During this legislative session, New York has seen proposed bills that set notification requirements for abortions performed on minors, require sonogram viewings and readings to be provided to women seeking an abortion and establish a “cause of action for damages” against an abortion provider who performs a “sex selective abortion.” None of these bills have made it before a vote in either chamber of the legislature.

But another piece of proposed legislation challenges some of the aforementioned bills. The “Reproductive Health Act” would amend the state’s public health law to secure the right for a woman to choose contraception and the course of her pregnancy. The proposed law “establishes a fundamental, statutory right to privacy in making personal reproductive decisions and updates New York’s abortion and contraception laws to correct constitutional defects and ensure that abortion is treated as a health matter.”

The bill hasn’t seen much action since it was introduced in the New York Senate in January by state Sen. Jeffrey D. Klein (D, 34th District), with two co-sponsors. It was referred to the Senate Health Committee in February; a similar version with 14 co-sponsors was introduced in the State Assembly by Deborah J. Glick (D-66th District) and was referred to the Assembly Health Committee in March.

Still, during this week’s Bipartisan Pro Choice Legislative Caucus, New York Senate Minority Leader John Sampson said he would fight to push the Reproductive Health Act.

“When it comes to protecting women’s access to safe, legal and affordable reproductive services, there’s only one choice,” Sampson said at the caucus. “When it comes to protecting essential and life-saving health services, there’s only one choice. And when it comes to protecting choice for millions of women, there’s only one choice. And that is pro-choice.”

Sampson emphatically said the state would pass RHA, but at the end of his speech, he seemed to imply it might not happen during this session.

“We will pass the Reproductive Health Care [sic] Act into law,” he said. “But for that we are going to need your help because we are going to need a new Democratic State Senate. … Right now we are overwhelmingly pro-choice here in the state of New York, but we’re represented by an anti-choice Senate.”

Watch Sampson’s speech to the Bipartisan Pro Choice Legislative Caucus:

State groups such as Family Planning Advocates of New York State and the New York Civil Liberties Union have made RHA among their major legislative agenda items and have until the session ends on June 20 to try to influence its passage.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has strongly pressured New York legislators to offer a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, and on Tuesday, Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell introduced the bill.

NOM has stepped in to oppose the bill and plans to spend $500,000 on television ads. NOM has pledged another $1 million to support candidates that oppose rights for same-sex couples and reward legislators that vote against the marriage bill.

The ad that NOM has launched in New York is a repeat of one the group ran in the state in 2009.

The ad says, “Massachusetts public schools teach second graders that boys can marry other boys.” It’s a similar line to one used in Rhode Island earlier this year: “Massachusetts’ public schools teach kids as young as kindergartners about gay marriage.”

The contents of the Rhode Island ad were ruled false by fact-check website Politifact:

The National Organization for Marriage mailing says that Massachusetts public schools teach kindergartners about gay marriage. The wording, including the present tense verb, gives the impression this is happening now, in many schools.

But the group’s only evidence is two incidents five years ago. It’s possible that somewhere, in one of the 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts, other kindergartners have been taught about same-sex marriage. But NOM couldn’t cite any other examples. We find its statement False.

Here’s the ad that NOM is running in New York:

The Human Rights Campaign’s Kevin Nix hit back at NOM over the ad. “Independent fact checkers will quickly determine, as they did previously with other NOM propaganda, that things don’t quite add up in this New York commercial,” he said in a statement. “Fear and fiction is the mother’s milk of this secretive, virulently anti-gay organization.”

In Rhode Island, the head of the National Organization for Marriage-Rhode Island claimed that the majority of Rhode Islanders oppose same-sex marriage. A bill to legalize same-sex marriage has been working its way through the General Assembly.

On a panel hosted by WPRI, the group’s executive director Christopher Plante said, “I don’t believe [House Speaker] Gordon Fox had the votes. Our head count showed pretty clearly that they didn’t have the votes and he had to make the decision he did,” he said. “Similarly, the people of Rhode Island don’t want same-sex marriage.”

