Good Grief. He's back. Alphonse Damato, that is.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/wayne-barrett-wizard-al-article-1.2256565

And I thought Halloween was in October. Yikes. ( shiver, shiver. )Yikes.

Release the hounds.

>>>In 2003, former U.S. Sen. Al D'Amato, now a leading lobbyist, vaulted into the headlines for earning $500,000 to place a single phone call on behalf of a client to the chairman of the MTA to save a deal that was said to be going sour. Four hundred thousand of that was a "success" bonus for putting the deal back on track.

Shortly after, Republican John Flanagan, then a freshman senator with just five months on the job — and a new salaried employee of a law firm founded by D'Amato's brother -sponsored a bill designed to protect D'Amato. The Senate was about to vote on a Republican-backed bill that would extend lobbying disclosure requirements to state authorities like the MTA, whose chair sprung into action after D'Amato's entreaty.

At the last minute, Flanagan introduced an alternative filled with poison pills. Not only did it exempt "vendor disputes," precisely what prompted D'Amato's half-million-dollar call, it required the lobbying commission to establish "intentionality" to penalize lobbyists who violated the statutes.

Flanagan's sham bill, so rushed he had to handwrite the memo supporting it on the floor, conflicted with the Assembly bill that had already passed and finished off any effort at reform that year.

No wonder that on NY1 shortly after Flanagan's recent elevation to Senate majority leader, D'Amato said: "I'm glad to see that John has taken the reins." Elsewhere, he expressed "tremendous relief."

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.>>>> The rest at link.