Barrett: lobbyist D'Amato "rules now without the accountability of a public office" (I add mention of Ratner relationship)

From Wayne Barrett (ex-Village Voice) in the Daily News today, The wizard of Al D'Amato: The former U.S. senator and current powerhouse lobbyist has his hooks everywhere, including in new Senate boss John Flanagan:

In many ways, New York state politics is Al D'Amato's world; we just live in it. And Flanagan, the state's single most powerful Republican, is no exception to that rule.
Al D'Amato is nearly 78, older than Jacob Javits was in 1980, when D'Amato beat him with TV ads that attacked him for being 76 and still wanting "six more years" in the U.S. Senate.
Yet, try as we might — and New Yorkers threw D'Amato out of the Senate 17 years ago — we just can't get rid of Fixer Fonz, whose booming lobbying firm now attracts $8 million a year in seduction fees, the second most of the licensed wirepullers in the state.
In fact, D'Amato is everywhere, still highly visible, yet at the same time invisibly haunting crime scenes across New York.
He made several indirect appearances in the iin the indictment of Dean Skelos, the third Senate majority leader he helped install....

There's much, much more, and here's the closing:

With a senate leader beholden to him, a governor allied with him, a Nassau county executive in his pocket, and extraordinary lifelong ties to the father of U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Al D'Amato, dubbed Senator Shakedown decades ago, rules now without the accountability of a public office, a shadow cast across an already darkened capital.

There was no mention of Forest City Ratner/Bruce Ratner in the article, hence my comment:

And let's not forget D'Amato's longstanding relationship with Bruce Ratner of Forest City Ratner, developer of the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project in Brooklyn, and the Nassau Coliseum.

Consider $3M+ in fees for D'Amato's firm, as well as a rather fishy sequence in which Ratner contributed to D'Amato's PAC, which then contributed to the campaign of Nassau Executive Ed Mangano

Consider $3M+ in fees for D'Amato's firm, as well as a rather fishy sequence in which Ratner contributed to D'Amato's PAC, which then contributed to the campaign of Nassau Executive Ed Mangano: