It's a week before the recall election of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and no matter what else is going on, this election is simply too important to not blog about.

Why is this such an important election? It's simple:

We are in the midst of a crucial test of our democracy. Governor Scott Walker won election to his office in 2010 on a platform of balancing the state budget and increasing jobs in Wisconsin. It was not widely known at the time, but he received an enormous amount of financial support from Political Action Committees and from corporations, including, most notably, the Koch brothers--whose fossil fuel energy interests Walker supports. The Koch brothers are also behind "Americans for Progress," one of the major supporters of the Tea Party movement.

Of course, the Koch brothers can spend as much money as they want, and there is nothing illegal about forming a PAC. And with the Citizens United decision opening the door to even more spending by corporations without direct oversight, they, like anyone, can spend as much as they want on issue-oriented political ads--it is speech protected by the first amendment of the constitution, as interpreted by the supreme Court in the Citizens United case which decided, essentially, that miraculously, corporations have the same rights of free speech as living, breathing citizens.

But that's all history. The curent election--the recall election that will happen throughout Wisconsin on June 5, one week from yesterday--is being held because Governor Walker, once he became governor, proceeded to commit acts that during his gubernatorial campaign he never mentioned.

He claims now that everything he has done is something he pledged to do in his campaign.

This is simply not true. He is lying.

And because he is lying so profoundly, because his public speech is so regularly laced with verifiable lies, I think it's only fair that those of us who have been living in Wisconsin should share with as many people as possible the difference between what the governor has said, and what he has actually done.

He said he would bring 250,000 jobs to Wisconsin his term of office.  He's not doing very well in this goal. So far, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wisconsin has lost more jobs during his first year in office than any other state in the union.

He has repeatedly claimed that his policies would "give the tools" to schools throughout the state to "improve education." However,  his actual actions regarding education have been mostly to decrease the state's education budget by more than $800 million. This has resulted in massive layoffs of teachers and support personnel throughout the state. He has essentially created an education crisis in Wisconsin, by cutting the budget by this enormous, unprecedentedly large amount.

He ran ads on television earlier this year in which people who described themselves as teachers said that they had not experienced any layoffs in their schools. And actually, the people in those poliical ads were telling the truth. However, one detail was omitted. The teachers were working at private charter schools the only schools that Walker's budget has supported to a significant degree.

This, while public schools have been sorely tested by his enormous cuts in budget.

But the most obviously egregious policy move Walker has made was a point in what he termed his "budget-balancing" bill: eliminating the right of public-sector employee unions to negotiate with the state. This is the issue that first aroused the considerable distress of Wisconsin residents.

Walker claimed that this measure was necessary to balance the state budget. Except that is simply not true. Wisconsin unions had been bargaining in good faith with the state under his predecessor's term, and were--and still are--quite willing to make wage and benefits concessions in order to help balance the state budget.

But Walker insisted hat eliminating negotiation rights for public-employee unions was absolutely vital to balancing the budget. And again, that is simply not true. It is worse, it's a baldfaced lie. Since this issue first emerged, Walker has been caught several times admitting that his real agenda is to break the power of unions in Wisconsin. It has nothing to do with budgets.

It has everything to do with political power.

The biggest source of political contributions and volunteers for Democratic candidates is unions. Union members historically ally far more with the Democratic party than with Republicans.

So if Walker can, as he has admitted in conversations he thought were private, break the unions, he can eliminate a very significant source of opposition to his policies and to the election of other Republican candidates in Wisconsin.

He has also acted to cut by tens of millions of dollars the budget for BadgerCare, the Wisconsin state organization that provides health insurance to those who don't have another source of healthcare coverage.

Farmers, state employees like teachers, nurses, police, fire and other workers all depend on BadgerCare. And Walker's budget measures have slashed support to this program.

Whenever I think he has done as much as he can possibly do to damage the state of Wisconsin, he does something else to damage one or another aspect of life in this, the state which was the birthplace of the American Progressive Movement.

Wisconsin pioneered the 40-hour work week.

Wisconsin had the first Child Labor laws.

Wisconsin was instrumental in instituting regulations to safeguard the health and working conditions of workers in the state.

And there are many other ways in which Wisconsin has historically been one of the most progressive states. But Walker isn't interested in the welfare of the state's citizens. He is committed to subsidizing the corporate coffers of the large corporate interests that support him, at the expense of the poor and the middle class.

Across the country there are other states where reactionary, far-right agendas are being pursued by Republican-dominated legislatures and Republican governors. It's not just Wisconsin. Ohio, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and elsewhere, similar initiatives. And it is no less important for people to push back against these unfair, destructive policies.

But ever since fourteen Democratic members of the Wisconsin State Senate walked out to prevent an un-debated vote on Walker's anti-union initiative, his persistent measures designed to undermine the democratic process have become national news, first as people rallied at the state capitol here in Madison to protest his anti-union bill, and ever since, as people have continued to organize here in an attempt to prevent Walker from enacting more and more legislative bills which have as their goal not what they claim to do--create jobs or balance the budget or safeguard us from vague threats to the state. The goal of virtually every bill he has introduced, some of which have passed because the Republicans, until recently, had a majority in boh legislative bodies, has been to subsidize business, or to serve a partisan right-wing agenda--like the law passed a month ago, to repeal the state's Violence against Women law that was enacted to help women who have been sexually or physically assaulted or abused.

