 This
Month's Issue:
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PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS
As we enter the summer season where we all get to do those things we dream of during the winter, I encourage all of our members and friends to keep the social causes of Ireland in mind. There is a long way to go for the complete equalization of the political, social, and religious landscape of the North. We should all exert every effort to be sure that the issues remain focused and that there are no political summer doldrums.
The IBO has just had a great golf event, and we are looking forward to a mid-summer event that we hope will have great attendance. The planning for the Gala Ball is well underway, and we are still looking for volunteers to help Julia Connolly manage this fun, but busy project.
Have a great summer.
James Doran
President, IBO
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IBO CALENDAR
OF EVENTS
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July
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July 15th Thursday
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IBO Summer Networking Event
Where: Hurley's 232 West 48 Street NY, NY
The Irish Business Organization cordially invites you to a night of networking under the stars!
Where: Hurley's, 232 West 48th St., NYC
When: Thursday, July 15th
Time: 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Cost: $25 incl. open bar & food
We will have the entire third floor …inside bar & outside garden! Open Bar & Appetizers for two hours! Drink, food & fun for all!
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6:00 - 8:00 PM
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July 20th Tuesday
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6.30 PM
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July 27th Tuesday
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NYC Breakfast Meeting
Fitzpatrick's Grand Central Hotel, 44th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues. Contribution for light breakfast is $10. Any questions, contact Tom Ward at TGWard718@aol.com or 718-565-0383.
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8:00 AM
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September
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September 8th
Wednesday
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IBO NY Meeting
The Shelburne Hotel, 303 Lexington Ave (@37th St.), New York, NY - Guest Speaker: tba
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6.30 PM
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September 22nd Wednesday
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Rockland County Meeting
Madden’s Restaurant, Central Avenue, Pearl River, NY 10954. Guest speaker: John Lowry of Minuteman Press of Nanuet. For details please contact Julia Connolly (201) 446-7939, juliac@ibo-ny.com
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7:00 PM
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October
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October 13th Wednesday
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IBO NY Monthly Meeting
The Shelburne Hotel, 303 Lexington Ave (@37th St.), New York, NY - Guest Speaker: tba
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6.30 PM
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October 15th Friday
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Annual Gala Ball, New York Hilton
**SAVE THE DATE **
The IBO is pleased to announce that Michael Doherty, President of Building Maintenance Service Corp. a subsidiary of Vornado Realty Trust, is to be honored as Tri-State Businessperson of the Year."
This year the recipient of our Humanitarian Award will be Brother Rick Curry, Founder and Artistic Director of The National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped. The NTWH provides the disabled community with the communication skills necessary to pursue a life in professional theatre and enhance their opportunities in the workplace.
Our Celtic Spirit Award will be honoring The Pipes and Drums of the NYPD Emerald Society. For the past forty-three years their music has played in both joyous times, as the other evening, and also comforted the New York community, especially after September 11th.
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Time TBA
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SUMMER NETWORKING EVENT
The Irish Business Organization cordially invites you to a night of networking under the stars!
Where: Hurley's, 232 West 48th St., NYC
When: Thursday, July 15th
Time: 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Cost: $25 incl. open bar & food
We will have the entire third floor …inside bar & outside garden! Open Bar & Appetizers for two hours! Drink, food & fun for all!
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IBO GOLF OUTING REPORT
The IBO-NY annual golf outing on June 21st was blessed with great weather and a great time was had by all. About 85 players enjoyed the golf and after golf festivities.
Our thanks to the many volunteers who also showed up and helped to make the event a success.
Mary Beggan won the Martin Gleeson Trophy as the best woman IBO member golfer.
Eugene Flanagan won the Patrick Duffy Trophy as the best male IBO member golfer.
John Doolan won the Harry Burke Trophy as the low net IBO member golfer.
Many photographs were taken, which we hope to have up on the website soon.
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NOLAN'S NOTIONS
An occasional Column from former IBO President!
I had reflect on looking at the cartoon in a newspaper at the weekend, showing an older couple walking out of the Theatre, having seen Fahrenheit 9/11 ..The one guy says, "Jeez I never knew George Bush piloted the plane that crashed into the Twin Towers!"
Such is the power of disinformation that really unless one was an eye-witness to something, there is no way to verify any current event from the press or TV, without being blasted with some bias, one way or another. Even Michael Moore seemed to lose his focus amid the hubbub about 9/11. The spin on all sides is dizzying, and in the middle of it all, brave men and women in the US forces, and I have to say ordinary but very brave folks in Iraq, are all in the firing line and paying the ultimate price all too often.
Truth it seems is now told at the behest of the censor and the whim of the power-brokers. Such a pity that credibility is now not the priority, but rather the outrageous or embarrassing sound-bite that lingers on longest after the fact and may influence voters in November.
