Escape

Tomorrow is election day in Wisconsin.  I've been anxious about the recall because this governor has changed my state, a state I've been so proud of.  It wasn't only about unions, though Wisconsin has always led the nation in workers' rights.  

It wasn't that he was incapable of working with the opposition party, creating a civil war in a friendly state.

It wasn't even that he seemed to be in the pocket of the Koch Brothers, a pair of billionaire uber conservatives.  

It was all the rest:

-- hiring a jumped up expert from Texas whose recommendation is to put state land into private hands.  

Sportsmen would have to pay to hunt. 

-- changing gun rules to allow people to pack anywhere, even in the state legislature.  

-- demanding voter IDs to solve a problem of voter fraud that never existed.  (The courts put an injunction on this for the time being.)

-- he tried to let a mining company with a record of environmental disasters come into Wisconsin to the edge of Lake Superior, one of the last pristine water sources in the world.  Worse, the company wrote the legislation which would have made them unaccountable for problems, leaving the state to pick up any costs.  One Republican state senator balked at that but the assault on our natural resources is not dead.  

-- he put realtors in charge of the state Department of Natural Resources.  The idea was to make it easier to build on wetlands, which have been protected in this state for decades.  

In a state that produced Fighting Bob LaFollette, John Muir, Gaylord Nelson, Warren G. Knowles and Aldo Leopold, we have no business having a governor like Scott Walker.  He deserves to be recalled. 

Of course, if he isn't recalled, he still has to face an investigation into illegal election practices while he was running for governor.  It looks more and more like there's an indictment in his future. 

In addition, four GOP state senators are facing recall elections.  If only one is defeated, the control of the state senate goes to the Democrats and Walker will effectively be neutralized.   

Gary and I voted absentee ballot over a week ago because we were going to be camping to avoid the television and radio coverage of the day, but I had to stay here to write, work on the garden, and go to a meeting.  I thought about camping somewhere overnight, but I think I will stay here and garden.  The TV and radio will stay off.  When it rains, I'll read. In other words, I will be camping here. 

The race will be close, so I'll go to bed before the results are in. On Wednesday morning, I'll see how the election came out. Until then, I won't think about it.