Stockton plans to shut the hotel next year, refit it for use in its hospitality-management program, and add student housing at Seaview, four miles from its campus, spokesman Tim Kelly told me.
Election inspection
Did corporate money put
Republicans over the top in last week's election? Or was it
President Obama's haughty ways? The
tea-party promise to "Take Back Our Country"? Outrage over health care, bank reform, and the budget deficit?
No, it was about wallets. "The people said Tuesday, 'I am hurting, my son or daughter is out of work, I overbinged on my credit card, I made too many loans on my house, I'm not moving forward, you guys in Washington had two years to straighten it out, and you didn't,' " insists lame-duck Sen. Ted Kaufman (D., Del.), who next week will give up his seat (formerly Vice President Joe Biden's) to Christopher Coons, also a Democrat.
Shouldn't Obama and the Democrats in Congress have done more to help put Americans back to work? "It would have been extraordinary to overcome," Kaufman told me. "The stimulus worked. The economy is getting better. Now it's up to the private sector to kick in [and start hiring]."
Why aren't companies hiring more? Did businesspeople, upset by Obama's threat to boost their taxes, wait until after the election to hire and expand? "No, business is still worried about the economy," and that's why Republican proposals to cut government won't cure the economy anytime soon, Kaufman said.
While the stimulus slowly kicks in, while hiring slowly comes back, Kaufman, an ex-Biden aide, has his own short-term employment assured.
