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Roger Johnson (June 24, 1934 – February 21, 2005) was an American businessman and government official. Johnson was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of an AFL-CIO leader. Although he was initially influenced by his father's Democratic Party politics, young Roger decided to join the Republican Party, according to him, the first time he had to pay taxes.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 18 megadiverse countries.
Hartford is the capital city of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. The city is nicknamed the "Insurance Capital of the World", as it hosts many insurance company headquarters and is the region's major industry. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford area of Connecticut. Census estimates since the 2010 United States Census have indicated that Hartford is the fourth-largest city in Connecticut, behind the coastal cities of Bridgeport, New Haven, and Stamford.
A tax is a mandatory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed upon a taxpayer by a governmental organization in order to fund various public expenditures. A failure to pay, along with evasion of or resistance to taxation, is punishable by law. Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labour equivalent.
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Johnson was valedictorian at Clarkson University, where he graduated in 1956 with a degree in business. He had ambitions to play professional baseball, but a coach convinced him to get a job in business. He eventually went to work for General Electric. In 1969, he left GE to work for Memorex, where he headed the disk drive division.
Valedictorian is an academic title of success used in the United States, Canada, Central America, Singapore, and the Philippines for the student who delivers the closing or farewell statement at a graduation ceremony. The chosen valedictorian is often the student with the highest ranking among their graduating class. The term is an Anglicised derivation of the Latin vale dicere, historically rooted in the valedictorian's traditional role as the final speaker at the graduation ceremony before the students receive their diplomas. The valedictory address generally is considered a final farewell to classmates, before they disperse to pursue their individual paths after graduating.
Clarkson University is a private research university with its main campus located in Potsdam, New York, and additional graduate program and research facilities in New York State's Capital Region and Beacon, N.Y. It was founded in 1896 and has an enrollment of about 4,300 students studying toward bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in each of its schools or institutes: the Institute for a Sustainable Environment, the School of Arts & Sciences, the School of Business and the Wallace H. Coulter School of Engineering. Clarkson University ranks #8 among "Top Salary-Boosting Colleges" nationwide. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifies Clarkson University as a "Doctoral University [with] Moderate Research Activity".
Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two opposing teams who take turns batting and fielding. The game proceeds when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball which a player on the batting team tries to hit with a bat. The objectives of the offensive team are to hit the ball into the field of play, and to run the bases—having its runners advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "runs". The objective of the defensive team is to prevent batters from becoming runners, and to prevent runners' advance around the bases. A run is scored when a runner legally advances around the bases in order and touches home plate. The team that scores the most runs by the end of the game is the winner.
In 1982, Johnson moved to Orange County, California to take control of Western Digital. Under his control, the company's sales quadrupled, from $250 million to over $1 billion per year. The company went from 811 to 7,600 employees. He and his wife were also active in several charitable organizations, and he taught at the University of California, Irvine and at Claremont Graduate University.
Orange County is a county in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 3,010,232, making it the third-most populous county in California, the sixth-most populous in the United States, and more populous than 21 U.S. states. Its county seat is Santa Ana. It is the second most densely populated county in the state, behind San Francisco County. The county's four largest cities by population, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Irvine, and Huntington Beach, each have a population exceeding 200,000. Several of Orange County's cities are on the Pacific Ocean western coast, including Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, and San Clemente.
Western Digital Corporation is an American computer hard disk drive manufacturer and data storage company. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology products, including storage devices, data center systems and cloud storage services.
The University of California, Irvine, is a public research university located in Irvine, California. It is one of the 10 campuses in the University of California (UC) system. UC Irvine offers 80 undergraduate degrees and 98 graduate and professional degrees. The university is classified as a Research I university and in fiscal year 2013 had $348 million in research and development expenditures according to the National Science Foundation. UC Irvine became a member of the Association of American Universities in 1996 and is the youngest university to hold membership. It is considered to be one of the "Public Ivies", meaning that it is among those publicly funded universities thought to provide a quality of education comparable to that of the Ivy League.
In 1991, Johnson was chairman of a prominent Orange County Republican fund-raising organization. However, he discussed with a reporter of the Los Angeles Times the possibility of leaving the Republican Party and joining the Democratic Party if the right Democrat came along. Bill Clinton took him up on the offer and met with him to see if he could obtain his support. Johnson and seven other prominent Orange County Republicans announced that they would support Clinton's bid for President.
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper which has been published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It has the fourth-largest circulation among United States newspapers, and is the largest U.S. newspaper not headquartered on the east coast. The paper is known for its coverage of issues particularly salient to the U.S. west coast, such as immigration trends and natural disasters. It has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of these and other issues. As of June 18, 2018, ownership of the paper is controlled by Patrick Soon-Shiong, and the executive editor is Norman Pearlstine.
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the presidency, he was the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992, and the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideologically a New Democrat and many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy.
The President of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.
In 1992, Clinton nominated Johnson to head the government's General Services Administration. Johnson said the position gave him a new outlook on governmental waste. He wrote It Can Be Fixed! Your Unmanaged Government, a book which discussed his beliefs as to how to end waste in government. Johnson boasted that he had cut the GSA's staff by 4000 and cut its operating costs by 17%. But he found himself at odds with professional bureaucrats, and various investigations into his personal finances and use of government property led to his resignation in 1996. He was cleared of all charges the following year.
The General Services Administration (GSA), an independent agency of the United States government, was established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. GSA supplies products and communications for U.S. government offices, provides transportation and office space to federal employees, and develops government-wide cost-minimizing policies and other management tasks.
Following his resignation, Johnson attacked the conservatism of the Congress under its leader Newt Gingrich, and officially announced his switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party.
Newton Leroy Gingrich is an American politician who served as the 50th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 6th congressional district from 1979 until his resignation in 1999. In 2012, Gingrich was a candidate for the presidential nomination of his party.
In 1998, Johnson and his wife Janice pledged $500,000 to endow the Roger W. and Janice M. Johnson Chair in Civic Governance and the Social Ecology of Public Management. [1] The Johnsons saw the chair position as a way to improve public management and civic participation. "I see the chair as a way to elevate professional management to a level similar to other recognized national policy issues such as health care, education and welfare," Roger Johnson said. "Only then will professional management have sufficient political clout to be taken seriously in government organizations." [2] In 2003, Martha Feldman, an organizational and public management scholar from University of Michigan, was named the second Johnson Chair.
Johnson died of lung cancer at his home in Laguna Beach, California.
