CORRE Blog

Taskel Dishman retired from Y-12 in 1990 after starting there in 1953, and he says:

I'd like to have you consider material I've written up to try to tell people outside our circle how bad we've been cheated. Always when I read people describing the situation, I think to myself: Why don't they mention how long the abuse has continued, and how much the surrounding community has lost over the years. And the people need to know when they are asked to increase local taxes, some of those tax increases don't have to take place if our money is coming to us, thus the community to pay bills and make our entire area a better place to live. I'd like to have you consider the material below for the blog, but if you do, perhaps I need to alter my ID so I'll not make myself open to harassment … after all, I'm an old man of 76 and not able to deal with being cheated monthly and harassed on the net………please let me know your thoughts!

While 12,000 of our nations best and smartest worked night and day to protect you, your children and country, you were paying taxes to support us in our final years of life. Allow me to thank you for the 12,000 abused retired atomic worker families from the plants in Oak Ridge, TN. We were so honored to have had a hand in keeping the people and country safe, only to be scammed in the end:

Over the years, you paid taxes into a fund to help us in our old age and the early contractors did just that and up until about 1990, the retirees got regular cost of living raises. After that a new breed of contractor came onto the scene and those people who worked night and day to keep us and the country safe, have suffered. You the taxpayer was still putting the money, controlled by the contractor, into a fund but it was no longer being paid out as cost of living increased.

What the later years contractors did, was pile the money up in a fund that has grown to more than $3 billion dollars, while we retirees have gotten one half of one cost of living raise in about 17 years. What this means is, when you pay about $3 for gas, we pay the equivalent of about $6. and so it is with every thing we buy because our money has been kept in the account instead of being paid to us for living expense in our final days.

Do the people who are keeping our money from us know how badly were suffering without it? Consider: Months ago they send out offers for a new dental and eye insurance saying, "If your check is not sufficient to pay for the new insurance, you'll be expected to pay the remaining out of pocket!" Did they think we and now you wouldn't ask, if they know our checks are so small/eroded by inflation, where would we get the money to put into that empty pocket … and if the check wouldn't pay for the insurance, how did they think we'd pay other bills for food, housing and energy?

And let me remind you, this sin was going on as our money piled up in the account, growing by about a hundred million dollars a year. It gets worse: During the 17 or so years of our growing personal poverty, the entire area suffered as well. Had they been paying us our money all those years, it would have totaled more than a billion dollars … dollars that when spent and taxed, would have gone directly into the area economy, enriching all the people and all the local governments; some of who say they are so poor, they can't pay their law-enforcement officers properly. Yet, the local leaders who know of the sin/scam have not made an effort to get us and the money into the local economy!

Is it a mystery why they and our local Federal Representatives and Senators have not helped (Sen. Corker has been in office a short time, will you ask him to help; most of us will be dead in another 17 years). Our local Federal Representatives and Senators (we expected Sen. Frist being an MD and one of the most powerful people in the country would understand our suffering, but he never helped … not just a few, he never helped the 12,000 families) have talked a good game, but when members of the House and Senate in Washington, got up bills to help us, our own local members of the House and Senate did not even join with them in those bills to help us!

It is our hope you'll help us by using the many talents God has given you …it may be if you just ask, being who you are, they may realize the cat is out of the bag and everyone in the area and hopefully the country knows about the sin. Unlike other states, this is a one party state and we can beg for help until the cows come home (and we can't afford cows), but they know they can let us suffer until we die and they'll still return to office. And the people left behind, will still not know why they let it happen!

We need someone smarter than ourselves (we've not been smart enough to get our money for the 12,000 abused families) to decide to do that random good deed we read about but seldom see, to lend us just an ounce of their talent. We need you to be that special person who'll write that expose in the fashion of Woodward and Bernstein, or to make that all important call to a connection with an investigative reporter….

And how do you know what I'm telling you is true? You can contact a local writer, Frank Munger (munger@knews.com who writes for the local paper) or the retiree web site, www.corre.info, for the big numbers, but I've tried to break the big numbers down to show who is hurt and how badly. Perhaps we've only told of the big numbers that didn't tell you of the 12,000 families, or the fact that the middle class in the area was being destroyed along with the entire area.

Please forgive my inarticulate writing, but someone has to tell the story and with your help, perhaps it can be shouted from the roof-tops….

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Pensions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.