Politifact ran his statement through their fact-checking service and ruled it “Pants on Fire.” Here’s Politifact’s rationale:

The most recent polls from Brown, RI-GLAD and even NOM-RI — Plante’s organization — show the opposite.

Not only did the trends in the NOM-RI and RI-GLAD polls show opposition to same-sex marriage evaporating, the Brown and RI-GLAD polls showed that the public wants gay couples to have the right to marry, even if you assume that every voter who didn’t express an opinion was opposed to gay marriage.

Plante’s assertion isn’t just false. It’s ridiculous. We rate it Pants On Fire!

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is leading the nationwide investigation into foreclosure fraud, but he's in danger of losing re-election. (Flickr: Iowa Democratic Party)

With unusual unanimity across the political spectrum, all 50 state attorneys general announced a coordinated investigation on Oct. 13 into recent revelations that mortgage servicers routinely used “robo-signers” to approve hundreds of thousands of foreclosures without scrutinizing the underlying documents. Because state law governs the mortgage lending industry for the most part, consumer advocates and experts believe this investigation will be the most effective way to resolve the foreclosure mess and compensate homeowners.

[Congress1] “The fact that all 50 have launched an investigation into potential fraud speaks for itself,” said Kathleen Day of the Center for Responsible Lending.

But after the midterm elections, the individuals holding those offices could vary wildly, and some of the leaders of the investigation, as well as the most aggressive advocates for consumers and against banks, could find themselves out of a job.

Consider this: Of the 12 state attorneys general on the executive committee of the coordinated investigation, only two of them — Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Rob McKenna in Washington — aren’t up for re-election this year. Several of them — Jerry Brown in California, Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut, Terry Goddard in Arizona, Andrew Cuomo in New York and Bill McCollum in Florida — are running for higher office and will not return to their posts. And other races are closely contested.

Currently, 32 of the 50 attorneys general across the nation are Democrats, to 18 Republicans. According to Governing Magazine, the GOP is poised to pick up anywhere from six to 13 of those seats after November, dramatically changing the makeup of the attorneys general across the country — and potentially the nature of their investigation.

“There are good AGs and not so good AGs,” said Ira Rheingold of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. “The question is, who will be the leaders of the investigation and who will drive the decisions they make?”

Take Ohio, for instance. Attorney General Richard Cordray (D) was the first to sue a major mortgage servicer, GMAC Mortgage, over faulty foreclosure documents. “Nobody’s very comfortable with the notion that people are committing fraud upon the courts on a deliberate and systematic basis,” said Cordray of his attorney general colleagues. He seeks not only damages of $25,000 per fraudulent document, but restitution for homeowners who may have been illegally evicted from their homes. But he faces former Sen. Mike DeWine (R) in a re-election battle on Nov. 2, and a Suffolk University poll from early October showed DeWine ahead 44-38 among likely voters.

Or look at Iowa, where Tom Miller, who has been Attorney General off and on since 1978, heads up the 50-state investigation. He has been investigating abuse in the mortgage lending industry for years, and is widely recognized as one of the best attorneys general on consumer protection in the country. “Tom Miller being involved is a really good thing,” said Rheingold. “Tom has been doing this for years, and has a demonstrated record on consumer protection.”

But Miller is being challenged strongly by Brenna Findley, a Sarah Palin-endorsed 34-year-old who previously spent seven years as the chief of staff for conservative Republican Rep. Steve King. She’s raised twice as much money as Miller and has campaigned more energetically in the state. There has been no public polling since August, but with the Republican lean in statewide races in Iowa, most experts see Miller’s odds as a tossup at best.

While no attorney general candidate, Democratic or Republican, has actually pledged to drop out of the investigation into foreclosure fraud, many of the GOP candidates have focused their attention elsewhere, saying little about the issue on the campaign trail. In Iowa, Findley has run almost entirely on her vow to join the lawsuit against the federal government over health care legislation, and on an aggressive effort to crack down on sexual predators. In Florida, Republican candidate Pam Bondi has a section of her website labeled “Protecting Our Consumers” that talks generally about consumer protection and barely mentions mortgage fraud or housing at all.

