When my wife, Kathy, and older daughter Sarah and her partner Lisa heard the three major networks declare Al Gore winner of the Presidential election that November evening in 2000, quickly nullified bv George W. Bush’s cousin working at FOX News, we knew to our horror, immediately and instinctively, that we were witness to bloodless coup.

So did millions of other Americans, and we all started immediately descending on Washington to protest.

But every other word out of FOX, CNN, and MSN was WMD, and we just couldn’t quite overcome Bush’s supporters, who kept screaming at us, “Get over it!,” meaning Bush’s selection by Anton Scalia and his four cohorts, overruling the Florida Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

I soon aferward learned that the counsel for Northampton County’s Democratic-controlled government was the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Rome, Comisky, and McCauley, a fundraiser for and advisor to Tom Ridge when he represented the Congressional district including Erie in Washington, where he first met George H.W. Bush, the CIA director, later when Ridge became Govenor of Pennsylvania, and still later when Resident George W. Bush appointed Ridge to the Office of Homeland Security and then as Secretary of HSD.

I began to become suspicious when I learned that a Republican fundraiser was legal and financial counsel to Democratic Northampton Council in the floating of its series of multi-million bonds beginning with the issuance of the $30 million bond in 1998 for construction of the county’s juvenile prison on Ferry Street, Easton, Pennsylvania, the county seat.

I also learned that Blank Rome’s managing partner and CEO was David F. Girard-DiCarlo, a “pioneer” in Dubyuh’s 2000 campaign, responsible for raising at least $100,000 personally, and in the 2004 re-election cycle, promoted to a “ranger,” responsible for personally raising at least $200,000 in campaign contributions.

I then learned that soon after President George H.W. Bush’s defeat in 1992, his counsel and then Secretary of the Department of Transportation, Arthur J. Rothberg, came to Easton as Lafayette College’s president and began organizing for the next Presidential election in 1996.

The Republican candidate, Bob Dole, lost that bid to Bill Clinton, but had success, of course, in 2000, with the selection of W.

I then learned that Northampton County was issuing multi-million-dollar low-interest loans to Lafayette and Moravian colleges and to Lehigh University, the latter two located in Bethlehem, Northampton County, first through its Higher Education Authority, and later through the HEA’s successor, the General Purpose Authority.

Northampton County created the GPA to replace the HEA for the purpose of circumventing the latter authority’s outstanding bond debt, amounting to millions of dollars.

Northampton County also created the GPA as successor to the Easton Hospital Authority (EHA) for the same money-laundering purpose of circumnavigating the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Municipality Authorities Act of 1945, the statute governing the incorporation and organization of authorities.

In 2005, finally overburdened with this monumental debt, a desperate and financially destitute Northampton County had no way out but to acceded to the demands of Blank Rome and other financial advisers like the late Jeff Skinner of Allentown’s Structured Finance, Harrisburg lobbyist Elmer Hainel, Raymond James and later Merrill Lynch salaried broker Maurice “Mossie” Murphy, and Michael Setley of Concord Financial Services of Reading to refund the county’s massive debt through financially risky interest-rate swaps known in financial jargon as swaptions or derivatives, of the kind that bankrupted Orange County, California and that financier Warren Buffet eschewed as financial WMDs.

I suspect that much of these millions of dollars, raised ostensibly for “economic development” like Easton’s Riverwalk, the Eastonian, and the Majestic, and Bethlehem’s Riverport, Starters Pub, U.S. Cold Storage, another Majestic, and the Sands BethWorks LLP Casino went into “slush funds” for political campaigns.