Ditto in Canada (naturally seeing how our laws are based on the UK common law tradition)

It never ceases to amaze me how most people have no idea how the money supply works. So maybe a simple explanation is in order.

Think of the money supply as shares in the company called "the economy". If the economy grows but the number of shares stays the same, then each share is worth more. This is called "deflation". It is deflation because the value of a unit of money has increased so you need less of it then before to buy goods and services (eg. prices fall).

So the goal of the Fed is to increase the money supply in step with the growth in the economy. Since this requires making predictions about how much the economy will grow they occasionally get it wrong. For example, if they predicted that the economy will grow by 10% they will increase the money supply by 10% so that prices stay the same. If they do this and the economy does not grow at all, then they have accidentally diluted the value of each unit of money and this is reflected as prices going up. (eg Inflation)

Most western central banks (the fed, the bank of Canada,etc,etc,) don't plan to keep prices the same. They actually target and plan for a 2% inflation rates. The want to increase the money supply slightly ahead of the growth of the economy. The do this for one reason, to introduce flexibility in the labour market.

Prices of bread and cars can go up and down in response to supply and demand. Wages are a little tougher to deal with. People don't like wages going down (even if you prove that purchasing power stays the same). So a 2% inflation rates automatically lowers wages by 2% a year. If times are good wages go up, if not they stay the same (which is to say, go down by 2%).

Up here in Canada the "evidence" from previous versions of these studies have lead to much stricter rules governing head protection and illegal hits in junior sports. In general we think of young people as being very resilient to overcoming injury, these studies showed that a concussion at age 10 can begin a process that can lead to very serious issues in mid life.

So ya we need these studies to provide hard evidence to conventional wisdom. Mostly because some peoples conventional wisdom is not so conventional.

2. The US deaths from gangs ... and deaths from drunk driving

Also, different styles of health care delivery can effect seemingly unrelated issues. In our single payer system in Canada we understand that if we can prevent drug abuse from happening or help people get off drugs sooner then we can avoid higher health care costs later. Smaller drug trade means less gang related violence and less trauma center treatment of gun shot wounds.

As for the driving more then others. Perhaps that means that your civil planning authorities are not giving enough weight to citizen health when they approve communities geared more towards driving then walking.

The crux of the matter is that you can't on the one hand say that the "Nanny State" is bad for personal liberty and your willing to put up with the negative consequences of not having a nanny state. Then turn around and deny the negative consequences as an "unavoidable" skewing of the data because your "unavoidable" differences.

Just suck it up and admit that you understand the pros and cons and are either happy or unhappy with the balance.

The French are willing to put up with 10 times the food related deaths as the USA for the sake of their love of certain foods. So stop being a coward and stand up for your principal that it is every man for himself and if you don't live as long as least you lived free.

No. Not enough said. Did you notice the R in front of their title? Congress is a reflection of the electorate. If you disagree with crap like this then it is your responsibility to raise the level of awareness in your community so that congress is a reflection of a better informed electorate. You have to counter the misinformation so prevalent around us.

Throwing up your hands and giving up will solve little and is just surrender to the ignorant.

You say that you teach Biology in a Christian School and you say you teach "Evolution" rigorously. Do you yourself understand and hold the process of evolution by means of natural selection to be a true account of the process that lead to life on earth and its continued development?

Or do you teach biology while believing that the earth is 6,000 years old and all the critters where created by...god (whether you think of god as an anthropomorphized being with a long beard or just some sort of cosmic super being.

I am truly interested and not baiting.

Agreed. If I tell Google that "In my opinion all of Yahoo's pages were defamatory please take them down." I would expect them to tell me to sod off. If on the other hand I sent them an order from a judge ordering Google (and other named websites) to stop linking to those pages. Then Google can fight with the courts.

It strains my imagination that anyone would think that I or anyone else could tell Google to remove someone's content.

The holy grail of the middleman is to set himself up to be the gate keeper of an essential good or service. Nice choice of words considering the biggest gate keeping extortionist of them all, the pope.

Because scientists are ALWAYS correct. Hell we have hard enough time predicting the weather beyond 5 days in the future. What leads me to trust these predictions 50 years from now?

