Author Archives: JeannieHeberlin

A love letter to Scott Pruitt

The EPA lost its top grifter Thursday afternoon, as Scott Pruitt tendered his resignation to President Donald Trump. We don’t know, right now, which straw broke the camel’s back — it could’ve been the tens of thousands of dollars he spent on first class flights, the secret calendar he used for private meetings with industry representatives, or maybe he just couldn’t take getting yelled at in a restaurant by a woman and her bemused toddler. (Trump told reporters on Air Force One there was “no final straw.”)

Whatever led to Pruitt quitting, that boy is gone. BOY. BYE.

Scott Pruitt was likely the most scandal-ridden, brown-nosing, oil-loving, climate-denying administrator to ever walk the halls of the EPA. Here’s the thing, though: We’re gonna miss him. Before you get mad and bring your toddlers to Grist HQ, hear us out.

Most of the time, the things that go on in the federal government, however consequential they may be, seem to bore Americans to tears. (Just look at voter turnout stats for midterm elections.) Whether you liked it or not, Scott Pruitt made the public pay attention. Fancy lotions, tactical pants, Chick-Fil-A? That’s drama. Secret phone booths? A 24/7 security detail? That’s intrigue. Getting your aides to pay for your hotel rooms? That’s petty. Pruitt was a veritable scandal-factory of his own making, and the wrongdoings were so juicy we literally couldn’t look away! I mean, the dude spent over 1,500 taxpayer dollars on a dozen fountain pens. Pens!

As time went on, it began to seem like Pruitt didn’t actually care about how many bridges he burned, how many federal investigations were launched, or even whether other members of the GOP were calling for his resignation. But we cared! The scandals were so egregious, so bizarre, so shallow and grasping, that people kept digging and digging to see what else the guy was up to. And each ethical misdeed focused attention on the work he led: dismantling decades of environmental regulations, cutting EPA staffing numbers to below Reagan-era levels, and striking mentions of climate change from the agency’s website.

People got mad! They marched, wrote letters, signed petitions, and sent the EPA multiple copies of Global Warming for Dummies.

No wonder the administration rails against “fake news.” Real journalism was able to take down a Trump loyalist.

Now, someone else wears the tactical pants at the EPA. His name is Andrew Wheeler. He’s been the agency’s deputy administrator since April, and we haven’t heard a peep out of him. Under his leadership, we’re probably in for far less scandal. But you can bet he’ll keep rolling back regulations.

Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist who has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from Murray Energy — a company owned by that guy who sued John Oliver for libel after the comedian called him a “geriatric Dr. Evil” on his HBO show. Wheeler also worked for Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma senator who brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to prove that global warming isn’t real.

The fact of the matter is that the new EPA chief could very well be worse for the environment than Pruitt. And with an administrator who doesn’t have a taste for grifting at the helm, some of those assaults on the environment, coated in propriety and due process, might slide by under the media’s radar.

So, yeah. Thanks, Pruitt. Thanks for stepping in it so many times, for sparking more than a dozen ethics investigations, for creating so many distractions you ended up drawing attention to the environment. (Hey, that’s our job!) Thanks for making people get mad. Here’s to hoping they stay mad.

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A love letter to Scott Pruitt

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The Threatened Atlantic Puffins Are Nesting And It’s Adorable

Mother Jones

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The Atlantic puffins are back…for now. After spending much of the year on the open sea, the photogenic birds have made their annual trip to the North Atlantic shores of Maine, Newfoundland, and the United Kingdom to breed.

Click here to read our feature on Atlantic Puffins

But as Rowan Jacobsen reported in a Mother Jones feature last summer, rising ocean temperatures have taken a huge toll on these seabirds. Cold-water thriving zooplankton, critical to the Gulf of Maine’s food web, have reached their lowest numbers ever, forcing the fish that puffins feed to their young to go elsewhere for food. Without a reliable source of food, in 2013, only 10 percent of puffin pairs in burrows tracked by researchers successfully fledged chicks (normally that rate is 77 percent).

This isn’t the first time puffins in Maine have faced an existential threat. After 300 years of hunting and over harvesting eggs, Atlantic puffin colonies in Maine nearly disappeared. Fortunately, a successful Audubon Society initiative in the 1970s brought them back to nesting islands off the coast of Maine; by 2013, 1,000 pairs were laying eggs there.

