When I publish a file to a remote *nix server, the default permissions are "rw-r-----" , or 640. I would prefer that the permissions default to 755 , or "rwxr-xr-x", because it's a pain to chmod every file I publish.

Is that I setting I can do in PhpED, or is it a setting I do on my server?

If you're using SFTP, check default permissions for Files(and Folders) in the account settings. Don't forget that actual permissions depend on umask too.