I warned Northampton County, Pennsylvania, at least six times that becoming a party to rate swaps (swaptions) with counter parties Blank Rome, the county’s long-time bond counsel, Concord Financial Services of Bethlehem, Structured Financial Services of Allentown, and Harrisburg lobbyist Elmer Hainel (a former stock broker with Raymond James, financier of the county’s 2001 $111 million megabond and after that a borker with Merrill Lynch was fraught with financial risk to the county’s taxpayers.

The county paid its counter parties exorbitant fees for their services; i.e, the refinancing of $67 million of the county’s $111 million megabond for courthouse and prison expansion and improvements.

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One of President-elect Barack Obama’s top political campaign contributors is fellow Chicagoan real estate mogul multi-bilionaire Neil bluhm, as reported by reporters Matthew Mosk and Alec MacGillis in the April 11, 2008, edition of The Washington Post.

Here’s what the writers of The Washington Post article report  about the Barack-Bluhm relationship: A “major figure of the Chicago finance elite of Obama’s is billionaire Neil Bluhm, a hotel and office building developer.  But Bluhm has posed a symblolic problem for Obama in Pennsylvania, site of an April 22 primary, because his latest endeavor is a push to open a controversial casino [called SugarHouse] along the [Delaware River] in the Fishtown and Northern Liberties neighborhoods] of the Philadelphia waterfront.

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Further proof that the Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ) enacted by the Pennsylvania legislature in 1988 and signed into law by Governor Tom Ridge and subsequent illegal “extensions” lie in today’s edition of The Express-Times in an article reported by Douglas Brill dated November 30, 2008 titled “Bangor Area pulls tax break of anchor Bangor Trust Building.”

This fraud began in December 1998 during the third term of Easton Mayor Thomas F. Goldsmith and continued into his fourth term when Governor Ed Rendell appointed him to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PALCB).

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The city of Easton, Pennsylvania, and Arcadia Properties, the private developer of Riverwalk, Northampton County, of which Easton is the governmental seat, the Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority (LANTA),  the Easton Parking Authority (EPA), and the town of Phillipsburg, New Jersey, have attempted to dupe for personal and political gain the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission (DRJTBC).

At today’s meeting of the DRJTBC in Solebury, Pennsylvania, i and other Easton residents testified that all of these political jurisdictions have misappropriated local, state, and federal funds to finance the Riverwalk scheme, including funds inserted in U.S. Senate appropriations bill as earmarks by Appropriations Committee Chairman, Arlen Specter, and his former Senate colleague, Rich Santorum.

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Yes, Open the Books, Springtown, PA, we have been duped by Michael Perrucci and Sheldon Adelson, both principals of BethWorks Now, city of Bethlehem officials, NMIH President Steven Donches, Executive Director of Musikfest and ArtsQuest, and The Morning Call, as seen in the scholarly work of Sharon Ann Holt, titled “Report from the Field.”

BethWorks Now, consisting of the Sands Casino, Musikfest, ArtsQuest, and other venues, is Pennsylvania’s biggest fraud since the infamous Walking Purchase of 1737, when son Thomas of the commonwealth’s founder William Penn defrauded the Delaware and Lenape Indian tribe of hundreds of acres of land in Northampton County, including 315 acres in Forks Township, headquarters of the Binne & Smith Crayon Crayola Corporation.

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The Morning Call newspaper, whose main distribution area is Lehigh and Northampton counties, Pennsylvania, continues to conspire with the the officials of Northampton County in the construction of a Sands BethWorks slot machine gambling casino complemented by a luxury hotel, entertainment center, parking deck, and upscale shopping center, etc.

This ambitious project, which the Sands BethWorks developers have already scaled back,  lies  within the flood plain of the Lehigh River and wetland and directly in the path of storm-water runoff from South Mountain and the Lehigh University campus..

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In the http://www.billybytes.com/blog/ post of June 15, 2006, I write about the Easton, Pennsylvania, HOPE VI project of the Easton Housing Authority (EHA) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Development in Washington, D.C.

Fellow blogger, Nazareth resident Bernie O’Hare III, in a post dated March 14, 2007, and featuring me, Bernie also makes references to the HOPE VI project.

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The Morning Call, a Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, mainstream news media print publication, carried an April 3, 2008, column by Washington Post nationally syndicated columnist George Will titled “Gambling global appeal profits Venetian’s Adelson.”

This column is titled “The Mogul Who Bet on Vegas,” the mogul being Sheldon Adelson, the third richest man in America after Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and the owner of the Venetian casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Macao, Communist China, the latter being the largest casino in the world.

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I can’t let this Easter Sunday pass without referring to my www.billybytes.com article titled “Springtime Follies” dated April 13, 2004.

The article opens with the paragraph, “Like Roman centurions on Calvary, rolling dice for the possession of Jesus’ robe, the Council members of Northampton County [Pennsylvania] gamble over its tattered finances.  This Thursday, April 15, 2004, Council is scheduled once again to refinance the county’s illegal $111 million bond, after tabling this dangerously risky venture in each of its last two meetings - ignoring the pleadings of Blank, Rome, Comisky, and McCauley bond counsel Jeff Blumenfeld, and responding instead to the warnings of opponent [sic] of the refinancing scheme.”

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