During the past couple of years, cold water has returned to the gulf of Maine, which is great news for the puffins. In 2014, they saw a rebound: 75 percent of chicks survived. This year they are back again and as cute as ever. You can watch them below on the Audubon’s puffin live cam until August when they leave again for the ocean:

If that’s not enough, below are some more photos and video of Atlantic puffins:

Randy Rimland/Shutterstock

Helen Kattai/Shutterstock

Eric Isselee/Shutterstock

gabrisigno/Shutterstock

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The Threatened Atlantic Puffins Are Nesting And It’s Adorable

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16 Interesting Photos From the Ferguson Grand Jury Files

Mother Jones

After St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch announced Monday that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted for killing Michael Brown, the county released a collection of documents from the grand jury proceedings. Among them were hundreds of photos from the investigation, depicting everything from the crime scene to Wilson at the hospital after the shooting. Here are just a few (all photos provided by the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office):

Wilson’s police SUV after the shooting. Brown’s hat lies next to it.

Brown’s hat.

The inside of the police SUV where the initial encounter between Wilson and Brown took place.

Shots were fired inside the car, and at least one went through the door.

The driver’s side door handle with what appears to be blood on it.

Wilson’s gun

A closer look shows what appears to be blood on the gun.

Blood on the street (presumably Brown’s)

Wilson, according witnesses and his own testimony, missed several times as he fired at Brown. Some of those bullets struck nearby buildings.

Where one of Wilson’s shots entered the wall of a nearby apartment building.

This shot narrowly missed a window.

There has been contention about the distance between Wilson’s car and Brown’s body. This shot shows Brown’s body behind a screen with Wilson’s SUV off further down the street.

Here’s the diagram of the entire crime scene. The New York Times created a color-coded version (see here).

Wilson said in his grand jury testimony that he only went to the hospital because a superior told him to. Here he is during his examination shortly after Brown’s death.

The left side of Wilson’s face.

The right.

A shot of Wilson taken Aug. 21 (according to the photo’s metadata), less than two weeks after the shooting.

Originally posted here: 

16 Interesting Photos From the Ferguson Grand Jury Files

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Who Makes Those Top 40 Piano Covers You Hear on American Airlines? We Found Out

Mother Jones

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If you’ve been on an American Airlines flight in the last few years, you may have noticed that the airline pipes in piano renditions of popular songs pre-takeoff and post-landing. “We typically offer slower piano music during the boarding process and more upbeat piano music upon arrival,” notes an airline spokesman. Interestingly, American is one of the few domestic airlines that play any music at all—much less these somewhat Muzak-y offerings.

Most of these covers were produced by a Minneapolis-based group called the Piano Tribute Players. According to their group’s website, they are “a diverse group of talented musicians devoted to transforming the music of rock and pop’s biggest acts of the past and present into unique piano arrangements.” To say that they are prolific would be an understatement: The Players have produced hundreds of tribute albums, spanning all eras and genres. It is, without doubt, the only group that has covered both Lil’ Wayne and the soundtrack to “Rent.”

It turns out that their covers, which run the gamut of Top 40 past and present, are the subject of contentious and often snarky debate among some of the airline’s regular passengers—there is a long thread devoted to the subject on FlyerTalk, a popular travel site. Here are a few of their thoughts, along with some tracks that have been in heavy rotation on American flights recently.

“The AA piano rips are dreadful. The worst one, from a mire of inadequacy, is OneRepublic’s ‘If I Lose Myself,’ truly horrific and I simply can’t believe the lead singer would have authorized his work to be massacred in this fashion.” —corporate-wage-slave

“I did not enjoy hearing “Blurred Lines,” by Robin Thicke. “What a crappy song to choose!” —FriendlySkies

“I really despise the music. Classical would be much nicer. The piano covers are actually very depressing.” —jmc1K

“Both times deplaning I heard “Lights” by Ellie Goulding. Could not figure out why, but it was a nice soothing touch after a long flight.” —dadaluma83

“I like the music…Guess I’m in the minority.” —jaimelannister

OneRepublic and Blink-182 did not respond to my requests for comment.

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Who Makes Those Top 40 Piano Covers You Hear on American Airlines? We Found Out

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