Vote Tomorrow!

Even if some random stranger came to your house and told you that signing the petition counted as a vote, no you still need to vote if you want it to count. Early voters and absentees, you're okay :)

Dirty tricks by republican true believers with too much time on their hands aside, this page endorses Tom Barrett for governor. Not that it is much of a surprise, bloggers do not have to pretend to observe some objective, passive-voice, he said/she said standards. It is unfortunate that a cadre of amateur people with keyboards have to be the voice of ethics in the new age.

There is right and there is wrong. There is selfishness and there is responsibility. There is stupidity and ignorance. There are questions to ask and reflection on current events. There is good and there is evil. Finally, there are lies and there is the truth. Not a subjective, pluralist truth that can vary from person to person or group to group, but a universal truth that transcends petty differences. I wish I could articulate it properly and strip away all of the complications built up around it over the years. Perhaps it is as simple as the golden rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or "love your neighbor as you love yourself." Confront injustice wherever it raises its ugly head to take from another for privilege or power.

In all of these cases, scott walker has been on the wrong side. His supporters have been blind to the harm he does and to the consequences of that harm. Walker has consistently shown that he has no qualities of a leader and merely does the bidding of other, truly evil men. Whenever it was a choice between truth and lies, walker chose the latter. Whenever it was a choice between responsibility and the common good versus power and privilege for the already powerful, he chose the latter as well.

The recognition that sociopathic demagogues would seek power through deceit in service to wealth and power is exactly the reason our Progressive forefathers championed recall as a method to prevent a demagogue from exercising dictatorial power once in office. Once an autocratic sociopath has control of the levers of power, he can manipulate the laws to whatever ends he sees fit for economic power. Make no mistake, regressive monsters like the koch brothers seek nothing less than the absolute power to control their workers, their customers, and prevent any choices by the public which could interfere. By contrast, responsible businessmen seek stability and a level playing field to operate. Recall is the option in a democracy to remove elected officials who game the system and make morally offensive laws in service to special interests. There always existed a way to remove officials guilty of criminal activity (by coincidence this may come to pass for walker and his cronies), that is called impeachment. Therefore, all the low-information commentators advocating that recall has no merit because there was no proven criminal wrongdoing have it backwards.

John Gurda recently wrote why this is so in the same paper making this fraudulent case against the recall. Likewise, Diane Ravitch argued why the damage walker has done to public education is grounds for his recall using the same logic of above. It was within the letter of the law to savage education and educators, but any reasonable person should find it morally reprehensible. Finally, Kay Nolan shows why the republican "war on women" is damaging to the public interest and also reprehensible to the idea of a republic and its governance as the "public's business." It is hard to argue with a straight face that this concentrated offensive on the rights of over half the population is "fighting the good fight against 'special' interests," though numerous manipulative demagogues have tried doing just that. Just as unions are the collective voice of a group and not entities unto themselves, women should not have to re-fight the battles of the past simply because a small number of bigots reject the notion that women should have equal rights to men.

It is unfortunate that every time the all-too-human Children of Light stumble, vicious Children of Darkness are there to capitalize. Walker got his start in a recall of the previous county executive of Milwaukee who made a bad move and paid for it. He snuck into the governor's mansion by capitalizing on the disillusionment of Democrats who felt let down by the all-too-human Barack Obama, with an assist from an astroturf movement that harnessed hate and resentment and rode it all the way to "dropping the bomb[s]" and dividing this state in vicious ideological war. There is nothing conservative about scott walker or his fellow teabaggers, this is radicalism pure and simple. Radicalism in service to society's economic masters. Tom Barrett is not perfect, nor can anyone expect him to be, but this is no reason to believe the lies and projections blaring from the television. Negativity in all forms benefits the Children of Darkness in outsized degree, and the polarization of Wisconsinites will persist for a long time but Barrett is the right man to ease back the divide and get us back on track.