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

by JeannieHeberlin Posted on October 12, 2014

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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Did Budget Cuts Hamper Response to Ebola and Enterovirus? Democrats Push for Hearing

by ChristiYdy Posted on October 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Yesterday the Ranking Members of the Labor, Heath and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee and the Appropriations Committee called for a hearing to examine how budget cuts may have led to not only the Ebola epidemic, but also the proliferation of Enterovirus D68, a rapidly spreading pediatric respiratory disease that has sickened 500 children in 42 states across the US.

Members of the subcommittee, which oversees the funding for two primary federal public health agencies—the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health—penned a letter to the subcommittee chairman, Congressman Jack Kingston, detailing the effects budget cuts have had on response efforts:

“As you know, our subcommittee has been forced to make difficult choices due to our constrained budget environment over the past four years. That has resulted in the purchasing power of the NIH being reduced by 10 percent over the last four years. Our public health infrastructure at the CDC and HHS has also been forced to make do with less. CDC’s program that supports our state and local public health professionals who are working on the front lines to contain this current Ebola epidemic has been cut by 16 percent over the last four years after adjusting for inflation. The program at HHS that helps hospitals be ready to contain deadly epidemics like Ebola and prepare for patient surges from outbreaks like Entereovirus D68 has been reduced by 44 percent over the same period.”

Congress is currently in recess, not scheduled to reconvene until after the November elections. But, with one confirmed death from Ebola in the US and new reports about potential diagnoses coming in, they are calling for answers now.

“While we may disagree on the merits and the necessity of these cuts we have a responsibility to ensure that CDC, NIH and the other public health agencies under our jurisdiction have sufficient resources to protect the public health and are taking the appropriate actions today to address it. When Congress returns from the November elections we will have to determine the funding necessary for these agencies to respond to these public health cruses before the Continuing Resolution expires. Therefore, we urge you to convene a Subcommittee hearing this month to gather the information we need to make informed decisions for the remainder of the fiscal year.

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Rand Paul to Appear at Event Featuring Neo-Confederate Aide He Had to Fire

by BillieMcmichael Posted on September 16, 2014

Mother Jones

This week, the Ron Paul-led Campaign for Liberty hosts its fourth annual Liberty Political Action Conference, and the speaking list features a roster of well-known Republican politicians and libertarian activists. The biggest draw of this year’s LPAC will undoubtedly be Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who each day inches closer to a 2016 presidential run. Slated to speak at the same event, though, is Paul’s ex-aide Jack Hunter, who the senator fired after his past as a neo-Confederate advocate was revealed.

Hunter used to be the social media director in Paul’s Senate office, and he co-wrote Paul’s 2010 book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington. But in 2013, the Washington Free Beacon revealed that Hunter, under a different identity, had long been involved with the neo-Confederate and southern secessionist movements. For 13 years, Hunter was a South Carolina talk radio host who called himself the “Southern Avenger.” In public, he wore a luchador mask bearing a Confederate flag. As the Avenger, Hunter made many a provocative remark, including arguably racist comments. He said that John Wilkes Booth’s heart was “in the right place” and that he celebrated Booth’s birthday every year. He claimed that Abraham Lincoln would have been romantically drawn to Adolf Hitler. He called the NAACP a “malicious hate group” on par with the KKK. He contended that a “non-white majority America would simply cease to be America.”

Hunter also chaired an organization called the League of the South, which advocated “the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic.” The Free Beacon reported,

“The League of the South is an implicitly racist group in that the idealized version of the South that they promote is one which, to use their ideology, is dominated by ‘Anglo-Celtic’ culture, which is their code word for ‘white,'” said Mark Pitcavage, the director of investigative research at the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL said it does not necessarily classify it as a hate group.

The League of the South maintains that it is not racist and does not discriminate in terms of membership.

“When I was part of it, they were very explicit that’s not what they were about,” Hunter told the Free Beacon. “I was a young person, it was a fairly radical group—the same way a person on the left might be attracted in college to some left-wing radical groups.”

After Hunter was unmasked, Paul said that his Southern Avenger commentaries were “stupid” and canned him. A few months later, Hunter wrote a story titled “Confessions of a Right-Wing Shock Jock” and distanced himself from his old comments. “I said many terrible things,” he wrote. “I disavow them.”

