Montana is a great place to live if you enjoy wilderness and wildlife, but it’s a scary place to live if you enjoy science and human rights. This is especially the case now that Republicans dominate the legislature and state-wide offices. Not to be outdone by Florida or Texas for crazy-ass shit, Montana is now the only state in the union that makes it illegal for private businesses to require their employees be vaccinated. What happened to Republicans being “pro-life”? What happened to the Republican rallying cry of “less government regulation?” Oh, yeah, being an asshole and “owning the libs” takes precedent.
Several years ago I shut down my telephone company, Essen Communications Corporation, to pursue other interests. Because of that I no longer have employees. But what if I hadn’t closed the company? My wife, Deb, designed our Montana house to be built with separate offices in our daylight basement. There would be no fucking way I would allow an employee in our home offices—unless that person was vaccinated!
Consequently, I would have had two choices: 1) Come up with some other reason to fire the unvaccinated employee. 2) Set that employee up in an outdoor office, like I have for myself in the summer. Of course, that employee’s outdoor office would be year-round, and he/she would just have to deal with snow drifts and five degrees below zero weather in February!
That said, I sincerely hope that when a COVID-19 outbreak happens in a Montana business—helpless to require employee vaccinations—that they find a way to sue Governor Greg “The Body Slammer” Gianforte and his Republican accomplices in the legislature for every fucking penny they have!