by Walter Gray—

Business Up, Faith to Follow

Raymond Arth knows he should feel better about the economy. Sales are up in Phoenix Products, the faucet company he runs in a suburb west of Cleveland, according to a Newsweek article.. He had a good 2010, and he’s on pace to have an even better 2011. His company hasn’t returned to its pre-recession revenues selling its wares to the makers of RYs and manufactured homes, but Phoenix Products is making a profit again and has enough orders that Arth decided to add eight workers to his core staff of 25 full-time employees So why are the new hires all temp workers?

Like too many other small-business proprietors, Arth doesn’t fully trust this economic recovery. While he says he is “guardedly optimistic” about it, his actions are all about the first half of that phase. He worries that rising gas prices will tamp down on RV sales. The volatility in the price of metals and other commodities has brought a spike in the in the cost of his raw materials. “There’s still just too much uncertainty out there,” Auth says (Ed. Note: Newsweek also reports that the Labor Department notes the private sector added 268,000 jobs in April, the largest gain in five years and the third consecutive month of solid job growth).

Hypertension in Decline

Americans are finally making headway in the battle against high blood pressure, one of the biggest contributors to cardiovascular disease, according to a Wall Street Journal article. At Kaiser Permanente’s big northern California health plan, 80% of more than 600,000 patients diagnosed with hypertension, or high blood pressure, have the condition under control, up from 44% a decade ago. In the southeast, 70% of nearly a half-million patients had reduced their high blood pressure to medically recommended levels. That’s, compared with 49% in 2000,

David Mamet Views Business

A Boston Globe writer raised this question of the author David Mamet: “Years ago, you described ‘American Buffalo’ as being about “how we excuse all sorts of great and small betrayals and ethical compromises called business.” In this book (The Secret Knowledge) , you defend enormous payouts to C.E.O.’s working for failing corporations. You seem to have changed radically.
MAMET: I have. Here’s the question: Is it absurd for a company to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to a C.E.O. if the company is failing? The answer is that it may or may not be absurd, but it’s none of our goddamned business. Because, as Milton Friedman said, the question is not what are the decisions but who makes the decisions. Because when the government starts deciding what’s absurd, you’re on the road to serfdom” More campus plus local, state reaction

Among Other Things…

ALBANY NEEDS ETHICS REFORM, suggests an editorial in The New York Times. Wrong. What Albany needs is an intervention concluding with a plan for flattening the state capital city so that nobody can live or work there. Or. um, we can call it a Brownfield, based on all the toxic people who are called legislators and all the people who do business with them, called lobbyists, hangers-on, supplicants and state workers. Gov. Andrew Cuomo plans on rectifying all the corruption problems by strengthening ethics laws. Like anybody pays attention to ethics laws. Our RI legislators are heard to say “what, you think you can buy me for a cup of coffee or a ticket to a Red Sox game?” The answer is yes, that’s what we think! How long has corruption been a major issue in Albany? Try 1493. Even Christopher Columbus couldn’t stand the stench.

Jobs – What Jobs?

Responding to a New York Times article on the paucity of jobs for recent college graduates, two Letters to the Editor expressed agreement. One writer said that, for the foreseeable future, this country can no longer hold out the promise of employment to graduates leaving college without any concrete skills. The job market cannot absorb English and history majors being churned out by the thousands into an uncertain future, especially given the current levels of education debt. Another writer, a professional college recruiter, said employment depends on how directed students are and how they present themselves.

Warning to Catholics – Meatless Fridays Returning

Starting in September, the Bishops of England and Wales have decreed the return of meatless Fridays, a practice that was abolished after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) when the Pope and his pals “opened the windows” to a new period of enlightenment. As the Catholic Church continues to renounce Vat2 and turns back to a more conservative institution, Fish on Fridays is the harbinger of further expected reactionary moves by the Vatican – and by Bishops who want to become Cardinals and Popes.