Some good, some bad

By The Standard Staff - 10/24/2007

Many thanks to all who participated in the Trash for Trees paper recycling drive this past weekend. Participants turned in a whopping 42,640 pounds of newspapers, magazines, catalogs and office paper.

On both Saturday and Sunday, recyclers filled to the brim all three large bins at the Civic Center, Three Bears Alaska and The Montana Standard, and some people also brought their donations straight to A&S Metals, 2100 Meadowlark Lane. A&S stepped up and paid 2 cents a pound for the paper, and the grand total raised came to $933.41, according to office manager Deanna Noon. All the money will be used to buy trees for Uptown Butte.

The bin at A.W.A.R.E. Recycling, 642 S. Arizona, was about half full as of Tuesday, and manager Terry Harrington said he’ll keep it open through the end of the week. Both co-sponsors also said people may con-tinue to bring their recyclables in and request to have the proceeds donated to the tree account. Standard Editor Gerry O’Brien said the paper will hold another weekend paper drive in six months.

Thumbs up, too, to Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., for working to prevent any further trademarking of “The Last Best Place,” Montana’s unofficial slogan. Baucus wrote a provision that would prohibit the federal government from spending money to process any more trademark applications with that phrase.

The measure recently passed the Senate, and now a negotiating team will work out a compromise that matches a House version.

Baucus pledged to do “whatever it takes” to protect that phrase and told our Lee Washington Bureau reporter that he’s “just baffled that someone would try to gain exclusive rights to it.” We can understand why a businessperson would want it as their exclusive marketing slogan — it’s a great phrase. But we agree with Baucus that it defines Montana in much the same way as “Big Sky Country” and “Treasure State” and it should remain in the public domain.

And while we’re all for finding good homes for stray and abused cats and dogs, the lengths that an animal welfare group went to last week to find homes for stray cats bordered on the absurd. Ten cats who were among roughly 400 rescued from an alleged cat hoarder in Pahrump, Nev., were flown by private jet to Anaconda to take up residence at Pintler Pets.

A staffer from Pintler Pets just happened to call the Utah-based Best Friends Animal Society with a question about dog training and ended up fielding an unrelated request to take in some of these Nevada cats that Best Friends was helping. If this ever happens again, Pintler Pets should just say no. Southwest Montana already has more stray cats than local shelters can handle, and Best Friends should stop wasting money and energy flying cats around the country. Surely there are better ways to spend donation money.

Thumbs down, too, to the U.S. Postal Service for proposing to cut operating hours at the Uptown Butte Post Office on Galena Street. Fortunately, it’s not a done deal yet, and the agency is accepting public comments on the proposal through Dec. 15.

Post office staff said about 600 to 700 people have picked up pre-addressed, postage-paid envelopes they can use to mail comments to the Billings office. If enough people speak up, maybe the decision-makers will re-evaluate the recommendation. If the station is not busy enough for two full-time staffers, maybe the solution is one part-time and one full-time person, to keep the station open all day. It sure seems plenty busy whenever we need to mail a package.