While the investigators for the probe are likely to be career bureaucrats at the staff level who would probably not change from one administration to the next, the decision-makers at the top play a central role. Reuters reported last week that banks have already initiated talks with the attorneys general to reach a quick resolution to the matter. State attorney general settlements in the recent past, with lenders like Countrywide and Wachovia, have included mandates for mass mortgage modifications that would allow homeowners to stay in their homes.

“Those who understand the issues know what the remedy needs to be,” said Rheingold. “Other AGs may have political calculations. For example, they might want a one-time pot of money to give out to homeowners, so they can do a press conference and declare victory. That wouldn’t be a serious move. This should be about what you make the lenders do to comply with state law.”

Several attorney general candidates on the Democratic side have boasted of their consumer protection credentials. In California, one of the states hardest hit by foreclosures since the housing bubble popped, San Francisco district attorney and statewide candidate Kamala Harris touted her past efforts, including the formation of the first-ever stand-alone mortgage and investment fraud unit in the district attorney’s office. She has already made several indictments through the unit, which has a $1 million grant from the Justice Department to investigate fraud. Harris trails Republican Steve Cooley in public polling, and Cooley has raised more money as well, while getting support from million-dollar independent expenditure campaigns led by former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie. Cooley has stressed public safety in his campaign more than consumer protection.

The campaigns for Cooley, Findley and several other Republican attorney general candidates did not respond to repeated requests for comment about their views on foreclosures and the 50-state investigation.

In New York, a key state because of the presence of Wall Street and the fact that New York trust law governs some thorny national legal issues which may determine whether or not servicers even have the standing to foreclose, Democratic candidate Eric Schneiderman said he would strongly support investigations into the banks’ activities. “I held the first hearing in the history of the state about the under-prosecution of mortgage fraud,” said Schneiderman, who supports a moratorium on foreclosures while the investigation proceeds. “The economic meltdown was driven by pools of bad mortgages. A lot of New Yorkers got stuck with those bad mortgages. Everyone in the state of New York should get a fair hearing before they’re foreclosed on.”

Schneiderman’s race in particular is emblematic of the stark difference between Democratic and Republican attorney general candidates on the issue of the financial industry, including the foreclosure crisis. His opponent, Daniel Donovan, has derived around 25% of all his campaign contributions from one hedge fund, Elliott Management, according to The New York Times. Donovan has been quoted on several occasions saying that he “doesn’t want to be anybody’s sheriff,” a reference to former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, nicknamed the Sheriff of Wall Street.

“Dan Donovan has said that we shouldn’t ‘disturb the garden’ of Wall Street,” Schneiderman said. “The central tenet throughout my career, as a public interest lawyer and a public servant, is that I have sought to do justice and fight against unfairness. I don’t like bullies. I don’t like when people use their power to take advantage of people who are weaker.” Donovan, on the other hand, writes on his website that “Wall Street is the financial backbone of our state, and we must ensure that it continues to create jobs and remain the economic generator our state depends on.” Although New York Democrats are running away with races at the top of the ticket, Donovan has cut into Schneiderman’s lead, trailing in a recent Siena College poll by just seven points, 44-37.

Similarly, Florida Republican nominee Pam Bondi, who led Democrat Dan Gelber in an October Mason-Dixon poll by five points, criticized her opponent as an “activist” who would prosecute too cavalierly. (Gelber, like Schneiderman, supports a foreclosure freeze as allegations are investigated.) She told the St. Petersburg Times, “Unlike Mr. Gelber, I understand the difference between using the attorney general’s office to responsibly protect consumers vs. attacking businesses as an activist AG in the mold of Eliot Spitzer.”

An attorney general with this kind of measured, pro-business worldview, in the midst of a politically charged national investigation against the biggest banks in the country, can change the focus of the probe. “The bureaucrats won’t change over the years,” said Rheingold, “but sometimes they have to keep their heads down” when their new boss doesn’t support their actions.

“The emphasis can change with a new AG,” he added. “The goals change.”

