AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, is a United States-based non-governmental organization and interest group, founded in 1958 by Ethel Percy Andrus, PhD, a retired educator from California, and based in Washington, D.C. According to its mission statement, it is "a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization for people age 50 and over ... dedicated to enhancing quality of life for all as we age," which "provides a wide range of unique benefits, special products, and services for our members."
AARP operates as a non-profit advocate for its members and as one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States. AARP has two affiliated organizations: AARP Services Inc. which is managed wholly for profit, and the AARP Foundation, a charity that operates on a non-profit basis.
AARP Services Inc. offers: Medicare supplemental health insurance, discounts on prescription drugs and consumer goods, entertainment and travel packages, long-term care insurance and automobile, home and life insurance. It provides quality control over the products and services made available by AARP-endorsed providers. According to AARP's 2008 Consolidated financials, it was paid $652,000,000 in royalties from insurance companies that sold products referred by AARP. AARP also received an additional $120,000,000 for the ads placed in its publications.
Samantha Elizabeth Brown (born March 31, 1969) is an American television host, notable for her work as the host of several Travel Channel shows including Girl Meets Hawaii, Great Vacation Homes, Great Hotels, Passport to Europe, Passport to Latin America, Great Weekends, Passport to China, and Samantha Brown's Asia. As of 2012 Samantha Brown has made her own travel luggage called Samantha Brown: Travel America. Ms. Brown is known for her perky disposition. She is currently a resident of Brooklyn, New York.
Brown was born in Dallas, Texas. Her family soon moved to New Castle, New Hampshire, where she grew up and graduated from Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire. She performed with Music and Drama Company with award winning designer Brian Sidney Bembridge. She took 12 years of voice lessons, attended Chapman University, and transferred to Syracuse University to study musical theater. As stated in one of her episodes in Passport to Europe, she is of Scottish and German descent.
Brown's early career included working in commercials, notably playing the spokesperson "Wendy Wire" for a company called Century Cable. She is involved in the comedy sketch group "Mouth", based in New York, where she has lived for ten years. Brown has appeared in the HP Pavilion "Computer is Personal Again" commercials. Additionally, she is the spokesperson for ECCO shoes. Brown is also a spokesperson in a 2009 commercial for Cedar Point amusement park.
Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.; January 17, 1942) is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist. Considered a cultural icon, Ali was both idolized and vilified.
Originally known as Cassius Clay, Ali changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam in 1964, subsequently converting to Sunni Islam in 1975, and more recently practicing Sufism.[clarification needed] In 1967, three years after Ali had won the World Heavyweight Championship, he was publicly vilified for his refusal to be conscripted into the U.S. military, based on his religious beliefs and opposition to the Vietnam War. Ali stated, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong... No Viet Cong ever called me nigger" – one of the more telling remarks of the era.
Widespread protests against the Vietnam War had not yet begun, but with that one phrase, Ali articulated the reason to oppose the war for a generation of young Americans, and his words served as a touchstone for the racial and antiwar upheavals that would rock the 1960s. Ali's example inspired Martin Luther King Jr. – who had been reluctant to alienate the Johnson Administration and its support of the civil rights agenda – to voice his own opposition to the war for the first time.
Susan Margaret Collins (born December 7, 1952) is the junior United States Senator from Maine and a member of the Republican Party. First elected to the Senate in 1996, she is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
One of six children, Susan Collins was born in Caribou, Maine, where her family has operated a lumber business since 1844. Her parents, Patricia R. (née McGuigan) and Donald F. Collins, each served as mayor of Caribou; her father also served in both houses of the Maine Legislature. Her mother was born in Barranca-Bermeja, Colombia, to American parents. Her uncle, Samuel W. Collins, Jr., sat on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court from 1988 to 1994. Collins attended Caribou High School, where she was president of the student council. During her senior year of high school in 1971, Collins was chosen to participate in the U.S. Senate Youth Program, through which she visited Washington, D.C. for the first time and engaged in a two-hour conversation with U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME). Collins is the first program delegate elected to the Senate and currently holds the seat once held by Smith.
Jean Sherman Chatzky (born November 7, 1964) is an American financial journalist, author and motivational speaker. Chatzky has given personal financial advice on various TV shows. She is the financial editor for NBC's Today Show.
Born in Michigan and raised in Wisconsin, Indiana and West Virginia, Chatzky holds a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania.
Starting her career in 1986 at Working Woman, Chatzky rose from editorial assistant to assistant editor. In 1989 she left journalism and joined the equity research department of Dean Witter Reynolds, returning to journalism two years later as a reporter/researcher at Forbes. She moved to the Dow Jones/Hearst start-up SmartMoney in 1992, rising from staff writer to senior editor. After a five-year run, Chatzky joined Money Magazine in 1998.
Chatzky has appeared on Oprah, Live With Regis and Kelly, The View and other programs. She has written for Parents, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, was a staff writer for SmartMoney and a fact checker for Forbes.