The National Weather Service issued an extreme heat advisory last week stating, “be prepared for some of the hottest weather ever recorded in the month of June.” It reached an intense 102 degrees on the farm.
We’ve reorganized some chores to be much earlier and later in the day to avoid the blazing sunshine, which stressed select plants.
Six months into the New Year, the growing season has been anything but predictable. That’s also true for politics, be it in Helena or Washington, D.C.
Gov. Steve Bullock established an impressive working relationship with the Republican-controlled Legislature. Bullock worked with the staunchly conservative Legislature to pass policies, which many thought would not happen anytime soon.
Bullock signed into law an expansion of Medicaid that allows lower wage earners to help purchase single-payer healthcare while using federal money to pay the vast majority of the bills.
Bullock convinced the Legislature to pass the last water compact, helping finalize statewide adjudication of water rights. Judging by the record drought that is crippling agriculture in places like California, a water war is brewing and states that adjudicated water rights will fare much better.
Bullock also signed into law a bill to require more transparency for election spending, ending dark money for state elections. The law is a direct reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court rulings that said some could spend unlimited amounts of undisclosed money to sway voters.
Those were impressive policy advancements that people across Montana call progress. Couple those achievements with Bullock’s fiscal frugality and record job creation makes him a consequential leader.
In a surprise to many, the Supreme Court moved some progress of its own.
Last week the court said that people could keep the tax breaks that the Affordable Care Act put in play over five years ago, which make health insurance accessible to thousands of people across our county and state.
President Barack Obama said after the ruling, “This week, after more than 50 votes in Congress to repeal or weaken this law; after a Presidential election base in part on preserving or repealing this law; after multiple challenges to this law before the Supreme Court, we can now say this for certain: the Affordable Care Act still stands, it is working, and is here to stay.”
The next day after the court ruled on health care it rendered one of its most monumental decisions in decades. The court said that same-sex marriage is Constitutionally legal in our 50 United States.
Staunch Republicans won’t have much good to say about this kind of news. In fact it’s hard to find a candidate in the GOP presidential primary that will have anything positive to say about recent issues like marriage and health care. Many want issues like health care and marriage to remain divisive pawns, for politics sake.
Given this kind of affirmative movement it’s easy to see why American voters elected leaders to move the state and nation forward. Voters want trustworthy people like Bullock or Obama at the helm. They serve to backstop plenty of bad bills, but are also willing to collaborate and move us forward.
On many issues, some are stuck living in the past. It’s time to move on and conquer the biggest ecological treat to our way of life, a rapidly changing climate.
Not many political victories are easy to achieve. Many take decades of activism by real people across America. If people want change, continued advocacy is a must.
Many of the social justice issues facing our country are far from fixed. From racism to prisons to brutality on the streets, there is plenty of work ahead. Celebrate now but engage again; we cannot rest upon our laurels if the goal is justice and liberty for all Americans.