PA in the WSJ

Reading through last week's Wall Street Journal's, I noted the following references to Pennsylvania businesses, politicians, trivia, and other interesting tidbits. This may not be a complete list, just things that caught my eye.

PA Businesses

In “Harley Isn’t Expected to Take Big Long-Term Hit from Strike,” by Ilan Brat and Kris Maher doesn’t think the strike at Harley’s York PA plant won’t have a serious long-term effect. (2/03)

Horsham-based Nutrisystem is the focus of “Investor Appetite is What Diet Firm May Really Lose,” by Joseph T. Hallinan (2/01). It is a brief article and discusses the firm’s primary clientel (the average customer is a middle aged woman who weighs 210 pounds), and its attempts to attract men and senior citizens. After a few bad years the company’s profit grew 2,000% in 2005.

Good news/ bad news, depending on your outlook: “Wyeth Loses Prempro Trial in Philadelphia,” (1/30)

Brief mentions: Mylan Laboratories (Pittsburgh, 2/02), a pharmaceutical firm

ICG Commerce (Philadelphia, 1/31), procurement services provider

Rebecca Rimel, president and CEO of the Pew Charitable Trust, was appointed to the board of Viasys Healthcare in Conshohocken. ((1/30)

PA Politicians

In “Senators to Seek Vote Backing Iraq Mission,” by David Rogers (2/02) we find this paragraph:

Rep. John Murtha (D., Pa), chairman of the House Appropriations panel that oversees funding for Iraq, said he warned government officials during the visit that unless more progress was made, Congress would be reluctant to fund billions of dollars sough by the White House to help equip the Iraqi forces. Mr. Murtha and others in the delegation said the Iraqi reply was that if Congress didn’t provide the money, he Maliki government would secure it from other sources.

Other PA

The (in)famous Big Mac was created in 1968 by Jim Delligatti, a McDonald’s franchisee in Pittsburgh. (For McDonald’s, It’s a Wrap,” by Janet Adamy, 1/30).

From “New Airline to Link Small, Midsize Cities,” by Scott McCartney, we find this sentence: “In addition, Southwest, long king of point-to-point airline service from medium-size cities, has increasingly put its new airplanes into big hubs like Philadelphia and Denver.” (1/30)

Other Interesting Tidbits

This is of interest to me but probably not to most if not all of my readers. I have written about belonging to an investment club. We began under the auspices of what was then NAIC, now BetterInvesting. The organization has been hit with some controversy lately, as reflected in the article “Peeved Members of Investing Clubs Turn on Leaders,” by Diya Gullapalli, 1/31). The article is accompanied by a woodcut of Richard Holthaus, now the chief executive of BI. A few years ago I had the opportunity of speaking at length with Holthaus. This is the first time anyone I can claim to have met in more than passing fashion has been a Wall Street Journal woodcut. I did sit next to Hank McKinnell, then CEO of Pfizer, for a couple of hours years ago, but we didn’t say more than a few words to each other. I noted that the soles of his shoes were worn so whatever he spends his money on, it isn’t footwear.