As Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and local papers all over the country are now noticing, the stand that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has taken against the Obama administration and five largest mortgage firms is building drama.

After CBS Marketwatch called the all-too-kind settlement being offered to the mortgage giants “another bank bailout“, the NY Daily News reported Schneiderman got a lift from New York’s Congressional delegation in the form of a letter sent to the Iowa Attorney General Tom Kelly. Kelly removed Schneiderman from the 50-state negotiating panel for objecting to a grant of blanket immunity from state fraud investigations and the NYS Dems did not appreciate this.

Kelly also shared some none-too-kind words about Schneiderman for “undermining” the work of the committee, which he wants to conclude expeditiously with a narrower settlement, focusing only on foreclosures and mortgage servicing practices. Kelly has been criticized in Iowa and elsewhere for serving the big banks who have contributed greatly towards his campaigns.

Schneiderman, elected to enforce the rule of law, wants to use this 50-state panel to immediately investigate the cause of the mortgage backed securities crisis that led the United States into the most debilitating economic tragedy in a lifetime. Attorney General Kelly, along with Obama’s HUD Secretary and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner are noticeably anxious to rush through a settlement that does nothing to confront the dangerous moral hazard of unregulated securitization or hold to account the crooks who designed them to be impossible to detangle, costing taxpayers billions.

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi was not shy in suggesting Obama may want to cuddle up to these banks in time for election contributions, abandoning the “small individual donor” he prided himself on for the historic 2008 election he won as our economy was crumbling. Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. are the firms in question, but other toxic debt bundlers are also watching keenly.

The signatories to Jerrold Nadler’s letter included every Democratic Member of Congress in the state – Louise Slaughter, Charlie Rangel, Gary Ackerman, Maurice Hinchey, Eliot Engel, Carolyn Maloney, Carloyn McCarthy, Nita Lowey, Kathy Hochul, Yvette Clark, Nydia Velasquez, Joseph Crowley, José Serrano, Brian Higgins, Yvette Clarke, Bill Owens, Paul Tonko, Edolphus Townes and Steve Israel, Gregory Meeks and Tim Bishop.

This display of party unity begs the question – will Governor Cuomo weigh in on the issue as the grassroots are mobilizing? Last week, a petition was circulated by Citizen Action of New York (sign it here) and late word came today that a group including AIG, the FDIC, and various ripped-off banks, insurers and fund managers are joining Schneiderman and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden in a lawsuit against Bank of America Corp., seeking to block any settlement and move the case to federal court.

If you have not yet written AG Schneiderman to support his investigation, click here. To complain to HUD Secretary Donovan, email to Secretary.Donovan <at> hud.gov or “tell your story” to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau overseeing the negotiations. Email the White House here or send a message to Geithner at the US Treasury on Facebook here.

With the State Budget being held hostage by the dysfunctional State legislature, Governor Paterson’s draconian recommendations have kicked in and, once again, New York families and communities are the loser.

But the Republicans might have an idea, it seems. On the eve of the park closings, in a mailing from State Senator Thomas Morahan, there is a push poll asking constituents if we should privatize our parks. Read on, I’m not making this up.

The mailer contains the “2010 Legislative Questionnaire.” This is a one-sided survey as it has very limited questions with an even more limited range of answers, that range from fiscally moderate to ultra-conservative. The possible range of responses pushes respondents to right-of-center conclusions. There’s no room for a progressive answer anywhere in the questionnaire.

More to the point, question #4 asks:

Which of the following aspects of government should be privatized? (check all that apply)

Highway and roadway maintenance
Corrections
Parks and Recreation
Health care
Transportation
Education

But beware, this isn’t a legitimate survey. It’s a politician playing craps with public opinion using a pair of loaded dice. This is an attempt by New York State Republicans to push through an agenda by attempting to change public perception.

This recent push poll is not unlike others. It is a underhanded political technique where Senator Morahan is trying to sway public sentiment and opinion by bringing certain issues to the forefront. There is very little science behind this polling process. And while a large number of people are contacted, little or no effort will be made to collect or analyze their responses. I know from experience that analyzing polls is very cost prohibitive and Senator Morahan’s office does not have the time, nor the resources to analyze the data. So this survey cannot possibly provide an accurate gauge of the pulse of the 38th State Senate district. It’s no wonder that push polling has been condemned by good-government groups and even the American Association of Political Consultants. And in New Hampshire, push polling is downright illegal.

