Scanning for good news from corporate America is like reading Highlights for Children magazine -- for every old lady that Gallant helps across the street, there's Goofus, throwing rocks at cars. Following is a heroes gallery of corporate overachievers to inspire hope (and a nod to the rogues, to keep things in perspective).

Novartis

Gallant: In 2005 the Swiss pharmaceutical company began paying a methodically calculated living wage to its 78,500 employees in 140 countries, an unprecedented step among major international industrial companies (the latest internal review found that just 93 Novartis employees had compensation below a living wage). This year, the company is asking third-party suppliers to pay the same wage.

Goofus: People allergic to peanuts may have been deprived of something much more than a living wage when the drug maker teamed up with Genentech last year to ruthlessly squash the release of an effective allergy drug made by a smaller biotech rival.

General Electric

Gallant: Deciding that doing environmental good, in the long run, could be hugely profitable, GE launched 'ecomagination' last May, an initiative that will double its investment in green technologies to $1.5 billion by 2010 (twice the proposed 2007 federal R&D budget for renewable energy and conservation); rolls out new products, like diesel-electric hybrid locomotives; and pledges a 1 percent absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. (Based on GE's projected growth, those emissions would otherwise increase 40 percent.)

Goofus: Most environmental groups applauded the turnabout from one of the world's largest polluters. But even among GE's senior management the move was greeted with skepticism, since the company's ecological (and public relations) footprint (and foot dragging) still looms large, in particular with respect to the cleanup of PCBs it once dumped in New York'sHudson River.

Walt Disney Company and McDonald's Corporation

Gallant: The two have teamed up with faith-based groups, local organizations, and socially responsible investors on Project Kaleidoscope, a labor monitoring and compliance effort to promote better working conditions at 10 Chinese factories that make their toys, shoes, and clothes. (McDonald's has exclusive restaurant marketing rights to Disney properties.) The idea is to work with factory management to create a 'culture of compliance' that would catch sweatshop abuses beforethey occur.