Now, Hunter is back in the fold and back on the speaker’s list in the liberty movement presided over by Ron and Rand Paul. The Campaign for Liberty bills him as “the one and only Jack Hunter.” Hard to argue with that.

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Rand Paul to Appear at Event Featuring Neo-Confederate Aide He Had to Fire

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3 Ways the Baltimore Ravens Completely Screwed Up the Ray Rice Mess

by RalphIsabel Posted on September 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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This afternoon, the Baltimore Ravens released running back Ray Rice in response to a video released by TMZ showing Rice knocking his then-fiancée (and current wife) Janay Palmer unconscious in an Atlantic City elevator in February. Rice has been the subject of intense scrutiny since the NFL suspended him for two games—earlier today, it suspended him indefinitely—but some had given the star running back the benefit of the doubt after he claimed he was simply defending himself. (Indeed, both Rice and Palmer were charged with assault following the incident.)

This new footage, though, clearly shows that wasn’t the case, and as outrage mounted today, the Ravens had little choice but to take decisive action against Rice. But we should hardly be praising the team. If anything, the Ravens have been defending Rice and victim-blaming from the very beginning. For example:

1. In May, the Ravens decided it’d be a good idea to sit Rice and Palmer in front of the media and have them publicly address the Atlantic City incident. The result was a complete PR disaster. Rice began by apologizing not to Palmer, but to senior Ravens management and coach John Harbaugh. Rice also chose his words poorly, defining failure as “not getting knocked down, but not getting back up.”

2. Even more tone-deaf than the press conference itself was how the Ravens presented it. The team had a staffer live-tweeting the spectacle, and the team’s official account sent out this unbelievable tweet, straight out of Victim-Blaming 101:

The tweet was deleted today.

3. After Rice’s two-game suspension was handed down in late July, people were outraged that occasional pot smokers got harsher punishments from the NFL. The Ravens PR machine thought it was the perfect time to start rehabilitating Rice’s image, releasing a glowing dispatch from his first major public appearance after the punishment. The article, posted on the team’s website, says Rice got a “standing ovation” from fans who “showed him a lot of love,” even though he had been under “national scrutiny.” After noting that he showed his “usual fun-loving side,” the piece observed with remarkable subtlety that “Rice jerseys sprinkled the crowd, worn by both males and females.”

The NFL has earned much-deserved flak for toughening its domestic-violence penalties only when the national criticism ramped up. Today’s move by the Ravens should be seen in a similar light: Cutting Rice was the right decision, but it’s clear the organization has never taken his offenses all that seriously. It took an even-worse leaked video to make the Ravens finally act.

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3 Ways the Baltimore Ravens Completely Screwed Up the Ray Rice Mess

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Russia Is Going After McDonald’s. (Can We Give Them Jack in the Box?)

by Brain5176z Posted on August 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Russia’s health inspection agency is scrutinizing more than 100 McDonald’s locations and has forced the company to temporarily close multiple others in the country. The agency says McDonalds outlets are getting inspected because some have violated sanitary regulations— but others see retaliation for US sanctions on Russia.

“This is a prominent symbol of the U.S. It has a lot of restaurants and therefore is a meaningful target,” Yulia Bushueva, managing director for Arbat Capital, an investment advisory company, told Bloomberg. “I don’t recall McDonald’s having consumer-safety problems of such a scale in over more than two decades of presence in Russia.”

McDonald’s was the first fast food chain to enter Russia, and it holds some symbolic importance in the country. The first location opened in Pushkin Square in Moscow in January 1990 to one utterly massive line (see video below). This was shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall but nearly two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union when Western brands of any stripe were a rare sight in Russia. At the time, the site of the Golden Arches in the center of Moscow signaled the arrival of a new era of prosperity and integration with the world economy.

Today, there are more than 400 McDonald’s outlets in the country. Many are owned locally. The company employs more than 37,000 people in Russia and sources 85 percent of its products from Russian suppliers, according to its website.

But as Russia and the West began facing off over Ukraine this spring, McDonald’s has fallen victim to their power struggle. In April, McDonald’s announced it would close it’s three company-owned locations in Crimea “due to operational reasons beyond our control,” according to their statement to Reuters.

