a tax when they were drafting the law.

It is also possible to argue the mandate is legal under the commerce clause because with cases like Wickard v. Filburn and Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court basically declared the commerce clause allows Congress to regulate anything so long as it may even tangentially affect the market.

What I find absurd, though, is the idea that there is any logical or legal basis for why the commerce clause would magically allow Congress to create a mandate to buy health insurance but not for most other products. There can be no doubt a mandate to buy a product would radically impact the interstate market for that product. If the health insurance mandate is constitutional due to the commerce clause then almost any mandate Congress chooses to create should be constitutional.

If you actually wanted to reduce health care spending you need to reduce how much we are actually paying for health care products and services. Not only do we spend way more than the rest of the industrialized world on administrative costs, we also pay way more for the exact same drugs and treatments. Forcing people to pay more for their health care out of pocket, i.e. have “skin in the game,” will not fix our problems.

This “skin in the game” theory is mostly nonsense that is neither supported by data nor a simple understanding of human behavior.

For example, a story in USA Today looked at new government reports and found that just 5 percent of the population is responsible for 50% of the health care spending in this country. In our country much of our health care spending goes to very sick people who need care. Making these very sick people pay higher co-pays or deductibles will not change the fact they will seek out treatment to try to save their lives. It just makes those who are sick poorer.

With the majority of our health care spending going to those who are very sick, it is just not mathematically possible to create significant savings by trying to modestly change the health care purchasing habits of relatively healthy people.

Also, the idea is completely flawed to anyone with a basic understanding of human behavior. The “skin in the game” theory only works if you believe much of health care spending is caused by a large number of people who really enjoy going to the doctor and getting expensive tests but only do so because insurance makes it “cheap” for them. Almost any regular human (besides maybe on economist) would tell you most people don’t like going to the doctor or getting medical tests. Most people don’t need additional financial decentives to make them avoid going to the doctor.

The stupidity of this “solution” to our health care cost should be abundantly obvious but unfortunately it is widely promoted by most American politicians. It is strongly supported by both Republicans and Democrats, including President Obama. Obama so strongly bought into this silly theory that despite spending millions attacking John McCain for wanting to tax health insurance benefits, Obama fought hard to make sure the Affordable Care Act included a tax on insurance. This provision is designed to make people face more cost shifts, such as higher co-pays and deductibles. Obama repeatedly claimed this “skin in the game” idea will “bend the cost curve.”

Sadly, we will probably never adopt proven solutions to reduce our huge levels of health care spending until our political leaders admit this “skin in the game” theory is nonsense. That is why the stupidity behind it needs to be pointed out repeatedly and often.

(photo: bochimsang12/Shutterstock.com)

Over the past two years the number of Americans who say there is a “very strong” or “strong” conflict between the rich and the poor has skyrocketed. According to Pew Research, in 2009 only 47 percent of Americans said there was a very strong or strong conflict between the rich and the poor. That number has now jumped to 66 percent, a 19 point gain in just two years.

While there is some partisan divide on the issue, a majority of individuals in every partisan group, Democrats, Independents and Republicans, now say there is at least a strong conflict between the rich and the poor.

Much of the rapid change in public opinion is the result of white Americans now becoming much more aware of the serious class conflict in our society. From Pew:

While blacks are still more likely than whites see serious class conflicts, the share of whites who hold this view has increased by 22 percentage points, to 65%, since 2009. At the same time, the proportion of blacks (74%) and Hispanics (61%) sharing this judgment has grown by single digits (8 and 6 points, respectively).

It would be hard to see this rather rapid change in public opinion as anything but a real victory for the Occupy movement, which is heavily focused on the growing economic inequality in this country. The Occupy movement managed to change the national conversation. It caused the media to talk about the issue of income inequality.

Many of the design principles for the insurance market exchanges in the Affordable Care Act were based on unproven, discredited, and frankly absurd conservative notions about the economagic of free markets.  But too many liberals refused to acknowledge this.

During the height of the debate on the ACA, the inherently conservative and flawed nature of these ideas was often ignored or purposely downplayed by liberal Democratic writers trying to promote the bill to voters. Dubious theories and even factually wrong statements made by the Obama administration to sell the law were parroted or accepted with little scrutiny.

Now that some time has passed and prominent Republicans are rediscovering the conservative principles Democrats co-opted for the ACA, the discredited theories are finally getting the scrutiny from many liberal/Democratic writers they should have faced back in 2010.

