Steven Walters, writing yesterday in the Mil. Journal Sentinel, bemoans the animosity being generated in Madison by the attempts to recall state legislators and Gov. Scott Walker. Walters makes an analogy that suggests the recall effort is a matter of jealousy, as if the state's Democrats are simply being petty. I think Walters misses the point.
Walters fears that the political "paralysis" of the recall battle will prevent the cooperation necessary to approve new mining rules for creating a huge strip mine in northern Wisconsin. While the mining corporation predicts the mine will create as many as 700 jobs, such a mine will also, judging from other strip mines in the state and nation, destroy the original landscape and pollute the air and water, a trade-off many living in the area are not willing to accept.
What's needed in Wisconsin and the rest of the nation is, among other things, a strip-mining moratorium coupled with public investment in diverse, clean, sustainable work in job-poor rural (and urban) areas funded by raising taxes on the big and rich; short of that, a stalemate that prevents harmful rules and laws isn't the worse that could happen in our Republican-controlled state.
The recall fight is, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, a democratic mode of protest fueled by populist anger and principle. Sometimes compromise is neither possible nor ethical, and those who urge "the center" are now giving a hollow legitimacy to things and people that are just plain wrong.