Not changing the issue, I grew up in Ireland, with only 2 Radio & TV channels and limited access to objective press reporting, but I believe to a degree that we were better informed and less distracted back then. I suppose it's inevitable that with $Billions of dollars at stake in the Presidential and other election races, that the simple unvarnished truth becomes tarnished and the huge corporate & competing media have to collar that crucial prime-time breaking story and leave the simple plain truth to languish in the late-night re-runs.
Where is Walter Cronkite when you need him? His coverage of the McCarthy hearings in the early days of 'Reality-TV' when he broadcast the deafening challenge by that old-time lawyer, with his "Have you no shame", felled McCarthy and all his bluster. Later when he covered the Kennedy assassination and funeral, and even into the Nixon era and the Watergate trial, we grew to trust the new media that invaded our homes unbidden each evening! His ilk, and the un-nerving gravitas of their coverage of issues, really gave hope to early TV viewers that the new media would be more honest, truthful and educational than that which the Press Barons had delivered on pulp in the previous 5 decades.
Instead, to our discredit, the Networks have conspired to save us from the truth and have managed to mask TV's potential for transparency with endless, repetitive and dumbed-down interpretations of all events, coupled with the rag-tag side-bars of 2 headed baby stories, rescued kittens and crop-circle how-to clips, that make up for diversity of content nowadays. All that neatly gift-wrapped in corporate sponsorship and big-time branding!
We have become victims of our own desire for quiet time. We are happy with our lot, preferring to be distracted and entertained, rather than informed and educated. Our politicians know this well enough and they waffle and filibuster away any interview time, with meaningless excuses and fat-free flippancy! No wonder no one votes anymore!
In the meantime, we use our vast superiority as a bully-pulpit. We invade a country, Iraq, depose its leadership and entire socio-economic system and call it Shock & Awe, as if it will become the next Nintendo game! We lock up prisoners in an obvious and even necessary revenge mode, but we do so on terms that the entire civilized world (and much of the uncivilized world) abhor, by locking them up indefinitely, without trial, and separate them from any legal representation. (I didn't even mention torture yet).
We denigrate the UN, castigate former allies and selectively interpret the Geneva Convention! Just a minute isn't that exactly what we accused the former Soviet & Communist blocks and just about every tin-pot dictator of?
What are we thinking about? And now the Pandora's Box is open, and the lid is missing!
What was wrong with us trying to win 'hearts and minds' a little longer? Were we in such a vengeful haste that we forgot that it, revenge, is a dish best eaten cold? Now, we are at the worst possible situation politically in the world, with few allies and many motivated enemies and our credibility as leaders of the modern era, gone in one burst of temper! Our dependence on Arab Oil has us making deals that serve none of us well, and we are paying for it at the pump. Our every move is criticized or misinterpreted, however well intentioned. And we have not begun to solve the problem we have created, not to mind the one we set out to eradicate!
We could just say sorry. We could try a new tack. For instance, why are we not focused on a new version of the Peace Corps. What about research and grant aid for new alternate sources of energy to wean us off our dependence on imported and hostile oil? We might try ABC for a while. A Abstinence ..I will not drive my SUV today. B ..Pull back from the table. I will not supersize my Burger today. C .. I will help carry the load for someone less fortunate today! Why not rescue our urban quagmires, where education and employment and values are not thriving and for instance re-vitalize our rural areas by incentivising re-settlement of the vast but under-populated mid- and north-west etc.
Where is the leadership? Where is the charisma! Where are the responsibility and the accountability! Where is the American can-do innovative and pioneering spirit, at once brilliant, inclusive, daring and caring! Or are we all too caught up with the mighty dollar and the rat race to notice that we are careening on the path to a disaster for the world, and for us!
The Buck stops here…but the gravy train trundles on!
Ponder all that when you are flying the flag on July 4. It's really Memorial day revisited I suppose. They died for all this….I don't think so!
Brian Nolan
Stellar research and effective and affordable marketing and sales solutions.
201 280 5022
bgnolan@aol.com
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LEGAL EASE
A monthly legal column by Carolyn A. Byrne, Esq.
Picture this scenario. A longtime colleague of yours is planning to leave your company, and is searching for a replacement job. You are not brokenhearted over his departure, as you found his work to be shoddy at best, his "watercooler humor" to be offensive, and were never very close to him on a personal level. Nevertheless, and much to your surprise, he asks if you will agree to be a "reference" for him in connection with his search for a new job. "Sure" you say, while silently praying that he either forgets you ever had the conversation, or that his prospective employers neglect to contact you. But lo and behold, you get the dreaded call, and a very trusting and cheerful sounding prospective employer asks you "So, what did you think of his job performance?"