The best example is the liberal critique of  the plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to control Medicare costs. When private insurance exchanges became the foundation of the ACA, Ezra Klein called them the most promising cost control idea in the new law. Two years later Ryan wanted the same basic exchange structure to replace Medicare.  Ezra Klein pointed out that insurance exchanges have never worked to control health care costs. Of course Klein was not alone in magically realizing that health care exchanges are totally worthless as a cost control idea only after the Republicans started promoting them again.

Once again we are seeing this phenomenon as liberals attack Mitt Romney for his revealing statement, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” as a defense of his Massachusetts health care law. Now that it is Romney, instead of Obama, defending the idea that being able to shop for health insurance is great, liberals are correctly pointing out there is little value in being able to “fire” your insurance company and go shopping on an exchange for a new one. From Matt Ygelesias blog post “Firing Your Insurance Company Is Not The Basis Of A Workable Health Insurance System”:

It’s true that if you have a system of competing, regulated, subsidized private insurers organized into a marketplace with an individual mandate (remember that idea) that insurance companies with very bad customer service may get fired. But that’s basically a tiny detail. The beef people have with insurance companies is that they won’t cover everything patients wish was covered. But there’s just no way around that.

From Arron Carroll’s widely cited criticism of Romney’s statement:

First of all, let’s unpack the idea that if individuals have their own insurance, the “insurance company will have an incentive to keep [them] healthy”. That’s totally backwards. The idea that people might fire their insurance companies is exactly why they don’t have an incentive to keep you healthy. Insurance companies preferentially cover healthy people, and they want those who are ill to leave, or, better yet, not enroll in the first place. Captive populations, like those in the VA, or maybe plans with long-term contracts through big employers might have the right incentive, but the types of plans Gov. Romney seems to have in mind don’t do the very thing he is saying they do. Insurance companies have a vested interest in keeping you healthy when you can’t or won’t leave.

Misguided public statements on health care policies by prominent Republicans like Ryan and Romney are at least having one positive effect. They are making some supporters of the Obamacare exchange model think through and point out the obvious flaws in the theories that served as the basis for designing the ACA.

The ideas of individuals shopping on private insurance exchanges and forcing individuals to have more “skin in the game” will not make health care better or cheaper. In no way are these ideas progressive. They are bad policy ideas when Republicans promote them now, and they were bad policy ideas when the Obama Administration designed its health care law around them in 2010.

 

Below is the up-to-date list of the status of Occupy encampments across the country, based on reports from OccupySupply liaisons of the FDL Membership Program who deliver supplies to them regularly.

Listed separately are occupations that have received eviction notices from the city or county, those that have moved indoors, as well as those that are not allowed to have an overnight presence but maintain tents and booths during the day. This week we are also adding a list of occupations camping out on foreclosed homes.

The permanent up-to-date list of encampments can be found here:

FDL OccupySupply State of the Occupation: Updated List of Encampments Across the Country