And that would have wide-ranging effects for what Rheingold described as “the most important game in town,” the investigation by the 50 attorneys general. “After all, it’s their laws being broken,” he said. “Congress is not going to do anything. The administration has not been strong thus far. The most important challenge to the banks comes from these attorneys general.”

Correction: This story initially stated that the campaigns of Pam Bondi and Brenna Findley did not respond to requests for comment. Steve Cooley should have been listed here, not Bondi, whose campaign was not contacted. We regret the error.

David Dayen writes for the News Desk at firedoglake.com. His work has been cited by the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post, and he has been a guest on NPR, Pacifica Radio and Air America.

DiNapoli’s announcement underscored the fact that the budget is flawed because of actions taken by the government:

“This year’s budget was seriously flawed,” Mr. DiNapoli said in a statement. “It was based on overly optimistic revenue assumptions and temporary revenue sources that pushed the problem into the future.”

Apparently, New York Attorney General and presumptive Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo didn’t get the message. Today, in what can only be termed an ill-timed announcement, Cuomo unveiled an investigation into state workers’ overtime, suggesting that state workers in the twilight of their careers were taking on additional overtime to inflate their pensions.

As justification for his investigation, Cuomo cited a water department worker who was working 60 hour weeks and thus, with time and a half, earned $30,000 on top of his $40,000 a year salary, as well as a county animal control officer who, while working 55 hour weeks, earned his $38,000 salary and another $19,000 in overtime.

But Cuomo neglected to note in his announcement that the state has been under a hiring freeze since July 30, 2008 (though the legislature, courts and state university system are exempted). With the kind of overtime being pulled in by the water and animal control employees, it seems clear that the hiring freeze is costing the state dearly — but Cuomo won’t be investigating that.

As The Wall Street Journal notes, Cuomo’s pension investigation didn’t start out as a witch hunt against state workers putting in overtime in the midst of a two-year hiring freeze.

The new line of inquiry for Mr. Cuomo marks a shift in focus. His ongoing pay to play investigation has looked at potential abuses in the management of pensioners’ funds.

Going after the pensions of hard-working state employees in the midst of a recession surely isn’t better for Cuomo’s political aspirations than tracking down fat cat banker-types siphoning off pension funds with fees and bad investments. But with few other state Democrats in the running for their party’ nomination for governor, maybe it doesn’t matter.

Although the general election may have just gotten a little more interesting…

In 2002, Goldman Sachs was listed as one of the managers of 3.5 billion of bonds issued by the Greek government. Between 2000 and 2001, according to testimony in the UK by a Goldman executive, Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government arrange a number of off-balance sheet transactions that made Greece’s debt appear lower than it really was. While Goldman terms the amount “small but significant,” Johnson notes that the amount of debt Goldman helped Greece hide from the EU, investors and Greek taxpayers was 1.6 percent of Greece’s GDP.

The problem for Goldman is that it knew that Greece’s overall debt was significantly higher than it appeared, which is of material importance to the investors to whom Goldman was selling the Greek bonds. Johnson explains.

The April 2002 offering circular did not disclose the debt swaps. There may have been other documentation available to investors that did reveal true Greek debt numbers – and perhaps these were discussed in the relevant road shows. We are not here taking a position on what was and was not disclosed; this is a matter for a proper official investigation. We also do not know what the other involved banks knew and when they knew it.

If it were the case that Greece’s true debt levels were known and not disclosed by the investment bankers involved, any reasonable investor – or the sovereign debt experts with whom we have discussed this matter – would regard this as withholding adverse material information.

Withholding adverse material information is not a crime, apparently, in Greece, and the bonds were not registered in the United States, which would normally mean Goldman was free and clear.

But there’s one exception to that rule: Bonds sold to Qualified Institutional Buyers do require material adverse disclosures, regardless of where they were issued or whether they are registered in the United States — and analysts believe that at least 10 percent of the 2002 bonds were sold to such buyers, possibly by Goldman.