Walker also supported and managed to get passed a bill to eliminate any kind of sexual education in public schools except for abstinence-only sex education.

This was especially unfortunate. It has been proven repeatedly, wherever abstinence-only sex education is the law, that this policy does not accomplish its stated goals. Instead of decreasing the number of teenage pregnancies, under abstinence-only policy, they increase; instead of decreasing the incidence of sexually transmitted disease, it increases under abstinence-only policies.

Again, Wisconsin certainly isn't the only state that is suffering under the administration of a Republican governor and a Republican-dominated legislature.

But what has happened in Wisconsin to fight back against Walker and his policies is also very notable. Two Republican State Senators were recalled in elections earlier this year. And the recall elections that will occur next week required a huge number of signatures in order to be instituted. For the recall aimed at un-seating Walker, more than 520,000 valid signatures were required. More than 900.000 valid signatures were collected.

But as we approach the election next week, the most disturbing thing of all is all too evident id one turns on any television station in Wisconsin. Walker is outspending Tom Barrett, the Mayor of Milwaukee, the Democratic candidate opposing Walker in the recall election, by a mind-boggling 25 to 1. One after another after another after another, an endless barrage of anti-Barrett political ads assault the eyes and ears of Wisconsin residents.

Twenty-five to one.

Think about it.

One has to ask oneself: what can possibly motivate such a vast influx of money from huge (and unidentified) corporate contributors to Walker's campaign?

Every policy Walker has pursued benefits those who already have the money and the power in the state. His policies are crippling and thwarting the efforts of those who have less to make a decent living, to get affordable health care, even to vote!

Yes, to vote. In several different ways, Walker and the Republicans have tried to limit the ability of people vote and to register to vote in Wisconsin. They tried to change the voting districts to benefit the Republican party all over Wisconsin; they passed a new, highly restrictive, voter ID law--a law with provisions that specifically target students and others---the poor, the working poor, minority groups, the elderly--who are traditionally more heavily invested in Democratic as opposed to Republican candidates.

Does this look like coincidence? All across the country Republican-led states are doing their best to suppress the vote, in similar ways.

How craven; how obvious. And yet, unless the people who are most affected by the wide-ranging Republican agenda against the interests of all but the very few and the very powerful, everyone else--you can call it the 99% if you like--will suffer even more, if the Republican-dominated legislatures and state houses succeed in retaining their power and implementing their ever-more-elitist agenda.

A week from now Wisconsin will decide whether this governor has managed to escape the will of the people; whether massive amounts of money will be the strongest determinant of our near-term political future.

We have seen the most lopsided distribution of wealth in the country over the past ten years since the 1920s "Gilded Age" that led directly to the Great Depression. The Republicans have been practicing their own form of welfare--corporate welfare, and welfare for the very rich. They keep talking about "helping the job creators" but the fact is that the "job creators"--big corporations--have had the lowest tax rates, as have the extremely wealthy, that they have had in generations, and all that has happened is an even greater concentration of wealth in a very, very few hands, while the people who have the least have lost jobs, have been victimized by banking schemes . . . do I need to say more?

There is only one way we can prevent things from getting even worse: people must vote out those who have brought this about, starting with Scott Walker and the other Republicans up for recall next week--lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, Scott Fitzgerald (the leader of the Republicans in the state senate) and others.

People have to vote for their own best interests. Not for Walker's bogus claims; not on the basis of whatever his ads say about Tom Barrett.

The anti-Barrett ads focus on the ten years Barrett has been Mayor of Milwaukee. Milwaukee has been a tough city to govern. But everything that has gone wrong in Milwaukee happened when Scott Walker was the County Supervisor of Milwaukee County. That's right. All the failure in Milwaukee fell under Scott Walker's purview.

So when Walker talks about Barrett's failures in Milwaukee, he's describing his own failures. Because Barrett could not do anything to fix Milwaukee without Scott Walker made it possible. And Walker was as un-helpful in Milwaukee as he has been in Wisconsin.

So all those attack ads against Barrett--like the ones that say "Facts" . . . are utterly disingenuous. It's as if Walker or a surrogate is saying in these ads, "Only one person was responsible for Milwaukee's problems. But in fact, Walker played an important role himself. His hands are anything but clean. When Milwaukee needed education aid, Walker instead funneled money to charter schools. When government workers in Milwaukee needed a government that would negotiate give-backs in benefits, instead Walker tried to privatize city services; it goes on and on.

We have only the power of the ballot box to use against the more than $30 million Walker has spent on this election. But we also need people to speak out about the truth about Scott Walker.

Tell your friends. Tell your neighbors. Help people who need help to get to the polls.

And vote.