Obviously detaining people indefinitely is a "useful tool" for law enforcement. That doesn't make it right. It may even be a human rights violation according to international law. Where are you getting this 24 hour thing? Can you cite it? My understanding is that an LEO can detain you for as long as he deems necessary to gather evidence of a crime etc. The standard is something vague like a "reasonable" amount of time. In the US there is no hard limit. Maybe you are thinking of the UK. They they have a 24 hour limit on how long a regular police officer can detain you. A higher ranked officer can extend that to 36 hours and a magistrate can extend it to up to 96 hours. That makes sense of course because as you say detainment without enough evidence for an actual arrest is a "useful tool" for police.
I don't agree with it in the least, and hate the fact that the Federal Govt. thinks they can just stop people driving around in their own country for no other reason than to ask us if we're citizens.
This is the very essence of the whole "papers please" issue. I don't care what the justification is. Being subject to random stops to be questioned by LEOs is one of the defining characteristics of a police state. It's scary that the majority of our elected officials seem to be in support of this sort of thing. I mean, being stopped and asked if you are a citizen. It really is like something from the old USSR. I am convinced that eventually the majority of Americans will decide in favor of safety over freedom. This is only the beginning.
There is no specific time limit on how long you can be detained. You can be detained for as long as the LEOs deem necessary. Technically I suppose this could stretch into months or years, but I think that would be impractical because as soon as they move you somewhere you are automatically under arrest and not detained. Once you are under arrest your rights change. Note that at a border you have no rights at all. No constitutional protection. No right to remain silent. No right to an attorney. No right to a trial. If an ICE agent feels you are guilty of a crime then you are guilty. Period. You have no right to a trial until you are actually admitted to the US. If an ICE agent wishes to execute you on a whim, he is within his rights. He would not even be suspended let alone prosecuted for murder. That would only be a violation of international law and not US law. And BTW, being a US citizen *does not* give you the right to enter the US without the consent of an ICE officer. If the ICE officer doesn't want to allow you to enter for any reason he does not have to admit you. In practice of course, these are human beings and, unless they are in a bad mood, unlucky, cop an attitude, are disrespectful, or seem unafraid of their power, most will not shoot you on the spot or detain you indefinitely.
Manning was releasing information to the public about a US military cover-up of several murders and the attempted murder of children. It was his duty as a US citizen to make the public aware of the heinous acts being committed in our name. No damaging classified information was released. No actual harm was done except to the reputation of the US military. Manning was a patriot and a hero as is wikileaks for having the courage to release the information even knowing how angry it would make the US government. Restraining the US military from the callous murder of civilians is of the utmost importance to our country. The problem was the murders themselves, not the leaked information about them. The US military are the bad guys here. Congress should be investigating *them*.
Given that I've been one of those "innocent folks" being questioned twice now, I'm going to respond with a hearty "suck it up". My first detainment consisted of being asked a few questions about drug trafficking until they determined that the dog involved just screwed up. The second was getting pulled aside and asked about what I'd been doing in Africa. My total inconvenience: less than an hour.
This is not what America was supposed to be about. The founding fathers of this country what be aghast at this example. We are moving very quickly into police state territory with this kind of thing. Will you just "suck it up" when you are detained for a day instead of an hour? What about a week or a month? Because that is exactly where we are headed. That's the problem. The principle is the same, regardless of exactly how much of your time they have taken. You can't have both freedom and security. It's a zero sum game. The Soviet Union had a very low crime rate. Is that where we are trying to go? If they have a valid reason for suspicion that is one thing, but these sorts of examples are known as "fishing expeditions". They are detaining you in the hope of finding something to nail you with. Why do they do it? Because they can. Power corrupts.
If you are at least friendly though you may well get out of a ticket. The cop is bored, he can find lots of other cars to give tickets to if you are even half decent to him (or her).
What world do you live in? Have you ever even been to the US? Cops here have ticket quotas they have to meet. And they are assholes. Cops become cops because they want to control and intimidate. They are nearly all ex schoolyard bullies. They like the power of legally walking around with a gun and being able to get away with fucking with people all they want. They are also the only people in the US who can get away with killing people. You gotta love that if you are into it. They get off on giving people tickets. It makes them feel powerful. The only time I have heard of people getting out of tickets was with young pretty girls, and even then, unless they are really hot, they usually have to cry.
