Bulletins - 2006 - 11/01/2006
This
Week's Bulletin Was Written
By Jenny K Goodman
President Jensen promptly started the meeting. Jim Mulvaney gave the invocation this morning. Tana Cleaves lead us in the flag salute.
Rosalie Kramm went easy on the crowd today. Pat Cowett won the 50/50. Gary Green paid a fine for his 17th hole in one. Jeanne Merrill did a little self-promotion announcing the start of her own non-profit organization.
Too many guests today to single out any one in particular. Welcome to all.
 The club welcomed Jeff Hogue as a new member. Jeff, who has been coming for nearly two months, finally got his red badge. Jeff is a graduate of USD Law School and specializes in real estate law. Jeff also has his broker's license. We look forward to getting to know you more in the coming months.
 Lynn Hamilton brought back her friend Suresh and Maureen Eberle presented him with a honorary Paul Harris Fellow for his work with the Power of Love Foundation. The Foundation helped set up a clinic in Zambia helping children with HIV. A lot of training is provided to the caretakers of these children, often grandparents, to take care of the children at home because its very difficult for the caretakers to get the children to the clinic. Deborah Linholm was also recognized for her work with the micro-credit program.
Larry Nuffer introduced this week's speaker, Scott Horsley, a reporter with NPR. Scott gave us a very interesting presentation regarding two stories concerning "leaks." The first leak involved the BP pipeline in Prudeau Bay Alaska. Scott talked about his experience covering the story and the superficial lip service the company seemed to make with respect to safety. The company never expected a leak and while other companies check their pipes with ultrasound every 14 days, BP had not done such tests for 14 years. Cost cutting attitudes are hard to overcome and now BP is going to have to pay a lot more to replaced corroded pipes, costs which will likely be passed on to consumers.
The second leak involved the shenanigans at HP where executives hired private investigators to spy, tail, stalk and even impersonate company employees to find out who was leaking information to the media. The illegal spying would have gone undetected but for board member Tom Perkins (husband to author Danielle Steel) who was a former board member and quit the board when he found out about the spying program. His action spurred interest and the story got a lot bigger once people started looking into it. Scott scared us all with his recitation of how some of this spying is carried out, mostly through lying. Many high officials in the company tried to claim plausible deniability but not asking where information comes from is not enought to insulate them from responsibility. Scott's admonition is that asking the question is not enough. You still have to do the right thing. Thanks for an interesting discussion.
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