NJ’s Stockton University is broke and heavily in debt. It is short $25 million just for this year. Without major cuts or new income, Stockton will be short $32 million next year. Stockton quickly burning up the endowment money it got from years of donations and fundraising. We all know why. We have been talking about it for years.
Click here for link to October 11, 2026 post in Press of Atlantic City: Stockton University’s budget crisis is not getting better.
Last May, we proposed this 7-Point Plan to Save Stockton University:
1. Fire the overpaid “woke” professors and administrators who created the mess.
2. Replace them with less paid adjunct professors and administrators with real world business-experience and a diversity of political opinions.
3. Hire all new professors, administrators and staff based on talent, motivation and achievement rather than “diversity, equity and inclusion” and political conformity.
4. Use AI and technology to teach useful skills needed for good-paying jobs in business and industry.
5. Sell all Atlantic City properties and pay down all debt. Cancel all leases for properties outside Galloway campus.
6. End all sports programs.
7. Apply above savings to cut tuition to roughly $6,000 per year– roughly what a student can earn during one year.
Click here for link to full post: Stockton University Needs What Saved Atlantic City Government – Liberty and Prosperity
During this time, the cost of room, board, books and tuition at Stockton has exploded. When Stockton began in 1971. a year of Stockton coast roughly $900. At that time, most students could earn roughly $1,200 from a summer job.
In 2011, before Stockton began its building boom, the cost of room, board, books and tuition there was roughly $12,000 per year. At that time, most students could earn roughly $3,000 to $4,000 from a summer job.
Today, the total cost of a Stockton “education” is roughly $33,000 per year for New Jersey residents and $42,000 for out-of-state students.
To deal with this disaster, Joe Bertolino, Stockton’s new President is saying he plans to lay off 21 professors and “professional staff” next summer at the end of the school year. This is as helpful as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Above Video: Roughly 100 Stockton students chant, “1, 2, 3. Palestine will be free! 4, 5 6. Stockton is next!” Others say “F**k Genocide Joe!” (Referring to Stockton University President Joseph Bertolino).
Click below links or above image for video:
How many of these students are being prepared to hold a productive job? How many are learning to do more than complain and demand? How many would you hire for even an entry level job? How many are learning the responsibilities needed to marry and raise children. How many can speak or write complete sentences?
South Jersey Socialism is blocking a good new hotel in Ocean City. It supports bailing out a failed one in Atlantic City.
Today, the owner of successful Icona hotels in Wildwood and Avalon cannot get permits to build a new luxury Icona hotel in Ocean City. He has been trying to get them for the past two years. He wants to build it on the site of the old Wonderland Amusement Park that has been closed for the past two years. However, the Ocean City zoning law does not permit any hotels there. It does permit almost every other business that serves tourists. It permits amusement parks, arcades, parking lots, restaurants, shops and fast-food shops.
There were no zoning laws at all in New Jersey until 1928. Until then every landowner could build and do whatever he or she wanted on his or her own land, as long as the building or use did not create a “common law nuisance”. That was noise, smoke, vibrations or smells that “unreasonably annoyed or disturbed” people nearby.
That changed in 1928, when New Jersey allowed towns to adopt zoning laws. People who bought homes in residential neighborhoods did not want stores, factories, or gas stations built next to them. People who owned store or restaurants did not want new factories or power plants built next to their businesses.
The first zoning laws did little harm to the economy. Most business and factory owners did not want to build on expensive land where homes were built and people would complain. They preferred cheaper land far away.
However, zoning laws became corrupt and smothering during the 1960s. People with big fancy houses did not want poor or even middle income people living near them. Owners of successful businesses did not want new businesses competing with them. They used their influence to make new zoning laws that made almost every proposed new building or business in violation of something. As a result, builders and developers could not build anything new unless they got “variances”, “redevelopment approvals” or special changes to zoning laws that nobody else could get. Almost anyone with political influence could block or slow down almost any new project unless they got something out of it. As a result, fewer new houses, businesses, and factories were built. Every new building and business was far more expensive than it was before. Consumers had fewer choices and higher prices.
The refusal of Ocean City to allow a new hotel to replace the closed Wonderland Amusement park is typical of this. The Boardwalk between 6th and 7th Street was once filled with people every summer. However, it was almost deserted for during the past few summers. Fewer businesses earned money. Fewer people, especially young people were employed. State and local government and the Ocean City public schools raised less in taxes and had to raise taxes on everyone else.