Also, LEOs are *not* your friend. They do *not* think nicely of you or respect you. It's their job to arrest people and get convictions. So assuming that they are out to get you is a correct assumption.
There are some states that mostly rely on nuclear and/or hydrolectric for their power. Electric vehicles in those states could get pretty close to zero emissions. Only about 15% of the electricity in Washington state and Idaho is from fossil fuels. A 85% reduction in emissions is pretty significant. And in hydroelectric states it is truly win/win because the electricity is cheap too. There is a big difference in paying 5 cents per KWh in Idaho vs 15 cents or more in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut. That web site shows that the most practical states for EVs are the states that are mainly powered by either coal or hydroelectric. Interestingly nuclear states are pretty expensive too. Although still less expensive than natural gas and oil states. Nuclear may be zero emission, but it aint cheap.
Maybe you should downgrade to the lowest tier. I agree that 50Mbps with a 250 gig cap is silly. Even with a 12 Mbps max download speed I would routinely hit the cap within a week or two, depending on how much I needed to download. It is really only when I barely had anything to download that it took me a whole month to reach the cap. Admittedly I was uploading about twice as much as I was downloading, but the cap really does make Comcap a bad choice for broadband. AFAIK, the only broadband worth having in the US is Verizon FIOS. I now have 35/35 mbit FIOS and I am thrilled with it. So much that when I move I will *only* move to a state and town that also has FIOS available. Not having FIOS is simply not an option for me. FIOS availability is one of the best things about living in this country. It is really too bad that all states don't have it.
The Volt and Corolla aren't exactly in the same class. The Volt is a much nicer car than the Corolla.
Well, yes. That is essentially the point of the article. Currently only the upper classes can afford to buy hybrids or PHEVs. It's being marketed as a luxury item, not as a way to save money. Even though battery assisted vehicles have been around for a decade, there is still not a single economy car with hybrid tech, let alone a PHEV like the Volt. I was all excited about the volt until I saw the price tag. Only rich people can afford to spend $40,000 on a car. The same people who can afford to buy a Porche or BMW. If this is intentional, I don't understand the strategy. Maybe they would be afraid that an economy hybrid would steal a lot of sales from their higher end models.
Was this by chance a Quebec border? The agents there are notorious. I was also detained for so long that I told them I no longer wished to enter Canada ever again and would like to withdraw my request to enter their great country. But they said they had the right to detain me for some very long time (I can't remember how long). I was eventually refused entry, but it took them hours to make that decision. Just as in the US, Canadian customs and immigration agents have virtually unlimited power and no oversight. They really can do whatever they want and make decisions without any justification. I have never had a problem entering Canada west of Quebec though.
How often do you travel? I've been pulled aside lots of times and really interrogated. Lots of personal questions: what do I do for a living, why am I traveling to or returning from country x, what do my relatives do for a living, where do they live, and much more. The extensive follow up questions would be even more personal and intrusive. On occasion the questions lasted for more than an hour. I also get chosen for a "random" search nearly every time. Maybe I just look suspicious. I am ghostly white and none of my family comes from the middle east or Southwest Asia. So it is not racial profiling. I can only imagine what it must be like for a foreigner. We don't exactly put our best foot forward at our borders. Much of the world already regards us as vicious, brutish thugs. Or at least our government. It always seems to happen on departure. Maybe because they know they have you over a barrel. They can easily interrogate you long enough to make you miss your flight. On one occasion they only released me just in time. I made the flight, but with only minutes to spare. In fact, it was only when I showed them my ticket and told them that I was about to miss my flight that they finally released me.
But how many countries *routinely* detain people for that amount of time for no reason at all? I have traveled to something like 50 or 60 countries, including some of the last remaining communist ones and I never experienced anything like what I have experienced trying to enter or leave my own country: The People's Republic of North America.
Imagine the same problem in a universe with three dimensions that's curved in a fourth dimension and you will understand a bit of what general relativity is all about.
