That bankrupt Bethlehem Steel was bought by vulture venturer Wilbur L. Ross for $1.5 million, and then turned around and sold it to the another vulture venturer, India native Lakshmi Mittal for $2.5 million, was not a coincidence.

Ross, a Democrat married to and divorced from former New York Republican Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey Ross, is the next door neighbor of Richard Fischbein in the Hamptons, Long Island, The Great Gatsby country of F. Scott fitzgerald.

Fischbein is the senior partner of Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner, and Harding of New York City.  He is a member of the Democratic National Committee, a generous campaign contributor to the the party, and a frequent guest in the President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore White House coffee klatches.

It was over coffee in the kitchen of Ross or of neighbor Fischbein that Ross learned that of the 1600-1800 acres of defunct Bethlehem Steel he bought through a New York bankrupcy court that 126 acres were still available, and this is the acreage that Fischbein and his partners New York realtor Newmark & Co. (recently merged with London’s real estate giant Knight and Frank), BethWorks Now, Las Vegas Sands Casino, the New Jersey law firm of Michael Perrucci and former NJ Governor Jim Florio, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, and others.

It was through these political connections that Las Vegas Sands had the inside track on any of its competitors.

Ross and Rendell are already looking to 2008 and through wealthy campaign contributors like Las Vegas Sands Casino owner Sheldon Adelson are raising money for the candidacy of Hillary Clinto.

Generally Adelson contributes to the Republican Party, he and his wife Miriam, a physician, donating $500,000 to President George W. Bush’s 2005 inauguration.

But Adelson knows that George W. Bush will not be a candidate in 2008.