However, people who live nearby would rather live next to a quiet empty lot than any business. Their property is worth more because they have less traffic and more parking spaces.
Above Image: The Beachwatch Condominium in Ocean City. Until 1985, it was the Beachwatch Motel! Last Wednesday, its condominium association president publicly opposed building a new hotel on the site of the closed Wonderland Amusement Park next door.
Last Wednesday, the president of the Beachwatch Condominium Association wrote. The Beachwatch condominium is a building of 46 mostly one-bedroom units. It was built in the 1970s as the Beachwatch Motel. However, it was converted from a motel to a condominium in 1985.
This is classic example of how bad zoning laws bring out the worst in people. There was no problem with a 46-room motel on the block at 7th Street and the Boardwalk during the 1970s. There was no problem with a 144-foot, ten story moving Ferris wheel at that amusement park. However, the president of the association for a condominium used to be a motel is now claiming that the block is no longer suitable for hotels and motels, and that having a five-story hotel instead of a ten-story Ferris wheel would ruin Ocean City!
This is one of many reasons why everything is so expensive today. This is why so many people can’t afford the things they need. But nobody is even talking about this–except a handful of us at LibertyAndProsperity.com
Meanwhile, while state and local laws are smothering the building of a new hotel that is needed in Ocean City, they are about to bail out a failed hotel in Atlantic City.
These are both classic examples of socialism–having government and politicians decide which businesses succeed and which fail.
That story began in the 1980s. At that time, casino gambling was just made legal in Atlantic City. There was no competition other than Las Vegas. Atlantic City casinos were making buckets of money. They were also paying enormous amounts of money as a Casino Reinvestment Development fund run by a state government agency called the CRDA or Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.
When New Jersey legalized casinos in 1978, there was a dispute over how much of a state tax casinos should pay on their gross winnings. Some argued that they should pay 10%. Others argued it should be 8%. As a compromise, New Jersey legislators agreed to tax casinos at 8% of their gross gambling winnings. However, the casinos were forced to “invest” another 2% of their winnings in projects approved by the state. During the 1980s, that fund was controlled by a state “Casino Reinvestment Development Authority” controlled by state Republicans including Atlantic County State Senator Bill Gormley.
During the 1980s, the CRDA leveraged moneys from the casino “reinvestment” tax to build hundreds of projects all over New Jersey. In Atlantic City, they included a baseball stadium, three new bus stations, and lots of low income housing.
They also included turning Atlantic City’s Convention Hall on the Boardwalk into a new TV studio for the Miss America Pageant and a hockey stadium. They would then build a new train station, a new convention center, and the Sheraton Hotel nearly a mile away from the beach, Boardwalk, and nearest casino. At that time, Donald Trump was building his new Trump Plaza Casino Hotel right next to the old Boardwalk Convention Hall. He repeatedly said that putting the new trains station and convention center “in the middle of nowhere” was ridiculous. It turned out that Trump was right. The train station, the new convention center and the hotel were all obvious failures as soon as they opened. The baseball stadium was also a failure.
The baseball stadium was abandoned. However, state politicians tried to fix the failed train station, convention center and hotel “in the middle of nowhere”. They tried to connect them to the Boardwalk and the Boardwalk casinos with a “corridor” of roughly 100 new retail shops and restaurants. They called it the “Tanger Outlets” or “The Walk”.
The state and local governments gave many tax breaks. They also spent roughly $421 million. Most of this money was borrowed. To repay those loans, the state imposed new taxes on hotel rooms, drinks, and entertainment in Atlantic City. It also imposed a $2 tax on all cars parked at the casinos. Until then, almost all Atlantic City casinos offered free parking at their parking garages. The news taxes and the end of free parking in Atlantic City crippled and shut down dozens of businesses.
The corridor project failed. Most of its shops and restaurants are closed or empty. The train station, the new convention center and the Sheraton Hotel are still failures. They are still “in the middle of nowhere.”
Now, a new bunch of state and local politicians are demanding that government “save” the Sheraton Hotel and the new convention center by raising taxes, borrowing more money and spending more government money.
This is classic socialism. Where there is free enterprise (what communists call “capitalism”) private businesses shut down and replace failures that lose money. As former astronaut and Eastern Airlines CEO once said, “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.”
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