Closing our public parks is just plain wrong. The Stony Point Battlefield is critically important to the economy of the Town of Stony Point as visitors to the site often spend money at the town’s shops during their visit. The Tallman Mountain pool is the only public pool in the entire town of Orangetown. They are now gone; they may never come back.

Worse than closing the parks is entertaining the cynical idea that they should now be privatized. And trying to push public opinion to this conclusion using taxpayer money is unethical to say the least.

There’s a sad irony to all of this: Mailings from our State legislature cost taxpayers $27.3 million per year and they are nothing more than incumbency insurance, or political campaigning paid for by our tax dollars. That amount is roughly the same as the $29 million that has been cut from our State Parks, resulting in today’s closings. So shouldn’t there be a question on Senator Morahan’s survey asking if we should do away with legislative mailings?

Getting very little press, President Obama’s PERAB (President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board) is where Obama’s economic wunderkind Austan Goolsbee was stashed away after the election, working under Paul Volcker, former Fed Chairman for Presidents Reagan and Carter.

PERAB is an advisory-only panel designed to review input and ideas from across the country and from all quarters, including the financial sector, industry and average American citizens just like you.

Since it’s first fully-transparent official meeting with the President (full video, full transcript), PERAB has opened their doors to leaders in business, labor and policymaking to discuss investment in infrastructure, green jobs initiatives such as home retrofitting, the role of community banks and credit unions, manufacturing and healthcare.

But PERAB is also going further, soliciting public and private input on a spectrum of tax reform proposals including filing simplification, shoring up enforcement and retooling our tricky corporate tax codes. PERAB is not, however, considering changes that would raise taxes on families making under $250,000.

PERAB will be compiling recommendations into an “almanac” of options that will be presented to President Obama, representing a broad range of viewpoints. Hundreds of suggestions have already been submitted by individuals, business groups and advocacy organizations, available for public viewing here.

Just this week, grants were distributed for 51 strategic transportaion projects including roads, rail, bridge repairs and more, demonstrating that PERAB initiatives do (eventually) find their way into real legislation. Last month, Goolsbee’s white paper became central to the White House proposal to limit risk-taking by banks who were recipients of bailout funding, curbing proprietary trading, hedge fund activity and more.

We should all endorse those reforms that increase economic and environmental sustainability, emphasizing localization, job creation and job retention over short-sighted wealth-creation. We should also advocate for regionalizing food supply lines, greater transparency in government and strengthening of the Earned Income Tax credit which recognizes the efforts of hard working families, manufacturing, production and service above “passive” income derived from dividends, investing, inheritance and other forms of “paper pushing” that benefit the already-rich.

Many do not realize it was then-governor Reagan who helped develop the Earned Income Tax credit as he successfully sought to incentivize work-over-welfare in California. As president, Reagan would later adopt “trickle down” incentives, lowering tax burdens for the rich in the expectation they might create jobs and not just pocket the cash.

Tempered by Newt Gingrich’s Congress, it was President Clinton’s expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit that saw a record number of millionaires created in the U.S. while reversing the growth of the deficit dramatically. CBO projections then calculated that the deficit could be fully repaid by 2009.

But after 2000, President Bush reinstated tax cuts for the rich alongside unprecedented levels of debt spending and industry deregulation. Again, income levels flat lined as work hours increased, benefits were cut and the dollar weakened. By 2008, job losses soared and the economy was in a state of disaster by any measure.

Obama’s current proposal for a direct tax credit for the creation of each new job is preferable to the “supply side” method which devastated the American middle class both times it was tried. We should all hope America’s middle class can be revitalized by a more equitable distribution of tax breaks, seeing through the ruse of trickle-down theories, and rewarding ONLY those businesses who create jobs in their communities.

But regardless of where you weigh in on today’s economic debates, you all have a chance now to be a part of the process and let the President’s Recovery Board know what YOU think. You can submit your ideas here using this web form, or direct email here.