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Bursting out of England to encircle the globe is a chain of stores that primarily sells shampoo and skin lotion and is shaking the conventional assumptions of the business world. So much so that Inc. Magazine put founder, Anita Roddick, on its cover this month with the headline: “This Woman Has Changed Business Forever.” The…

Spending a few days in California just before the early June primaries can persuade almost anyone that the only factor that counts in that state is the television set. Candidates for Governor had little time for daily campaigning because they had to spend so much time day after day on the telephone raising money or…

I finally met Joe DiMaggio, one of my boyhood sports heroes. He was sitting quietly in the Green Room waiting for his turn to go on to the stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City during a gala benefit for retired actors and actresses of the theater called Night of the Stars.…

Elmer Johnson, a former high official of General Motors and a leading heir-designate to head the giant company before he was pushed out for being too candid about GM’s deficiencies, called the GM Board of Directors a rubber stamp for CEO Roger Smith. Last week at his last shareholders meeting, Roger Smith got what he…

The giant AIG and Aetna Insurance companies have been spending much of their policyholders’ money recently for full-page advertisements denigrating and distorting the American civil justice system. It is clear that these companies do not like lawsuits by injured people against the perpetrators of their harm. Lawsuits against the clients of these insurance companies mean…

Twenty years ago, Maggie Kuhn launched the Gray Panthers and last weekend at the 4-H facility in Washington, D.C., this valiant woman, 84 years young, was celebrating the occasion with her civic leaders from all over the country. Forced to retire at age 65 from her church-related, social service position, Maggie started the movement against…

The Patent Gazette is a weekly publication produced by the Patents and Trademark Office of the U.S. government. Each week, about 1500 newly issued patents are described in its pages. It makes for fascinating reading about the inventiveness of humans and the frontiers of technology. Recently, a son of an old friend of mine from…

You can still buy a horse and buggy. But try buying a new manual typewriter or a windup watch or, very soon, records and turntables to play them on. The difference is that the horse and buggy were rendered obsolete but not extinct decades ago by the motor vehicle. The new produce obsolescence deals in…

Twenty years after the first Earth Day in 1970, the corporate polluters have learned something called environmental public relations. For Earth Day 1990, these companies have applied hefty doses of advertising deodorants to their little changing operating realities. Coming off nearly ten years of Reagan-Bush deregulatory government of the Exxons, by the General Motors for…

Two people have been in the news recently. One seems always in the News — Donald Trump. The other is rarely in the News — Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Their relative newsworthiness tells us something about the media’s judgment about what interests the citizenry and what role models are presented to the younger generation. All Marjory…