More like a pseudo-understanding. It's a bad analogy. The fourth dimension is not spatial. It's temporal. It was mathematically convenient to place time on the graph simultaneously. It also happens to reflect what special relativity indicates is the reality: that space and time are not independent. However time is not really the fourth dimension in the way that people usually think of it, in the way that a tesseract is a four dimensional object, an object that can only be correctly measured using 4 spatial dimensions or axes. This is a very common misconception that unfortunately science fiction has not helped. It is more like a convenient graph of 4 different parameters And again it reflects the reality that our naive idea of independent time is an illusion. The bowling ball and marbles on a rubber mat (to represent a solar system) analogy is also flawed because it tends to make us treat time as a spatial axis. While a great deal of special relativity can be understood intuitively, Minkowski space can only really be understood mathematically. All of the analogies are really hopeless. Our brains are simply not currently wired to understand time as a fourth axis, no matter how elegant and beautiful it makes the equations.
another one is that a bachelor's degree is not really that impressive in Europe
It's not really impressive in any first world country (and even a lot of third world countries). For any decent job you are expected to have a (4 year) bachelors degree in something relevant. In addition to relevant experience. A Masters or PhD is obviously a plus in certain kinds of jobs. In other jobs it is required.
As far as masters programs in the US being free, I never heard of that. One masters program that I was looking at officially costs around $50,000 USD/year, but you are saying that my advisor would pay that for me? Sweet.
IANAHRO, but the topic is interesting. I was snooping around and I found this link which discusses equipment and antennas and has some relevant videos. This site has some info on the various ham bands that might be relevant. It mentions that the sun spot cycle is a problem right now for long distance communications that bounce of the ionosphere. From that site it looks to me like the 20 meter (14mhz) and 40 meter (7 mhz) bands are your best bet. I wouldn't want to have to rely on repeaters on mountain tops. I'd get myself a Yaesu FT-817 and plan to rely on the busy 20 meter band to bounce the call for help off the ionosphere. I'd also look into using an amateur radio satellite. Even though you only get one 15 minute window every 24 hours it's better than nothing. It seems most of those satelites work in the 2 meter band. So an FT-817 would also cover it. But it seems that a small dish antenna might be your best bet to transmit to the satellite. A yagi would probably be easier to pack though. You might also look into a helium balloon or kite aerial antenna. A very cool/geeky way to maybe get above the mountains. I wouldn't want to rely on having to summit a mountain when you have an emergency. I would assume we are talking about something like a broken leg or worse. Despite all these budget communication options if you really value your life and have some money I would go with renting a satphone.
Except technically the sequence was VHS/Betamax -> Laserdisc -> DVD. Laserdisc had seeking, random access etc. The quality of the better discs was very close to DVD and there were no compression artifacts. Some people say that Bluray is the new laserdisc, which would make DVD the new VHS. I still have like 50 or so laserdiscs and my Sony laserdisc player still works fine. I prefer DVD though. I think part of the miraculous success of the DVD format (even converting people from renting to buying) was due to the small size. I prefer it for that reason and also for the higher resolution. And if there's one thing that recompressed 8GB bluray movies have tought me it's that resolution trumps compression artifacts.
And more importantly (to the studios) it would be impractical to rip even to a 3 terabyte drive. This is the best copy protection the studios could ever ask for.
I can't help wondering how many of these replies are from Comcast employees. They have already shown themselves willing to fill courthouses with shills. So why not slashdot? Am I just being paranoid? With millions spent on advertising why not have at least a few slashdot posters in their pocket as well. That's not to say there are genuine concerns about trusting the government. I'm sure some of the posters are legit. I have some concerns as well, but I still don't see how there could be any negatives to a simple net neutrality law. I think the basic rule is that anything good for Comcast is bad for us.
If the problem with government is that it no longer serves the will of the people
It never did. It is in the very nature of governments that they serve their own will. They are their own master and answer only to themselves. Elections just change the names involved. Nothing can change the nature of the quasi-organism known as government. It exists to serve itself. It has always been that way and it will always be that way. Occasionally, be sheer accident, this quasi-organism does something the people regard as good. Net neutrality would be a perfect example. Wouldn't it be nice if we could pass a net neutrality law *without* increasing the power of the FCC? Or just increase their power solely over net neutrality issues and not over the internet in general?
If the democrats are "centrist" then so are the republicans. Socialists probably see the American democratic party as centrist just as Libertarians see the Republicans. At least when it comes to economic issues. For issues not directly related to economics the Republicans are actually further left than the democrats. Although both parties often agree on such issues, which is what gets us things like The Patriot Act and the DMCA. Of course, in terms of actions both parties are virtually identical. It is only their words that differ. Democrats pretend to care about the poor and "social justice", egalitarianism etc and the Republicans pretend to care about free market economics.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously detaining people indefinitely is a "useful tool" for law enforcement. That doesn't make it right. It may even be a human rights violation according to international law. Where are you getting this 24 hour thing? Can you cite it? My understanding is that an LEO can detain you for as long as he deems necessary to gather evidence of a crime etc. The standard is something vague like a "reasonable" amount of time. In the US there is no hard limit. Maybe you are thinking of the UK. They they have a 24 hour limit on how long a regular police officer can detain you. A higher ranked officer can extend that to 36 hours and a magistrate can extend it to up to 96 hours. That makes sense of course because as you say detainment without enough evidence for an actual arrest is a "useful tool" for police.
