By KEVIN NEVERS

The message of the “Turn Around America” rally on Saturday at the Duneland Falls Banquet Center in Portage, sponsored by the Northwest Indiana Federation of Labor (NIFL), couldn’t have been clearer.

Vote.

Tell your friends, family, and neighbors to vote, then drive them to the polling places on May 6 and Nov. 4 to make sure they vote.

And—above all—vote Democrat.

Only hours before Hillary Clinton spoke at Washington Township High School, a headlining U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-1st, joined by prominent labor leaders from the region, made an impassioned plea to get out the vote or face the consequences of another four years of a GOP administration.

Neither the NIFL nor Visclosky nor any of the labor reps endorsed a candidate for president. But there were no good words spoken on Saturday about John McCain or—in particular—about President Bush.

“I’m usually a non-partisan person,” Visclosky said. But in this election “you need to drum up all the support you can for Democratic candidates,” he told the several hundred union members in attendance.

“If you are happy with a war with no end,” Visclosky began a refrain, “then do nothing between now and November. If you are happy with $3.50 per gallon of gas, do nothing between now and November. . . . If you think it’s okay to debate about a little torture being okay, do nothing between now and November. . . . If you like the Labor Department being the enemy of collective bargaining, do nothing between now and November.”

On Saturday, though, the sharp edge of the wedge was health care and, as Visclosky noted, the 47 million Americans who have no health care insurance.

Some other figures recited by Visclosky:

•Since 2000 health care premiums have risen 78 percent and the average citizen now pays $3,200 annually for health care. Since President Bush took office, a family is earning in effect $1,000 less per year due to health care costs.

•Fully 89 million Americans under the age of 65 at one point in time or another have had no health care insurance.

•Even Americans who do have health care insurance are exposed to “very uneven care” depending on where they get it.

•Many Americans can’t afford to quit jobs they hate or can’t afford to retire because they would have to go without health care coverage.

• Health insurance companies made $15 billion in profit last year, Visclosky observed. “How many mansions do they need to build for their executives? . . . We need the health insurance. They don’t need the profits.”

•And 50 percent of bankruptcies in this part of the state are precipitated because someone in the family got sick. “In the U.S. no one should lose their house because they get sick,” Visclosky said.

Every day, Visclosky said, his local office staffers speak to constituents who are “at their wit’s end” because they have nowhere else to go. “That’s wrong in America.” But, he hastened to add, “George Bush is on the job, keeping the emergency rooms open.”

Thus, Visclosky said, “it’s against the law” to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies about “what they can charge.” Thus President Bush twice vetoed a bill which would have extended CHIPS coverage to an additional 4 million American children, above and beyond the 6 million currently covered. “But the Bush Administration is on the job.”

McCain, for his part, “has the answer,” Visclosky observed: tax credits and savings plans. “Tell that to the people at Union Tank. That’s nuts.”

“Vote straight Democrat,” Visclosky concluded.

Posted 4/14/2008