Feb 22, 2025 Seth Grossman Weekly WPG Radio Message: US Still Paying Stockton U. To Make $6,667 Per Gal. Maple Syrup!

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The reason most Americans oppose Trump for cutting back the federal government is they believe these programs are essential. Just before I cam on the air to talk to you, I was with a group having bagels and coffee at a condo in Atlantic City. And most of the people at my table were saying, “Oh, I’ve never seen such turmoil. Trump is wrecking the government. How could Trump possibly be doing that?”

But if you knew the details, then you’d have a different view. And a lot of those details are posted at libertyandprosperity.com. So far, Trump, has cut the USAID budget. People are saying, oh, it’s so horrible. How could you be against helping poor people overseas.

Trump made cuts in the Department of Education. People are saying, “How can Trump cut back education?”  So far, Trump did not even touch the Department of Agriculture. However, we can see that waste right here in South Jersey.

The US Department of Agriculture was established by President Lincoln in 1862 to protect farmers during the disruption of the Civil War. He wanted to protect their income from ups and downs in the market. He wanted to protect the soil from erosion. He wanted to help them sell their crops overseas.

But what is the U.S. Department spending money on in New Jersey today? Just look at our post at USDA Gives Stockton Another $500,000 To Market $6,666 Per Gallon Maple Syrup – Liberty and Prosperity

For the past five years, Stockton University has gotten a million dollars from the US Department of Agriculture for its maple syrup program. What did it do with that million dollars? They were studying whether it’s feasible to produce maple syrup in South Jersey. Over the past five years, they spent a million dollars and produced 150 gallons of maple syrup. That comes to $6,667 per gallon, That is a very expensive way to learn that making maple syrup is just not practical in South Jersey. It costs less than $35 per gallon to make maple syrup in Wisconsin, Vermont, Maine, and the Poconos of Pennsylvania. Why is it so much cheaper to make maple syrup up there? Why is it so expensive to make it down here? 

Very simple. It’s the weather. Maple trees only produce lots of sap for sugar when you have a whole lot of days where it’s freezing at night and thaws out in the daytime. You have those weather conditions in the Poconos, Vermont, Wisconsin and Maine. But you don’t have that weather here in South Jersey. So that’s why it takes nearly $7,000 to make a gallon of maple syrup here. 

You would think the Department of Agriculture would say, okay. We spent a million dollars, and now we know it doesn’t pay to make maple syrup down here. But no. They just reported in the Press of Atlantic City last week that the US Department of Agriculture gave Stockton a new half a million dollar grant to market that South Jersey maple syrup. 

So, I guess you could ask, Vince Mazzeo if he could sell some of that maple syrup at Masseo’s Market in Northfield. He can’t sell it for cost, He’d have to mark it up to $8,000 a gallon to make a profit. So Mazzeo’s could put South Jersey maple syrup up for sale at $1,000 a pint.

Anyway, this is the type of stuff that President Trump and Elon Musk are doing away with.  They have to do it. Congress would never  get rid of this stuff because, you’re hiring your friends and your relatives at these projects at Stockton College.

Let me give you another example. The US Department of Agriculture has a rural electrification program. t sounds like a good idea to think, “Oh, These poor farmers in the middle of South Dakota need help to get electric lights. We’ve got to help the poor farmers get electricity”.  But it turns out that $16 million of that rural electrical electrification program is spent in here South Jersey. They just gave $16 million to about 40 businesses in mostly suburban towns in New Jersey. They gave $800,000 to a furniture store in Somers Point, which is hardly a rural farm area. That $800,000 went to put solar panels and electric vehicles charging stations at its warehouse in Somers Point. So this just shows how these programs are completely, mis-used and go off track.

But then there’s another angle to it. It’s not just waste. Look at the $2 billion that was paid to a Green Energy group tied to Stacey Abrams, a perennial candidate who’s always running for something in Georgia. This isn’t waste. The Democrats are using our money to pay their candidates to run for office and pay for newspapers and advertising to help keep them in power.

Anybody who has seen the way big corporations work, the way universities work, the way government works, knows there is a DEI mafia. A handful of people get high paying jobs even though they are not qualified, and often when there is no need for the work in the first place. But they have political influence, and they get votes for the right people.

Once they get their positions, they only hire people who agree with their politics and support their programs. And there are different groups of victims who get these jobs, leftists, black Democrats, LBGQT and so on. Once they once they get their jobs, they make sure that their corporation, their university, their government agency will only take students, or hire employees, or give grants or scholarships to people who agree with them politically.  And if you disagree with them politically, you know that to protect your career, you have to pretend you agree with them or keep your mouth shut and let it go on.