That decision was praised by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a prominent legislator and Putin supporter, who suggested the chain should leave Russia as well. “It would be good if they closed here too, if they disappeared for good,” he said in Russian media. “Pepsi-Cola would be next.” Zhirinovsky also proposed instructing members of his Liberal Democratic party to picket outside McDonald’s until they closed.

Since August 20, McDonald’s has temporarily closed 12 locations throughout Russia, including four in Krasnodar, near the black sea, and the iconic first-ever location in Moscow. Burger King, Subway, and KFC— which have all seen big expansions in Russia in recent years— have remained unscathed.

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Russia Is Going After McDonald’s. (Can We Give Them Jack in the Box?)

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Humans Have Tripled Mercury in the Oceans

by Perry67Yfbpuqm Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, researchers released the first comprehensive study of mercury in the world’s oceans over time according to depth. Their finding: Since the Industrial Revolution, the burning of fossil fuels and some mining activities have resulted in a more than three times increase in mercury in the upper 100 meters (about 330 feet) of the ocean. There, it builds up in carnivorous species like tuna—a food staple in the US that health experts have been concerned about for years because of its high mercury levels. Much of the 290 million moles (a unit of measure for chemical substances) of mercury in the ocean right now is concentrated in the North Atlantic.

A neurotoxin, mercury is especially dangerous for children and babies: The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that exposure to it can lead to “poor mental development, cerebral palsy, deafness and blindness.” In adults, mercury poising can lead to problems with blood pressure regulation, memory, vision, and sensation in fingers and toes, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. And if that wasn’t scary enough, it’s invisible, odorless, and hiding in fish meat.

The researchers say that the increase in mercury levels is starting to overcome the natural ocean circulation patterns. Typically, the coldest, saltiest water in the world’s oceans naturally sinks and brings much of the mercury along with it, offering shelter to marine life from the chemicals. But now, because of the sheer volume of the stuff, the circulation of water can no longer keep mercury out of shallower depths. According to co-author Carl Lamborg, humans are “starting to overwhelm the ability of deep water formation to hide some of that mercury from us.” According to David Krebbenhoft, a geochemist working for the US Geological Survey, these shifts are directly correlated to the increase in mercury outputs over time.

The good news: If we can curb power plant mercury emissions and buy more products with reduced mercury, we can expect to see ocean mercury levels drop in the future. Says Krebbenhoft, “It’s cause for optimism and should make us excited to do something about it because we may actually have an impact.”

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Humans Have Tripled Mercury in the Oceans

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Californians Want to Fix the Drought—Without Spending Any Money

by 4q4cv8v Posted on June 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Californians agree their state’s drought is a big problem, but they’re not enthused about spending money to alleviate it. That’s one of the takeaways from a just-released University of Southern California/Los Angeles Times poll. Some other findings:

Big problem, getting bigger

Just prior to California’s last gubernatorial election in November 2010, 46 percent of voters agreed that “having enough water to meet our future needs” mattered “a great deal.” The proportion of people who care a lot about water issues has crept up a lot since then:

Last September, 63 percent of voters called the drought a “crisis or major problem.”
89 percent of voters call the drought a “crisis or major problem” now.

Save us some water, just don’t send us the bill

Californians are notoriously tax averse, but even what may be the worst drought in 500 years is apparently not enough to get most voters to agree that the state should improve its water infrastructure:

36 percent of voters said the state should improve water storage and delivery systems, even if it costs money.
52 percent said the state should address these problems without spending money, by taking measures like encouraging conservation.

Poorer people and Latinos are feeling harder hit

The poll found:

11 percentof people making more than $50,000 annually said the drought had a “major impact” on their lives.
24 percent of people making less than $50,000 annually said the same.
29 percent of people making less than $20,000 annually said the same.

It’s worth noting that some of California’s poorest people are Hispanic farm workers. While 25 percent of Latinos surveyed said the drought had a “major impact” on teir lives just 13 percent of people from other racial groups said the same.

Climate denial

A recent study has linked the drought to climate change, but some Californians still aren’t so sure about the connection. While 78 percent of Democrats said climate change was “very or somewhat responsible” for California’s water trouble, only 44 percent of Republicans agreed.

