“60 Minutes” reporter Kroft addresses Business Council

By BILL FALLON

“60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft and Westchester County Business Journal Executive Editor Caryn McBride. 

 

Newsman Steve Kroft did nothing to dispel the adage news is mostly negative Thursday night in the Hilton Rye Town grand ballroom, but he swaddled the message in a smooth-as-silk presentation that held 425 members and guests of The Business Council of  Westchester rapt.

Kroft’s velvety doom-and-gloom anecdotes included word America’s nuclear codes have twice gone missing, once after President Reagan was shot and his clothes were cut off and once when aids sent President Carter’s jacket containing the launch-go to be pressed.
He devoted much of his address to the thoughts of the nation’s top auditor, David Walker, who will no longer sign off on the government’s books and calls them “unauditable,” the product of “imprudent and unsustainable economic policies.”

“We’re getting seriously in hock,” he said, drawing a dark laugh with news the drug cartels have turned their backs on the dollar in favor of the euro.

Citing Walker again, he called the health-care system unmanageable. “By 2040, all the government will be able to do is pay interest on the debt and run its entitlement programs and nothing else. No transportation projects … nothing else. It’s Washington’s dirty little secret.”

Displaying the polish you’d expect of a person 18 years on “60 Minutes,” Kroft knew well the value of self-effacement. His own business history after graduating from Chappaqua’s Horace Greeley High School and Syracuse University was miserable, he recalled: a year as a buyer for a Miami department store. But he saw enough there and has seen enough since to know the value of businesses big and small. “On a number of different levels, you’re really the people who make the country run,” he said.

He asked for applause from those who thought “things were going great.” The response was tepid. “Well, that’s a little better than 29 percent,” he laughed, though he did not identify the source for his figure.

The three-plus-hour event was a lively business hoedown, first over cocktails and platters of exotic munchies, then over a filet mignon sit-down dinner in the ballroom. Attorney Norman Bernstein was chatting by the hors d’oerves; Lighthouse International’s new director, Evelyn Morales, was just three handshakes away. Hilton Rye Town catering sales manager Sylwia Rudnicki identified the ballroom as the biggest in the county, capable of holding 900 people. Kroft came on between the steak and the coffee.

 

From left, Steve Kroft, Assemblyman Adam Bradley and Business Council Chairman Stephen J. Jones.

Business Council President and CEO Marsha Gordon said that of those businesses doing business with five or more council members in the last year, 70 percent anticipate revenue growth of 10 percent to 100 percent. She was preaching to the choir as evidence by the business-card swapping and networking going on.

County Executive Andy Spano told the crowd of a meeting he had just held with a Chinese trade delegation, saying the county was competing with cities like Chicago for Chinese business. “Our quality of life is our biggest asset,” he said.

 

Business Council Chairman Stephen J. Jones cited economic leaps being taken by White Plains, Yonkers and New Rochelle. “Go to our cities,” he said. “You’ll be inspired. You’ll have fun. And you’ll want to do business here.”

 

Sponsors included MasterCard Worldwide, Entergy, Forest City Ratner, Network Crazy Technical Services and EZKR Certified Public Accountants and Consultants.

 

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