That’s why you have so many leftist organizations out there. The people doing all that work for them are getting paid by some government agency, or government grant. They’re getting paid to promote these woke agendas. But if you’re a conservative like the people in our group, Liberty and Prosperity, we have to beg people to pay $75 to buy have a ticket for a fundraiser, like the one we’re having tomorrow at Josie Kelly’s. That’s how we pay our expenses. 

Everything we do is voluntary with voluntary donations. Everything the left does, they’ll get to do a Kwanzaa program, they’ll get to do a  Juneteenth program. They all get paid. We have a, Liberty and Prosperity to remember Richard Somers in September, every dollar to put the event together comes out of our own pockets as donations. Every time leftist organizations have these, events to promote leftist causes, or leftist narratives, taxpayers paying for it.

That is what Elon Musk is uncovering, and that is what Trump is getting rid of. It’s about much more than just saving money. It’s about having a level playing field. It’s about not having to fight all these woke, leftist organizations paid for with out own money.

It is so unfair to have to give up so much of our time and money to fight them.  That’s the big picture.

DEMASI:  And, of course, tomorrow is the big day. You should mention that. 

GROSSMAN:  Yes. It is. We sold a lot of tickets online, but we will also be selling tickets at the door. It’s $75. It’s at Josie Kelly’s in Somers Point. The price includes a cash bar buffet. It’s at 2:00 in the afternoon. You can learn more at the home page of libertyandprosperity.com.

Our keynote speaker is Bill Spadea, one of five candidates, running for governor on Republican side in the June Primary Election. We want to hear what he has to say. And we want him to know about our 11 Point Program. There’s going to be a lot of drama there because, right now, there are five people in a race on the Republican side. 

You have Jack Ciattarelli, very good Republican, very well known, ran against the Republican establishment in 2017. He ran against Kim Guadagno, lost that primary narrowly. He lost against Phil Murphy in 2021, so he’s a a solid candidate. 

Bill Spadea has been running as the pro-Trump conservative, you know, as the alternative ant-GOP Establishment candidate. And he he expected it to be a two man race. But what happened is that you have other conservatives who are unhappy with Bill Spadea.

For example, you have Ed Durr, who calls himself Ed The Trucker. Ed drives a furniture delivery truck for Raymour and Flanagan. He’s running against, really running as a conservative against Spadea. And, of course, the thing about Ed Durer, he was the one who knocked off Steve Sweeney, and he said, I’m the, you know, I’m the giant killer. But the problem with Ed Durr is it wasn’t him who, defeated Steve Sweeney. The teacher’s union whacked Steve Sweeney because they were mad at Sweeney for not bailing out the New Jersey insolvent pension fund. The Teachers Union wanted a mandatory new state property tax to bail out the pension system. It was the Teachers Union, not Ed the Trucker who knocked off Sweeney, And Ed Durr was defeated just two years later. So, I don’t know if he’s really a serious candidate. 

But in North Jersey, a lot of the conservatives also unhappy with Spadea, and they just came up with a new candidate who announced three weeks ago.  His name is Mario Kranjak. He is the mayor of Englewood Cliffs, a small town by the George Washington Bridge. He has a lot of money, and he started running. A lot of your conservatives in North Jersey, like Steve Lonergan, Mike Crispi, Phil Rizzo, did not get behind Bill Spadea. And now you have them and Newt Gingrich coming out for this Mario Kranjac.

Now I don’t know how serious he is.  If you’re going to run for Governor, you can’t throw your hat in the ring just four months before an election and expect to be a serious candidate. Even though New Jersey is a small state, anyone who’s ever driven our crummy roads, like I did when I ran for Governor, knows that you look on a map and it says, oh, it’s only 30 miles away and it takes you two hours to get there. I mean, it’s really hard to get around New Jersey, but that’s another topic.

So, I I think there’s going to be drama because, Bill Spadea really has to make his case tomorrow. Why is it that he didn’t connect with conservatives in North Jersey? What’s missing? And either he’s going to, you know, make a new presentation or do or say something dramatic to win people over. Or he’s not. He has to turn things around. That’s why I think it is going to be a very interesting event tomorrow, if you’re listening here on Saturday. Now, of course, if you’re listening on Sunday afternoon to this broadcast, you missed it, but the video will be posted on libertyandprosperity.com. 

Meanwhile, on on the Democrat side, you have six candidates running for Govdernor. Again, both the Democratic and Republican parties pick their candidates in a Primary Election on June 3. If you want to vote in that June Primary, you have to declare yourself as either a Republican or a Democrat.

