Sheldon G. Adelson, “chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, who ranks sixth on the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s billionaires,” as reported in today’s edition of The New York Times, in an article titled “Big Coffers and Rising Voice at Freedom’s Watch.”

Adelson is a creator of Freedom’s Watch, founded this summer by a dozen wealthy conservatives. This group’s core members include besides Adelson Mel Sembler, a shopping center magnate based in St. Petersburg, Fla., headquarters of the Raymond James investment firm that underwrote the Northampton County, Pennsylvania (of which the city of Easton is the seat) illegal fiscal year 2001 $111 million general-obligation (meaning the county’s taxpayers pick up the tab) for courthouse, prison expansion, and “economic development.”

Except for the $43 million allocated for the courthouse and $22-plus million for the prison, the balance has been disbursed for “economic development,” such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot- and drug store-anchored shopping centers, which accrue to Sembler’s wealth.

Another $13-plus million of the illegal bond issue has gone to the construction and landscaping of Commerce Center Boulevard traversing the former Bethlehem Steel Corporation tract in the city’s South Side neighborhood.

The bankrupt steel maker’s 1800 acres fell first into the hands of International Steel Group owner Wilbur Ross, Tecumseh Steel, Indian (the country) steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal.

These speculators then sold the defunct steel maker’s subdivided acreage to Lehigh Valley Industrial Park Incorporated, which in turn and in league with an oligarchy of Pennsylvania Commonwealth, Northampton County, city of Bethlehem officials, and private developers further subdivided the property to California-headquartered Majestic Realty and Bethlehem-based developer Louis Pektor, president and CEO of Ashley Development.

Pektor subsequently built the luxury condos he called Riverport on the South Side Bethlehem Commerce Center on the banks and in the flood plain of the Lehigh River.

He has since been trying to build more than 100 luxury condos and/or apartments in the city of Easton, one he calls the Majestic, on a site also located in the flood plain of the Lehigh River downstream from his Riverport.

(At the same time, a major Pektor competitor, Richard Thulin, president and CEO of Arcadia Properties, is attempting to build 147 luxury condos and an upscale retail complex in the flood plain of the Delaware River.

Another founder of the elite Freedom’s Watch is John M. Templeton Jr., the conservative philanthropist from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, neighboring the city of Philadelphia, the legal and political center of Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell and the law firm of Blank, Rome, Comisky, and McCauley, commonly called Blank Rome.

Blank Rome, with a branch office in Allentown, Pennsylvania, through its associate Jeff Blumenfeld, provides bond- counseling services to Northampton County.

Timothy “Tad” Decker, former managing partner of the Philadelphia law firm Cozen O’Connor and founding, former Rendell-appointed chairman of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board involved in the licensing of the Commonwealth’s 14 casino/racino gambling sites - including BethWorks - represented (or perhaps misrepresented) the Delaware Indian Tribe of Oklahoma to open a casino in the city of Easton’s neighboring Forks Township on disputed land currently occupied by Binney & Smith’s world headquarters and other private owners in the tribe’s losing competition with the casino combine of Adelson, the law firm of Florio, Perrucci, Steinhardt, and Faber of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and the New York City real estate firm of Newmark & Company.

Evidence exists that the legal battle between the Delaware Indian Tribe of Oklahoma and BethWorks Now may have involved the K-Street influence of convicted felon “Casino” Jack Abramoff.