Actually I am pretty impressed with how accurate the 5 day forecast has become. When I was a kid (70's) the 3 day forecast was frequently wrong and the next day forecast was only had about a 50% confidence.

You already have, your money got Harper elected. Now get off my lawn and out of my countries politics!

Understood. and I didn't mean to be nit picky but there is a world of difference between:

basically doing everything he can to destroy freedoms and turn us into a police state. and
"I wish he could/would do more to restore our the freedoms that others took away or eroded."

It appears that there are many in your society that really do believe the former simply because it has been repeated over and over by people with an agenda. I think as a thinking person you have an obligation to question yourself before repeating other people's propaganda. I am sure it was not your intention to be a tool for the plutocrats.

OK So if I have read your reply correctly what you are saying is:

1. why hasn't Obama pushed congress harder to repeal laws past by congress under the Bush administration
2. why is he not acting to push congress to curb the over reach of the Border protection services
3. and you want him to exercise more control over the TSA and tell them exactly how to balance traveler security vs personal invasion.

About the TSA he has said "I understand people’s frustrations, and what I’ve said to the TSA is that you have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through are there other ways of doing it that are less intrusive," Obama said."

Now if he explicitly told the TSA to stop pat downs or scans or whatever and there was an incident, you would probably be calling for his impeachment for interfering with the good work of the agency. I can hear the pundits now: "If it hadn't been for Obama interfering with the TSA for political gain, those people would be alive today."

So instead of saying Obama has done more to limit freedom then anyone else, you should have said "Why hasn't he done more to repeal the freedom limit actions of others."

Just saying most of the stuff your complaining about was started by other people and the only way for him to do anything about them is through a republican led congress.

Your aim is true but you have the target wrong.

A libertarian state would last 2 seconds. That's how long it would take for two or more citizens to realize that they could join together, pool their resources and subjugate those around them for fun and profit.

I understand the appeal of libertarianism but I have zero idea how anyone could ever create a libertarian state (if such a thing even makes sense). In some ways it's like a paradox. You can only create a libertarian "state of civilization" if you FORCE everyone else in the world to do it at the same time and somehow prevent them from forming their own collectives. Kinda runs counter to the whole philosophy doesn't it?

Or lets put it another way. Who is going to protect your libertarian freedoms? Yourself? That won't work will it. So maybe a bunch of libertarians get together and decide to "volunteer" to coordinate the defense of their mutual freedoms. So they build a wall and take turns patrolling it. This works fine and they live happily and have kids. Those kids grow up and some say "I don't want to walk the wall and you can't force me because we are libertarians." Do you throw them out side the walls? It's their personal choice right? They can volunteer to patrol the walls or they can choose to leave and not have the protection of the walls.

So if you call yourself a libertarian you can either pay your taxes and be happy about it, or you can LEAVE!

basically doing everything he can to destroy freedoms and turn us into a police state. I am not an American, nor do I live in America. Can someone please explain to me exactly what Obama has done to deserve this type of accusation?

I agree with your analysis but not your conclusion. When you say "Per capita metrics only make sense when comparing between countries with similar industrial outputs and economies." you are meaning to say that it is not fair to make this comparison?

per capita measurements in terms of GHG emissions are meant to provide an ethical baseline. It does not matter if you choose to live in the north pole or the equator, you have no more "right" to pollute then anyone else. To say we use more energy because we are more industrialized explains the higher energy use but is not any kind of justification or reason to excuse it. Rather it just becomes more obligation for us to find none polluting energy sources.

Per capita is the ONLY fair measure, and can not be excused away because of locale or level of industrialization. I truly hope you understand that.

On a related note, here in British Columbia we instituted a Carbon tax. The people who live in the north of the province complained that they should receive a rebate because it is colder where they lived, and they had to drive further distances, and had to own trucks. That argument misses the entire point of the carbon tax as a way of internalizing and making transparent and otherwise invisible externalized cost of carbon fuels. These people were probably correct that they will pay more carbon tax then those living in the south. But rather then ask for a rebate, they are supposed to add that additional cost onto the products we receive from the north such as minerals and lumber. The whole idea is for the cost of carbon use to be internalized completely into the price mechanisms of our economies. Providing a rebate would make the entire exercise pointless.