1	Occupy Anchorage	Igloos!
2	Occupy Asheville	City council to vote this week on whether to evict
3	Occupy Atlanta	Re-occupied Woodruff Park after the raid, stopped a recent foreclosure
4	Occupy Austin	Nice story in Daily Texan about OccupySupply helping them prepare for winter
5	Occupy Birmingham	Marched with Alabama civic & religious leaders to protest state immigration law
6	Occupy Boise	FDL and Occupy Supply on Channel 6 news helping Occupy Boise
7	Occupy Buffalo	Have an agreement with the city regarding the camp site
8	Occupy Cedar Rapids	Says they have a stable location through the winter
9	Occupy Charlotte	City wants them gone so they won’t offend Democratic convention, but hanging in there
10	Occupy Claremont	City council may intervene, but police say they’re not breaking any laws
11	Occupy Cleveland	Still maintains a 24 hour tent.
12	Occupy Chattanooga	County Commission recently passed resolution of disapproval
13	Occupy Dover DE	Still going strong
14	Occupy Delaware (Wilmington)	Doing great foreclosure work
15	Occupy DesMoines	Voted to stay in the park at GA on 1/06
16	Occupy East LA College	Started in early November, two dozen tents, protesting tuition hikes and budget cuts
17	Occupy Erie	Keep coming back to the gazebo despite 7 police raids
18	Occupy Fairbanks	Yes, there’s an Occupy Fairbanks. No kidding.
19	Occupy Fort Wayne	In Freimann square
20	Occupy Gainesville	Organizing Florida occupations for upcoming FL legislative session
21	Occupy Harrisburg	Organizing around state redistricting
22	Occupy Houston	Celebrated International Migrants Day by protesting prison industrial complex
23	Occupy Huntsville AL	City gave them a spot
24	Occupy IowaCity	Mic checked Newt Gingrich last week
25	Occupy Ithaca	Started Nov 21, 15 tents, moving to Baptist church
26	Occupy Kansas City	Just celebrated 100 days at Liberty Memorial
27	Occupy Kstreet	Filing lawsuit to prevent cops from seizing their property without cause
28	Occupy Lancaster PA	Holding toy and book drive for children of the community
29	Occupy Las Cruces NM	Joined with Occupy El Paso to protest 18th anniversary of NAFTA
30	Occupy Las Vegas	Protesting at auctions of foreclosed homes seized without paperwork
31	Occupy Lincoln	Tent town in Centennial Mall
32	Occupy Little Rock	Built a geodesic dome
33	Occupy Madison	24 hour encampment with support of Madison PD and the City of Madison officials.
34	Occupy Memphis	Held march to mark 1 year since Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in Tunisia
35	Occupy Miami	Encampment behind city hall
36	Occupy Milwaukee	Immigration groups recently loaned them space
37	Occupy Monterey	City may evict them on January 20
38	Occupy Nashville	Getting tremendous community support
39	Occupy Newfoundland	City says there will be no attempt to evict them
40	Occupy New Haven	On private property by agreement with managers
41	Occupy Newark	City recently lifted ban on overnight encampments
42	Occupy Ogden	The Unitarian Universalist Church gave them a space
43	Occupy Orange County	Will be moving on January 11
44	Occupy Orlando	Occupier arrested before Christmas for using chalk on sidewalk & still in jail
45	Occupy Palm Beach	Protesting wealth inequality in rich neighborhoods
46	Occupy Phoenix	Demonstrating against Joe Arpaio’s tasering of Latino Marine vet that left him brain dead
47	Occupy Pittsburgh	Calling for an international day of action against Bank of New York Mellon
48	Occupy Raleigh	Property owner & city say they can stay
49	Occupy Reno	Plan to start door knocks and community outreach in January
50	Occupy Rochester	Just received AFL-CIO Rochester Labor Council’s Community Solidarity Award
51	Occupy Sacramento	Recently occupied Clear Channel
52	Occupy San Jose	San Jose City Hall
53	Occupy San Luis Obispo	Recently voted to maintain their 24 hour presence
54	Occupy Salt Lake City	Moved to Gallivan Center next to Wells Fargo Bank after police raided down town camp
55	Occupy Scranton	Still maintaining 24 hour tent despite December raid
56	Occupy Syracuse	Erected a triple-walled Army surplus tent and plan to stay for the winter
57	Occupy Tacoma	Mic check to OccupySupply
58	Occupy Talahassee	Will present objectives of Florida occupations to state legislature on January 10
59	Occupy Tampa	At Voice of Freedom Park
60	Occupy Trenton	Suffering the wrath of Chris Christie but hanging in there
61	Occupy Walton OR	Small Oregon town trying to save their post office
62	Occupy Winston-Salem	Fighting quick & dirty Dan’s plan to evict

Occupations Threatened with Eviction

1. Chattanooga
2. Columbia SC
3. Louisville KY
4. Missoula MT
5. Oakland CA
6. Portland ME
   
7. San Antonio TX
8. San Diego CA
9. Santa Fe NM

Occupations Voting to End Encampment

1. Chapel Hill

Occupations With Daytime Tents or Booths

1. Santa Rosa
2. Columbus

Occupations That Have Moved Indoors

1. Detroit
2. Tulsa
3. Freedom Plaza (DC)
4. St. Louis

Occupying Homes

1. Occupy Colorado Springs
   

Previous Reports:

• January 9: #OccupySupply State of the Occupation, 1/9/2012
• December 28: Occupy Supply State of the Occupation: 66 Encampments on 12/28/2011
• December 22: State of the Occupation: Permanent FDL OccupySupply Page Shows 63 Encampments on 12-22-2011
• December 21: State of the Occupation: 11 Encampments Threatened With Eviction
• December 20: List of Active Occupy Encampments Across the Country – Now at 61

If you would like to update us with information about your occupation, or have a 24 hour encampment that needs supplies, let us know at members AT firedoglake DOT com.

Occupy Supply is getting barraged with requests for cold weather gear from occupations across the country as cold weather hits this week.  Please consider donating to Occupy Supply.  100% of all donations go to purchasing and distributing supplies to occupations.