New Jersey has one of the largest and most ruthless student loan programs in the country, described by one bankruptcy lawyer as “state-sanctioned loan-sharking.” The state is less strict about collecting on debts, however, when it comes to bankrupt casinos owned by celebrity real estate developers.

According to health department records and apparently unsatisfied customers, up until very recently the Trump Taj Mahal casino and hotel in Atlantic City was crawling with mice, roaches, and bed bugs.

“Donald Trump says Carl Icahn should be in charge of the entire American economy!” shouted the man into the bullhorn as we stood in front of Trump Tower. “Everything you hate about the American economy, Carl Icahn does.” America’s working class Trump supporters still have ample time to reconsider.

When the chips are down, check to see if you’re in a building with Trump’s name on it and then for god’s sake get out of there (strategically).

On the same day Macy’s narrowly averted a strike by its employees, union representatives say there is “overwhelming support” for a July 1 strike by more than 6,000 Atlantic City casino workers, whose average pay is less than $25,000 per year. Fortunately, strikes tend to work.

A number of letters written by Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, will go up for auction on Wednesday. In one, written just a few months after its April 1990 inauguration, she offers a few choice words on Donald Trump’s $1 billion Atlantic City casino, the Trump Taj Mahal.

Atlantic City casinos are going bankrupt left and right, largely due to a major oversupply of casinos on the east coast and nationwide. New Jersey’s proposed solution? Build more casinos.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — There are about as many ideas about how to save Atlantic City as there are residents of Atlantic City (39,551). I don’t say that hyperbolically. When I was there this past weekend every single person I talked to knew exactly what was wrong with it and how to fix it: it’s either Trump’s fault, or the lack of Trump, or because too many casinos opened, or because the casinos aren’t fancy enough—many don’t offer luxury massages and club experiences like in Las Vegas. Or it’s because the city’s inherently gritty casinos tried to be fancy and that was a bad idea. If Atlantic City just goes back to its roots, some people said, perhaps it could be the seedy, smoke-filled pleasure capital of the northeast once again.

As Boardwalk Empire begins its final season, so does real life Atlantic City, where grand casinos are closing at an unprecedented clip. Our elected leaders' solution to these financial troubles? More gambling. It will never work.

Over the course of under three weeks, the casino resort town of Atlantic City, N.J. will see its city lose three iconic casinos and over 8,000 jobs, leaving a quarter of the town's casino workforce unemployed.

The Revel Hotel and Casino—better known as the Jersey Shore's last, desperate attempt to hide its stale cigarette smell with a spritz of cloying eau de toilette—lost big today. The still-shiny-and-new $2.5 billion property plans to shut down next month, confirming once and for all that the Atlantic City dream is dead.

Hurricane Sandy lay waste to a large section of Atlantic City's iconic Boardwalk, with the storm itself still several miles off shore.

Atlantic City: the biggest shithole on the East Coast, where blocks of open-air crack markets immediately give way to cut-rate seedy casinos full of doomed and hopeless poverty-level day trippers in a geographic continuum of vice and despair unequaled anywhere in its chemical spill-laden state of New Jersey. Now it's easier to have your wedding there. Alert your spouse-to-be.

The desperate deluxe Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in gross glamorous Atlantic City features the best of everything, naturally. But now guests at Donald Trump's vomit-tinted Xanadu can look as great as the Taj makes them feel, as the hotel is awarding a $25,000 plastic surgery gift certificate to one lucky card player, good for "mix and match surgeries, including breast enhancements, tummy tucks, liposuction and face lifts." But why go so run-of-the-mill, when you could instead use that money to have the hair from a giraffe's nutsack grafted directly onto your scalp, which you might then style in a fetching, comb-forwarded fashion that's sure to excite your mail-ordered, Slovenian succubus bride? You do deserve the best, after all. [AP, photo via Getty]

Not happy with all the eardrum damage caused by her first aural abomination, Countess LuAnn de Lesseps is back with a new song and a new video, this time co-starring some other Real Housewives of New York. Know what? It's not completely horrible!

Since last December, some dude named Don Johnson from Pennsylvania has been single-handedly beating the crap out of Atlantic City casinos. So far he's won over $15 million from just three: Borgata, Tropicana, and Caesars Palace. The Press of Atlantic City caught up with Johnson, and corroborated his claims with casino officials.

Well, last night HBO unrolled its latest great hope, a high-budget, prestige drama all about Prohibition-era Atlantic City and its various denizens — from honest but grimy to wealthy but crimey. (Whee!) What'd we all think?

Donald Trump came down from Trump Tower yesterday to testify in court that Trump Entertainment Resorts needs the Trump name if the Trump casinos will be successful again. Everyone disagrees, but he's holding his name hostage. Trump!

For the most important sociological experiment of our time, we must observe our seven guidos not only in environments they are comfortable in, but abroad as well. Still, it as in their native habitat where they truly flourish.

We have no special guests this week, but that doesn't mean this live blog won't be full of special guests, like you. And we won't get a Snooki punch, but we'll get a ShamWOWW punch. And it's two hours!