On the Democratic side, Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark is a candidate. So is Steve Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City. Sean Spiller, the head of the NJEA Teacher’s Union is a candidate, and he has lots of money behind him. Sean Spiller gets a straight salary of $370,000, and he medical and pension benefits worth $70,000 So Sean Spiller is paid a total of $440,000 each year.  And he is claiming to be an ordinary working man. And the NJEA Teacher’s Union has plenty of money. It collects almost a thousand dollars each year in dues from more than a hundred thousand members. That makes it the most powerful political organization in America with more than $100 million to spend each year.

The fourth Democratic candidate for Governor is former State Senate President Steve Sweeney. He is the one who got whacked by the teachers union in 2021 for not wanting to bail out their pension funds with a new statewide property tax.

And there are two others. You have Democratic Congresswoman Mickie Sherrill. She is the Democrat who defeated Republican Assemblyman Jay Weber in that 2018 Blue Wave. You also have Josh Gottheimer. He’s the Democrat who ousted Republican Congressman Scott Garrett in 2018.  and, of course, I have a personal grudge here. Remember how the Republican leaders s trashed me for, being so horrible when I opposed diversity instead of talent and achievement to hire people. And they gave all their money to candidates like Jay Weber and Scott Garrett. I ended up running stronger, without their help than these two Republicans in safe districts with their help. So there’s a little bit of irony there.

Meanwhile, speaking of Republicans picking their, candidates. Although there is a Primary Election on June 3, there’s something going on in Galloway Township today, Saturday, at the Carriage House. That’s where Atlantic County Republicans are having their convention. So, if Republicans and Democrats, pick their candidates at a primary election inJune, what is the purpose of having an Atlantic County convention this morning?   A

This is where all the, Republican leaders, the elected officials, the heads of all the Republican clubs, they get together and they decide who they’re going To back in the primary. And whoever they pick gets the label “Regular Republican” and when the Democrats do it says “Regular Democrat”.  And everybody knows that all the bosses are for these candidates. And usually the way they design the ballot, you often don’t even know that the other candidates are running.

So even though the parties pick their candidates in a June secret ballot election, the county conventions they have three months before the y really shows who the who the favorites are and those favorites win about 90 of the time.

So it’s going to be very interesting. I don’t know if there’s any controversy here. Probably the Republicans are gonna pick, Claire Swift and Don Guardian to again be their candidates for the assembly. And they’ll they’ll probably, you know, I don’t know who they’re gonna pick for the, the commissioner seats that they used to call freeholders.  Maybe George Tibbitt of Atlantic City will get one of the nominations, but that’s what’s going on. It’s starting, it actually started at 09:00 this morning. 

 Another, brief, point:  That that woke teacher in Egg Harbor Township who posted, “Blank Trump and blank anyone who voted for him” and 
he also posted “I think we’re at the moment where assassination needs to be part of the conversation”. Well, he they announced he’s resigning or retiring at the end of the year. So that’s, that takes care of him. 

And, the the only other, thing going on is the, the so called PILOT program. Republican senator Vince Palestina was on Harry Hurley’s program saying how we ought to continue giving the same tax breaks to the casinos in perpetuity. I only have a minute. It’s tough to do that justice. All the details are posted at our libertyandprosperity.com website. But the bottom line is our state constitution says that all real estate in New Jersey is  to be tax assessed at its true fair value and taxed at the rate for everybody in the town.

The people who wrote our state constitution thought it could be very corrupt if politicians could just decide to tax some people at one rate and  other people at a different rate. But Polistina said having the Legislature decide how much the casinos pay will bring stability. But it didn’t work out last time. Remember ten years ago, they said, we’re going to tax the casinos based on all their income. And as soon as the casinos thought they were paying too much money, they said, okay. Let’s change the rules after five years so we don’t have to pay based on our online gambling. 

So the rules get get changed all the time. And you also saw how the PILOT worked in Atlantic City. Blattstein build a water park at the old Showboat for $20 million, but they are taxing it as if it were only worth $356,000. There’s nothing more corrupting than when the people with the most money and influence in a town say, “We don’t care about getting efficient government and low taxes for everyone”.  We just want special deals that give us low taxes”.  That’s the downside of this Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) of everybody following the same rules and paying at the same rate, and it’s all based on the value of your property.

Anyway, Liberty and Prosperity has breakfast discussions 9:30 to 10:30 every Saturday morning at Sal’s coal fired pizza, Groveland Avenue, and New Road in Somers Point, and I’m late. Have a great week.

DEMASI:  Okay. As always, you’re late. Seth Grossman, Liberty and Prosperity. Liberty and prosperity dot com is the website. Check it out. A lot of good stuff on that. It is Talk With a Purpose every Saturday, nine till noon, WPG Talk Radio 95.5fm I’m John DeMasi.