I don't agree with it in the least, and hate the fact that the Federal Govt. thinks they can just stop people driving around in their own country for no other reason than to ask us if we're citizens.
This is the very essence of the whole "papers please" issue. I don't care what the justification is. Being subject to random stops to be questioned by LEOs is one of the defining characteristics of a police state. It's scary that the majority of our elected officials seem to be in support of this sort of thing. I mean, being stopped and asked if you are a citizen. It really is like something from the old USSR. I am convinced that eventually the majority of Americans will decide in favor of safety over freedom. This is only the beginning.
There is no specific time limit on how long you can be detained. You can be detained for as long as the LEOs deem necessary. Technically I suppose this could stretch into months or years, but I think that would be impractical because as soon as they move you somewhere you are automatically under arrest and not detained. Once you are under arrest your rights change. Note that at a border you have no rights at all. No constitutional protection. No right to remain silent. No right to an attorney. No right to a trial. If an ICE agent feels you are guilty of a crime then you are guilty. Period. You have no right to a trial until you are actually admitted to the US. If an ICE agent wishes to execute you on a whim, he is within his rights. He would not even be suspended let alone prosecuted for murder. That would only be a violation of international law and not US law. And BTW, being a US citizen *does not* give you the right to enter the US without the consent of an ICE officer. If the ICE officer doesn't want to allow you to enter for any reason he does not have to admit you. In practice of course, these are human beings and, unless they are in a bad mood, unlucky, cop an attitude, are disrespectful, or seem unafraid of their power, most will not shoot you on the spot or detain you indefinitely.
Manning was releasing information to the public about a US military cover-up of several murders and the attempted murder of children. It was his duty as a US citizen to make the public aware of the heinous acts being committed in our name. No damaging classified information was released. No actual harm was done except to the reputation of the US military. Manning was a patriot and a hero as is wikileaks for having the courage to release the information even knowing how angry it would make the US government. Restraining the US military from the callous murder of civilians is of the utmost importance to our country. The problem was the murders themselves, not the leaked information about them. The US military are the bad guys here. Congress should be investigating *them*.
Given that I've been one of those "innocent folks" being questioned twice now, I'm going to respond with a hearty "suck it up". My first detainment consisted of being asked a few questions about drug trafficking until they determined that the dog involved just screwed up. The second was getting pulled aside and asked about what I'd been doing in Africa. My total inconvenience: less than an hour.
This is not what America was supposed to be about. The founding fathers of this country what be aghast at this example. We are moving very quickly into police state territory with this kind of thing. Will you just "suck it up" when you are detained for a day instead of an hour? What about a week or a month? Because that is exactly where we are headed. That's the problem. The principle is the same, regardless of exactly how much of your time they have taken. You can't have both freedom and security. It's a zero sum game. The Soviet Union had a very low crime rate. Is that where we are trying to go? If they have a valid reason for suspicion that is one thing, but these sorts of examples are known as "fishing expeditions". They are detaining you in the hope of finding something to nail you with. Why do they do it? Because they can. Power corrupts.
If you are at least friendly though you may well get out of a ticket. The cop is bored, he can find lots of other cars to give tickets to if you are even half decent to him (or her).
What world do you live in? Have you ever even been to the US? Cops here have ticket quotas they have to meet. And they are assholes. Cops become cops because they want to control and intimidate. They are nearly all ex schoolyard bullies. They like the power of legally walking around with a gun and being able to get away with fucking with people all they want. They are also the only people in the US who can get away with killing people. You gotta love that if you are into it. They get off on giving people tickets. It makes them feel powerful. The only time I have heard of people getting out of tickets was with young pretty girls, and even then, unless they are really hot, they usually have to cry.
Also, LEOs are *not* your friend. They do *not* think nicely of you or respect you. It's their job to arrest people and get convictions. So assuming that they are out to get you is a correct assumption.