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Californians Want to Fix the Drought—Without Spending Any Money

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The Dick Cheney/Rand Paul Feud Continues—And They’re Both Wrong

by ElmerKTEyid Posted on May 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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This past weekend, former Vice President Dick Cheney made yet another media appearance to denounce President Barack Obama. But Cheney also used the opportunity to continue his feud with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kent.), who is mulling a bid for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. On the friendly turf of Fox News Sunday, Cheney was asked about Paul’s 2009 damning accusation—reported last month by Mother Jones—that Cheney used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse for the Iraq war so that Halliburton, the military contractor Cheney once led, would reap a large profit.

Cheney replied,

Well, before I ever took the job as vice president, I totally severed all my ties with Halliburton, at considerable financial cost. I had no relationship at all with the company throughout the time I was vice president. I didn’t even talk to them. We kept a totally arm’s length relationship. So he obviously is not familiar with the facts.

Paul’s statement was harsh; he essentially had claimed that Cheney had betrayed the nation, exploiting a national horror and causing widespread death and destruction (including the deaths of thousands of Americans) to enrich his corporate cronies. When questioned by ABC News’ Jon Karl about his Cheney comment, Paul insisted, “I’m not questioning Dick Cheney’s motives.” But that’s precisely what Paul had done. And Paul had accomplished what not many could do: he evoked sympathy for the former vice president, who had led the Bush administration’s campaign to rally public support for the Iraq war with false claims about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al Qaeda.

It’s been easy for Cheney and his defenders to dismiss Paul’s over-the-top, conspiracy-theory-like assertion. But on Fox News, the ex-veep, too, went too far. He maintained that he had no financial ties with Halliburton while he was George W. Bush’s number-two and made a personal sacrifice by trading his CEO badge for a White House job. But that’s not entirely accurate.

As Politifact.com noted a few years ago, when Cheney became vice president, he pocketed a $34 million payout from Halliburton. In fact, because he probably sold stock options at an opportune time, he profited enormously because the stock price was at a high:

It’s not clear when Cheney sold his stock options, but it likely was within weeks of his being named to the ticket — a period when Halliburton shares hit their 2000 peak, in the low-to-mid $50 range. By November 30, 2000, the stock had fallen to $33 a share. If he’d waited until then to sell, his payday would have been one-third lower, or roughly $14 million rather than $22 million.

Moreover, when Cheney was veep, he continued to receive deferred payments from Halliburton. In 2004, the New York Times reported, “Mr. Cheney’s financial disclosure statements from 2001, 2002 and 2003 show that since becoming vice president-elect, he has received $1,997,525 from the company: $1,451,398 in a bonus deferred from 1999, the rest in deferred salary.” And at that time, Cheney still held some stock options in the company.

As vice president, Cheney repeatedly contended he had no continuing relationship with Halliburton. In 2003, he declared, “I’ve severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had, now, for over three years.” But a report issued that year by the Congressional Research Service undermined Cheney’s claim. It found that if a public official retained unexercised stock options and collected deferred salary—as Cheney did then—the official had “retained ties” to the company.

So when Cheney now says that he had nothing to do with Halliburton while he was vice-president, he is contradicted by the Congressional Research Service. Maybe he wasn’t in contact with his old pals at the firm, but he continued to bank millions of dollars from the company as it obtained Iraq-related contracts from the US government.

In this ongoing scuffle pitting a GOP establishment heavy (who’s a hawk) against a possible insurgent Republican presidential candidate (who’s an intervention skeptic), both are wrong. When Paul assailed Cheney, he went too far and joined the ranks of the tin-foil-hats crowd—and then he tried to claim he had not said what he said. In defending himself, Cheney misrepresented his financial relationship with Halliburton. This mud-wrestling match has yet to produce a winner, but it is showing that each participant has a problem with accuracy.

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The Dick Cheney/Rand Paul Feud Continues—And They’re Both Wrong

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Department of Education: Title IX Prohibits Discrimination Against Transgender Students

by AntoniettaRyrie Posted on April 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued explicit guidance barring schools that receive federal Title IX funds from discriminating against transgender and gender-nonconforming students.

“Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity and OCR accepts such complaints for investigation. Similarly, the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of the parties does not change a school’s obligations,” the guidance reads.

