Here are a few pictures taken at the Dyer Parade the other day! Click on the thumbnail to see the larger image!

A special thanks to everyone who came out!

Beneath the United States and our territorial waters is as much oil as there is in the Middle East but Congressmen like Pete Visclosky have repeatedly refused to allow safe and environmentally friendly drilling for American oil. As a result, our Representatives in Congress have allowed us to be held hostage by countries like Venezuela and Iran.

In an attempt to send a strong and undeniable message to Congress, a group called American Solutions is leading a petition charge that’s already collected nearly 600,000 signatures from Americans of all walks of life.

Let’s help them by joining with patriotic Americans like Chuck Norris, Newt Gingrich, Mark Leyva, thousands of others who are committed to making America Energy Independent!

Click here to sign the petition!

It’s no secret that Pete Visclosky has been enjoying the support of major special interest donors in and around Washington.  But as the Post-Tribune showed recently, those Special Interests are costing hard working Americans just like you MILLIONS of dollars every year! Ask yourselves who Pete is representing in Congress, the people of Northwest Indiana or the major donors to his campaign?

A quick look at OpenSecrets.org, which makes candidates FEC reports public, reveals that the top contributors to Pete’s campaigns have been the PMA Group, Prologic Inc., and Parametric Technology Corp.  Already, PMA Group has donated nearly $60,000 to his campaign for this 2008 race.  That’s on top of the nearly $175,000 they’ve given to Pete throughout the course of his career.
The investment in Pete Visclosky paid off for these special interest groups as they’ve secured over $20 MILLION dollars for projects that include “technical order optimization” for Parametric and the “optimal placement of unattended sensors” for Prologic.

This year alone, Pete Visclosky was the fourth-worst offender when it comes to pork barrel spending in the entire Congress.  In addition to our tax dollars that he sent to PMA Group, Prologic, and Parametric, Pete Visclosky also sent an additional $14.4 million dollars to other out-of-state programs.

The grand total of Pete’s corruption this year came to $130 million and he wants YOU to pay for it with your tax dollars.

But the problem doesn’t end with Pete Visclosky.  The Congress approved $15 Billion dollars of our money in 11,000 pork barrel projects this year alone.  That’s just one of the MANY reasons we need to send agents of change, like Mark Leyva, to Congress in November!   Mark is a limited-government, no-nonsense, let’s-cut-spending-right-now type of guy.  The kind of guy we need to send to Washington ASAP to help change the corrupt system.

Help Mark change the system by making a donation to our campaign. Pete Visclosky’s war chest grows with every deal he makes with special interests in Washington and it means we’re going to have an uphill battle in the fund raising department.  But just like Mark vows to stretch every dollar in Congress, he’s insisting that his campaign stretch every dollar you so generously contribute to our Northwest Indiana effort.

Woodrow Wilcox (Griffith) and Michael Replin (Lowell) each wrote a great Letter to the Editor in the Post-Tribune last week. Read them for yourself!

Leyva over Visclosky with anti-abortion vote
Woodrow Wilcox
Mark Leyva won the Republican nomination for Indiana’s 1st Congressional District again. But can this pro-life Hispanic get the help he needs to run against entrenched Democrat Rep. Pete Visclosky?

No Republican has won this congressional district since the 1920s. The district includes Hammond, East Chicago, Gary and other pro-union areas. Leyva is a union carpenter. Since the last census, the district has expanded to include rural communities in Lake, Porter, Jasper, Newton and Benton counties.

In 2004, Leyva received over 82,000 votes with almost nothing to spend on the campaign. What might Mark Leyva accomplish if he had a decent campaign treasury? I crunched some numbers to explore that issue.

The district has over 50,000 Hispanic voters, over 50,000 African-American voters, over 50,000 non-Hispanic Catholic voters and over 50,000 evangelical voters. Many of these voters are pro-life. Most of these voters do not know that Visclosky consistently votes in support of abortion on demand. In fact, Visclosky regularly votes to give federal money to pro-abortion organizations.

Many of Leyva’s fellow Hispanics are Catholic, as is Leyva. Many Catholics and evangelical Christians support pro-life candidates when they know that a candidate is pro-life. A growing number of African-Americans support pro-life candidates.

Republican leaders have not done much to help Leyva raise the money he needs to make sure that every voter in the district knows of this big difference between Visclosky and Leyva.

If Leyva can get just 16,000 Hispanic voters, 16,000 African-American voters and 16,000 other voters to switch their votes from Visclosky, Leyva will win.

Here’s the other one. We really relate to this guy’s frustration!

All congressmen should be ousted
Michael Replin

Congress is useless.

Gasoline is $4 a gallon and going higher every week. Who’s to blame for this problem? Congress!

Do you remember the oil embargo in 1974, which was caused by the Middle East countries, and the gasoline shortage of 1979? During this time frame, Congress should have encouraged more drilling for oil inside the United States as well as offshore. Also, more oil refineries should have been built.

This didn’t occur because it seems Congress is run by environmental, animal rights and special interest groups. So this next election in November, vote all the incumbents out of office and hire new members of Congress.

Maybe new members also will be able to solve the underfunded programs of Social Security and Medicare.

Click here for the link on the Post Tribune’s website.

Don’t forget, if you write a letter to the editor and it gets published, or even if you just see a story that deserves more attention, let us know and we’ll make sure to highlight it here!