However, if any of these bonds were sold in the US to “qualified institutional buyers” (QIBs) under rule 144A (an exemption to registration requirements under the 1933 Securities Act), there is a potential legal issue (here I’m just rewording what Senator Kaufman said). Rule 10b-5, under the 1934 Securities Exchange Act, definitely applies to securities sold under 144A – i.e., selling securities to anyone in the United States while deliberately withholding material adverse information is not allowed.

Johnson allows that investors are unlikely to sue Goldman unless the bond defaults — and avoiding that is the purpose of the European Union bailing out Greece — and the statute of limitations might have expired for a criminal investigation.

On the other hand, it might not have, and no one will find out without an investigation. Perhaps if New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo isn’t too busy investigating the governor he’d like to replace, he will get around to making a name for himself by taking on the universally despised Goldman.

News reports indicate Democrats have been encouraging the governor, appointed after Eliot Spitzer’s resignation, to retire or resign due to poor approval ratings and low poll numbers. But a new development appears to have pressed the governor even further: The New York Times reported this week on a domestic violence case involving Paterson’s top aide and questions arose regarding an alleged cover-up by Paterson’s office.

The Daily News reports Paterson does not intend to resign. His retirement paves the way for Democrat Andrew Cuomo’s candidacy. Cuomo just happens to be New York’s Attorney General, in charge of the office that is investigating Paterson.

Reading from the contracts — which still appear not to be publicly available, though I’m trying to get them — Frank notes that the contracts effectively insulated the managers from the company’s losses: heads – I win; tails – I don’t lose, either.

“We should bring lawsuits, as the owners, to say these people performed so badly that we’re justified in rescinding the contracts,” said Frank.  He added that the contracts even appear to have been written and signed in comtemplation of serious losses, suggesting the fraud that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has said he’s investigating.

I still think the first step ought to be making those contracts public, and seeing what exactly the AIG employees were expected to do to fulfill their end of the bargain. And if there’s a real case to be made that they didn’t fulfill their obligations (as there sure seems to be, given the state of the company), then by all means — sue the bastards.

Update: The AIG contracts are now up on the House Financial Services Committee Website (PDF).

But what about what the executives promised to do under those employment contracts?  Surely those contracts required managers and executives to act in good faith on the company’s behalf and not gamble away all its assets. Even if the bonuses weren’t based on current profits, they must have been based at least on the employees doing a decent, good faith, legitimate job. And selling risky credit-default swaps — insuring really, really bad debt — may well not meet those standards.

So why haven’t we — the taxpayers who supposedly own some 80 percent of the company now — seen the contracts yet?

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is probing the matter, and he has the right idea in questioning the legitimacy of the bonuses, noting that the company may have violated New York laws prohibiting “fraudulent conveyances.” If a company enters contracts to pay money it “effectively doesn’t have, it’s akin to a looting of a company,” Cuomo said in a conference call with reporters. If the AIG contracts were signed when the people in charge knew “the finances were going south,” it could be considered a fraudulent conveyance, Cuomo said.

While Cuomo investigates, Congress ought to be insisting that AIG come clean about how and when those contracts were negotiated, what exactly they say, and whether the those lucky employees in the AIG unit that triggered our global economic crisis and received $165 million in bonuses so far (a total of $1 billion was supposed to be paid out, according to Bloomberg) actually fulfilled their contractual obligations.

The startling details are outlined in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services. Brace yourself, as the Irish say:

“A.I.G. made more than 73 millionaires in the unit which lost so much money that it brought the firm to its knees forcing a taxpayer bailout,” Mr. Cuomo wrote in the letter. “Something is deeply wrong with this outcome.”

Mr. Cuomo did not name the bonus recipients, but the numbers are eye-popping, given A.I.G.’s fragile state. The highest bonus was $6.4 million, and six other employees received more than $4 million, according to Mr. Cuomo. Another 15 people received bonuses of more than $2 million, and another 51 people received bonuses between $1 million and $2 million, Mr. Cuomo said. Eleven of those who received “retention” bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at A.I.G., including one who received $4.6 million, he said.

Well, that was money well spent. It’s hard to imagine what else could be out there to stir up the pot of populist anger even more. But given the steady drip of jaw-dropping details emerging daily, I’m sure more outrages will be revealed soon.