Human rights advocates are praising the new policy: “We hear from hundreds of students each year who simply want to be themselves and learn at school,” Masen Davis, Executive Director of Transgender Law Center, said in a statement. “Sadly, many schools continue to exclude transgender students from being able to fully participate. Now, every school in the nation should know they are required to give all students, including transgender students, a fair chance at success.”

“This guidance is crystal clear and leaves no room for uncertainty on the part of schools regarding their legal obligation to protect transgender students from discrimination,” said Ian Thompson, ACLU legislative representative, in a statement. The ACLU notes that the guidance builds upon the 2012 ruling from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission protecting transgender employees from workplace discrimination.

The Title IX program is a Nixon-era law that bans schools that receive federal funding from engaging in sex discrimination. But the requirement hasn’t always extended to transgender students. The Transgender Law Center is currently representing a transgender man who filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the University of Pittsburgh violated his rights under Title IX, among other laws. While he was a student, the university allegedly banned him from using the men’s restrooms and later expelled him after he continued using the men’s facilities.

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Department of Education: Title IX Prohibits Discrimination Against Transgender Students

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More Evidence of Paul Ryan’s "Inner Cities" Problem

by KourtneLoughman Posted on March 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012, was still defending his recent comments about inner-cities culture this week, when he appeared on Fox News and told host Bill O’Reilly, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” Ryan was responding to criticism he drew after saying earlier this month, during an interview with conservative radio host Bill Bennett, “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.” Some accused Ryan of using racist—or racially-loaded—rhetoric. Ryan replied that he had been “inarticulate” but was not “implicating the culture of one community”—that is, African Americans. Yet his interview with Bennett was not the first time that Ryan, a potential 2016 presidential contender, had given the impression that inner city poverty was linked to the supposed cultural deficiencies of minority Americans.

In 2005, Ryan spoke to the Atlas Society, a libertarian outfit devoted to the philosophy of Ayn Rand. “I grew up reading Ayn Rand,” he noted, “and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff.” And he observed that all political battles “usually” come down “to one conflict: individualism vs. collectivism.” Asked to describe the best Randian argument to advance libertarian notions on Capitol Hill and beat back the welfare state, Ryan replied,

I think the victimization argument. I think that the fact that collectivists speak down to people as victims is not only an arrogant thing to do, but it produces poor results. So backing up, this victimization class that collectivists try to produce, and showing the folks you’re trying to convince that this is not only in their best interests—in their worst interests—that it’s not dignifying, and it’s arrogant. That seems to work. We’re trying to recruit a lot of minority legislators to work with us on personal savings and health accounts because, of all things, it’s in their best interest to fight party bosses from the Democrats, who are really insisting on everybody toeing the line… But I always try to show how victimhood has gotten them nothing.

You can listen to Ryan’s full answer here:

In these remarks, Ryan appeared to be associating the “victimization class” with “minority legislators,” and suggesting that this group of people have gained nothing by accepting “victimhood.” It’s a message close to Mitt Romney’s 47-percent remarks and Ryan’s own takers-verus-makers line. But there is a racial cast to the comment.

In a 2012 interview, Ryan contended that inner city crime was a cultural matter. Speaking to a reporter with the ABC television affiliate in Flint, Michigan, Ryan remarked,

the best thing to help prevent violent crime in the inner cities is to bring opportunity in the inner cities, is to help people get out of poverty in the inner cities, is to help teach people good discipline, good character. That is civil society. That’s what charities, and civic groups, and churches do to help one another make sure that they can realize the value in one another.

A key problem, he appeared to be saying, was with the character of poor people within the inner cities. Given the high percentage of African Americans in such areas, this remark, too, could be seen as racially charged.

It’s no shocker when Ryan—or other libertarians—denounce government assistance programs for breeding dependency and preventing recipients from developing a robust work ethic. But Ryan contends all this assistance leads to a cultural problem. In 2012, he told conservative host Star Parker that the best way to undo the harm caused by a “welfare state that lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency” is to bring “cultural antibodies back in.” And by tying this depraved culture to inner-city Americans, Ryan presents an analysis that can be read to include a racial component. What he said on Bennett’s radio show was not out of sync with his usual rhetoric. It was not inarticulate. It was a view he has expressed before and presumably believes fully.

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More Evidence of Paul Ryan’s "Inner Cities" Problem

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