BFO Retirees

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Lester Smith	- President and Corresponding Secretary
Margaret Dahlberg	- Vice-President
Lillian Cohen	- Recording Secretary
Elaine Statsinger	- Treasurer

Welcome to Spring 2008! Let’s hope it will be a pleasant season. It won’t be long until our snowbirds return. We trust they had a good winter.

Before I go any further---the days of the BFO Retirement Party and the BFO June Luncheon must be clarified. (Further details will follow at a later date.)

The BFO Retirement Party will be held on THURSDAY, JUNE 19, from 6-10:30 p.m. at the Coral House in Baldwin. At this time, Penny Reich and Barbara Smith will be honored for their service to the Bellmore Schools.
The BFOR June Luncheon will be on THURSDAY, JUNE 26, from 1-3 p.m. at Piccolo’s Restaurant in Bellmore.
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NYSUT’s VOTE/COPE drive for 2008 has begun. You should have received the relevant materials before this issue. We are now eligible to receive a 20% rebate on our retiree collections. Going back to the 2006 and 2007 drives, we received $740. Due to this addition to our treasury, I do not anticipate any increase in dues. Thank you to all who contributed to VOTE/COPE for providing this benefit to ALL of our members. Hopefully, this year we will have 100% participation in this important initiative. Whether or not you think VOTE/COPE is a questionable professional activity, these funds are needed so we can lobby on a grassroots level. We have neither the funds nor the ethics to lobby on a million-dollar corporate level! The many local, state and national conventions, conferences, and informational reports are costly and vital to preserving our benefits.

Maddy Minkoff and I served at the phone bank in NYSUT’s Jericho Office for the Democratic Primary. I appreciate her support. What was interesting was that approximately 15% of the retirees I contacted wanted a change. Therefore, they were supporting Barack Obama. These members expressed the opinion that a dynasty of Clintons following a dynasty of Bushes was not in the best interests of the nation. This fall will be a very active time for NYSUT’s phone banks. Retiree Council 17 will be requesting volunteers from all local chapters. Some of the jobs involve paperwork, not necessarily making calls.

Thanks to the media, the recent New York scandals are constantly in the news. NYSUT officials, as well as most New Yorkers, are very disappointed in ex-Governor Spitzer. Hopefully, newly installed Governor Paterson will rise above a start that has been both promising and disconcerting. I am quite concerned about a brief article which appeared March 20 in the Daily News. It read as follows:

GOV. AGAINST HIKING TAX ON STATE’S RICH: Governor Paterson sent a strong signal yesterday that he’s opposed to raising taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents to plug state budget holes.

“I don’t think this is where we should be going,” Paterson said of the Assembly’s proposed $1.5 billion dollar surcharge on New Yorker’s who make more than $1 million dollars a year.

Still, Paterson said he would not rule out a tax hike because the economy is still uncertain. The governor, who spoke after a visit with Mayor Bloomberg at City Hall, just proposed $800 million in budget cuts.

In Newsday on Friday, March 28, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), acknowledged he is the sole supporter of increasing personal income tax on residents earning $1 million or more a year.

On March 30 (at the time of this writing) Sheldon Silver retracted his support for this tax initiative. It is interesting to note that March 31 is the budget deadline, which the governor and lawmakers have pledged to meet.

NYSUT issued the following reminder of the latest IRS guidelines regarding 403b accounts:

Retirees continue to have the ability to initiate a rollover from their 403b to an IRA or other qualified plan. If you are considering transferring your 403b to another provider at this time, it would be prudent to consult your 403b provider and tax advisor to avoid future adverse tax consequences. (We have received information through RC 17 that you can move funds within your current provider, but not to another provider without tax consequences.)

Regarding Medicare surcharges: Before this date you should have received from NYSHIP a letter entitled “At a Glance.” This letter provided the procedure for obtaining full payment of Medicare charges deducted from your Social Security check. Some of our members are paying a surcharge on Medicare because of their income levels ($80,000/single; $160,000/couple). Through legislation, individuals covered by Empire are to be fully reimbursed. At the present time, we get the June and December checks from Bellmore. However, the surcharge must also be returned to us. It is your responsibility to contact the school district with the letter from Social Security and/or your 1099 from Social Security. The “At a Glance” letter provides all the necessary details.

ANTI-LABOR GROUP TARGETS TEACHERS’ UNIONS: The “Center for Union Facts” has launched a $1 million derogatory ad campaign designed to discredit teachers’ unions. The first advertisements appeared in U.S.A. Today and The New York Times. CUF, which has a history of opposition to teacher unions and is run by an ultra-conservative lobbyist with ties to questionable causes, plans to run television commercials on CNN and Fox News and unveil a billboard in Times Square. The group has a web site at www.teachersunionexposed.com

NYSUT, AFT, NEA, and several state education unions are sharing information on the campaign. The best strategy continues to be avoiding fanning the story.

The head of CUF, Richard Berman, has had little credibility with the national media in the past. He as a record of defending tobacco and alcohol products, and attacking groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Centers for Disease Control. Berman is reportedly being paid more the $400,000 to downplay the risks of indoor tanning.

If called by members of the press, leaders should point out teachers and their unions are working to raise standards and improve student achievement, while fighting for the resources public schools need to help all children succeed. Attacks like these are insulting to dedicated teachers who spend their own money to help children and who work through their unions to enhance public education for all students.

Please contact NYSUT Communications if you have any questions or receive a call from a reporter. For more, see the Leader site at www.nysut.org

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: At this point, the Title 1 funding for New York promised under the No Child Left Behind Act is $2.42 billion, but the actual funding $1.32 billion, a funding gap of $1.10 billion.

More food for thought: from a report issued by the Alliance for Retired Americans Educational Fund entitles Outrageous Fortune---How the Drug Industry Profits from Pills:

In the United States, pharmaceutical companies have a unique position among industries because they:

utilize research paid for at public expense
have data exclusivity
launch products that are copies rather than innovations
acquire market exclusivity and patents with patent extensions freeing them from competition for about two decades
experience few marketing restraints
charge whatever they want for different customers
pay less in taxes than other businesses
If you are interested in obtaining the full report, this might be available by calling the ARA at 202-637-5599 or visiting their web site at www.retiredamericansfund.org

During the first week of March, while viewing C-SPAN, I witnessed a Republican house member from Texas speaking. The thrust of his presentation referred to America becoming bankrupt from entitlement programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Over the past several years, the Bush administration and its supporters have put forth an agenda that advocates the dismantling of these entitlements.

Rather than focusing on the destruction of these important entitlements as expenses, the legislators might do well to consider the following drains on our economy:

the war in Iraq (The cost of waging this war for 36 to 48 hours could resolve the need for the proposed cuts in programs such as Medicare and No Child Left Behind .)
the outsourcing of job (The corporate tax on outsourced goods and services is 5%, while the domestic corporate tax is 35%. This is a loss of billions of dollars annually to the tax base.)
tax cuts for the wealthy (According to many economists, this practice has NOT boosted the economy in over 10 years.)
wasteful spending in government contracts (Remember Halliburton????)

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IMPORTANT LEGISLATIVE PHONE NUMBERS:

To contact GOVERNOR PATAKI or your STATE SENATOR or ASSEMBLYPERSON, call the New York State AFL-CIO Action Line at (877) 255-9417

To contact PRESIDENT BUSH, call the White House at (202) 456-1414

To contact your U.S. SENATOR or CONGRESSPERSON, call the United States Capitol at (877) 331-1223

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