Would tapping America's energy cornucopia speed economic recovery?

Nah. My colleague Steve Smith and I are fracking skeptics, tree-huggers, and fact-based economic realists, as our recent op-ed suggests. The Chamber of Commerce begs to differ.

David S. Ware, RIP

Somehow I missed news of his death last month. A great one: his huge sound was unmistakeable, and his commitment to the pursuit of beauty--wherever it might take him--was uncompromising. As a player, in my view, he stands with Hawkins or Rollins.

This one is not for the faint of heart, but it gives a flavor of the man's power and intensity. With very cool Matthew Shipp piano.

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 24

Maceo kills. Listen to the whole thing... relentless.

Annoying

My recollection of Ronald Reagan's approach to environmental policy is that he maintained that trees pollute, and generally favored massive deregulation, cost-benefit analysis be damned. It's surely a good thing if he made an exception for the Montreal Protocol to control CFCs. But it's disingenuous at best for Cass Sunstein to claim that cost-benefit analysis is "a tool disliked by many progressives but embraced by Reagan," as if the left remains the major obstacle to a rational approach to climate change. Most of the mainstream environmental movement came around to CBA and market-based policies, such as a carbon tax or cap-and-trade, some time ago. Meanwhile, the mainstream conservative movement in the United States, including the GOP, has gone all in for an anti-intellectual, anti-science ideology that denies the problem before it even gets to talking about a solution. Whether that is because they have an irrational commitment to some fantasy Randian worldview in which the unfettered market can do no wrong a priori, or because they are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, I cannot say. All I can say is that Sunstein should know better. If he thinks invoking Reagan will sway some Republicans, I say good luck with that.

What a great country

Sure, we have our problems, but where else but America could someone have come up with this unsettling little masterpiece...

Cartograms...

... are pretty cool. Questions remain... Are we a divided red and blue, or a thousand shades of purple? That turns out to be a gray area...

They all axed for you...

... they even inquired about you!

Your FSA/OWI photo of the day

Little boy with sack of vegetables from the community garden at the Casa Grande Valley Farms, Pinal County, Arizona. Russell Lee, 1940.