Assuming you want to tell the prospective employer everything, but you are worried that your former colleague will sue you if he doesn't get the job due to your candor, you will be comforted to learn that New York law provides certain built-in protections for people in your position. First, as I have mentioned in a previous column, you cannot be found liable for slander as a result of a true statement of fact (for example, "John always showed up for work at least 20 minutes late"). Nor can you be held accountable for damages for expressing your opinion (for example, "John's idea of humor really gets on my nerves"). These protections are a function of the definition of slander and/or defamation, which involves an "untrue statement of fact tending to expose another to reputational injury." So if the statement is true or if it is an opinion (other than opinions of a racial or discriminatory nature) you will likely be off the hook.
And there is more good news. Even if the statement you give to the prospective employer turns out to be false, New York law provides you with what can loosely be called "limited immunity" in the form of a qualified privilege in the work reference context. Simply stated, New York deems the free flow of this type of information so important that it is willing to forgive certain untruths relayed to a prospective employer in the context of information exchange about a potential job candidate, provided that the untruth was not relayed with malice, spite, or ill-will. Practically speaking, ordinary negligence in relaying the untruth would not be sufficient to hold you liable for damages, whereas it might be sufficient in other contexts outside of the work reference situation.
In addition, note that there are other problems inherent in a lawsuit against one who has provided a less-than glowing reference concerning a job applicant who ultimately fails to get the job he seeks. For example, how would a plaintiff prove that your negative reference was the reason he did not get the job? How would a plaintiff prove the dollar amount of damages caused by the negative reference in a situation where the employment he sought was terminable at will? According to several commentators on New York law, these and other hard questions are the reason behind the extremely low success rate of lawsuits stemming from negative employment references.
All of this being said, as I have noted in before, the mere threat of a lawsuit, however meritless, looms large and understandably can cause a certain "chilling effect" on communication.
Nevertheless, if you are aware of how unlikely these lawsuits are to succeed, and the reasons behind the low success rate, it may provide you with the necessary courage to do the right thing the next time you get the dreaded call from a prospective employer.
Until next time,
Carolyn A. Byrne, Esq.
cbyrne@velaw.com
The opinions expressed above are those of the author, and should not be construed in any way to reflect the opinions of Vinson & Elkins L.L.P. or the Irish Business Organization of New York. Moreover, this column is intended for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. There is no substitute for a one-on-one consultation with a lawyer to address your particular legal concerns.
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IBO
MENTOR PROGRAM
If you have a career that you would like to develop further, run an enterprise that you would like guidance on, or simply would like a wise and unbiased head to turn to - the IBO Mentoring Program could be the answer. We have access to experienced individuals both within and outside the IBO who have offered to act as Mentors to our members.
The Program is free to IBO members and is totally confidential.
If you would like to learn more, email Simon Pereira Shorey at simonps@ibo-ny.com or call Simon on (212) 208 2526.
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NOTICEBOARD
- IBO Website Members Forum
Just a reminder that once you have logged into the Members Forum (left hand side of the IBO Home Page at www.ibo-ny.com) if you click on to ‘Members Forum’ you will have access to pages for:
- Job Opportunities
- Members seeking positions
- For Sale/For Rent
- Misc. Event Announcements
- IBO Suggestion Box
You can post your own items and read those posted by other members. This is a new area so initially there will be only a few items there. However, the more you use it, the more useful it will become! So please post about any non-IBO events that you wish to publicize, post job opportunities that you hear about, and indeed anything else pertinent. This is YOUR area. Please use it and read it every time you come to the website.
- Success Stories
One hears of many success stories of how membership of the IBO has led to new business, a new job, etc. We are seeking to collect these so that they can be used as ‘sales points’ to attract and retain members. If you have one (or many) of these stories to tell, please email us now at success@ibo-ny.com and let us know.
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About The IBO:
The Irish Business Organization of New York, Inc. is an non-profit,
non-denominational organization, which seeks to promote, foster, and
advance the business interests of Irish and Irish American business
people in the tri-state area.
The IBO News
is the official newsletter of the Irish Business Organization of New
York, Inc. It is published 10 times per year. This newsletter is distributed
to members of the IBO, guests from recent IBO meetings, and other individuals
from the NY-NJ-CT business community.
Newsletter Staff
Editor: Simon Pereira Shorey, GeneAfrica, Inc. (212) 208 2526
Technical Support: Jim McGuire, Eric Elias: Teledotcom Inc., 212 675 6565
Contact Information:
The Irish Business Organization of New York Inc.
FDR Station, PO Box 6425
New York, NY 10150-1901
Tel: 212 750 8118
Fax: 212 747 1820
email: info@ibo-ny.com
www.ibo-ny.com
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