Caltech costs about 50k/year IIRC.
Obvious nuclear is the way to go.
A Ford Nucleon then?
There are some states that mostly rely on nuclear and/or hydrolectric for their power. Electric vehicles in those states could get pretty close to zero emissions. Only about 15% of the electricity in Washington state and Idaho is from fossil fuels. A 85% reduction in emissions is pretty significant. And in hydroelectric states it is truly win/win because the electricity is cheap too. There is a big difference in paying 5 cents per KWh in Idaho vs 15 cents or more in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut. That web site shows that the most practical states for EVs are the states that are mainly powered by either coal or hydroelectric. Interestingly nuclear states are pretty expensive too. Although still less expensive than natural gas and oil states. Nuclear may be zero emission, but it aint cheap.
Maybe you should downgrade to the lowest tier. I agree that 50Mbps with a 250 gig cap is silly. Even with a 12 Mbps max download speed I would routinely hit the cap within a week or two, depending on how much I needed to download. It is really only when I barely had anything to download that it took me a whole month to reach the cap. Admittedly I was uploading about twice as much as I was downloading, but the cap really does make Comcap a bad choice for broadband. AFAIK, the only broadband worth having in the US is Verizon FIOS. I now have 35/35 mbit FIOS and I am thrilled with it. So much that when I move I will *only* move to a state and town that also has FIOS available. Not having FIOS is simply not an option for me. FIOS availability is one of the best things about living in this country. It is really too bad that all states don't have it.
The Volt and Corolla aren't exactly in the same class. The Volt is a much nicer car than the Corolla.
Well, yes. That is essentially the point of the article. Currently only the upper classes can afford to buy hybrids or PHEVs. It's being marketed as a luxury item, not as a way to save money. Even though battery assisted vehicles have been around for a decade, there is still not a single economy car with hybrid tech, let alone a PHEV like the Volt. I was all excited about the volt until I saw the price tag. Only rich people can afford to spend $40,000 on a car. The same people who can afford to buy a Porche or BMW. If this is intentional, I don't understand the strategy. Maybe they would be afraid that an economy hybrid would steal a lot of sales from their higher end models.
Was this by chance a Quebec border? The agents there are notorious. I was also detained for so long that I told them I no longer wished to enter Canada ever again and would like to withdraw my request to enter their great country. But they said they had the right to detain me for some very long time (I can't remember how long). I was eventually refused entry, but it took them hours to make that decision. Just as in the US, Canadian customs and immigration agents have virtually unlimited power and no oversight. They really can do whatever they want and make decisions without any justification. I have never had a problem entering Canada west of Quebec though.
How often do you travel? I've been pulled aside lots of times and really interrogated. Lots of personal questions: what do I do for a living, why am I traveling to or returning from country x, what do my relatives do for a living, where do they live, and much more. The extensive follow up questions would be even more personal and intrusive. On occasion the questions lasted for more than an hour. I also get chosen for a "random" search nearly every time. Maybe I just look suspicious. I am ghostly white and none of my family comes from the middle east or Southwest Asia. So it is not racial profiling. I can only imagine what it must be like for a foreigner. We don't exactly put our best foot forward at our borders. Much of the world already regards us as vicious, brutish thugs. Or at least our government. It always seems to happen on departure. Maybe because they know they have you over a barrel. They can easily interrogate you long enough to make you miss your flight. On one occasion they only released me just in time. I made the flight, but with only minutes to spare. In fact, it was only when I showed them my ticket and told them that I was about to miss my flight that they finally released me.
But how many countries *routinely* detain people for that amount of time for no reason at all? I have traveled to something like 50 or 60 countries, including some of the last remaining communist ones and I never experienced anything like what I have experienced trying to enter or leave my own country: The People's Republic of North America.
It would be spooky if the region of space with fewer cosmic rays coincided with the WMAP cold spot.
Imagine the same problem in a universe with three dimensions that's curved in a fourth dimension and you will understand a bit of what general relativity is all about.
More like a pseudo-understanding. It's a bad analogy. The fourth dimension is not spatial. It's temporal. It was mathematically convenient to place time on the graph simultaneously. It also happens to reflect what special relativity indicates is the reality: that space and time are not independent. However time is not really the fourth dimension in the way that people usually think of it, in the way that a tesseract is a four dimensional object, an object that can only be correctly measured using 4 spatial dimensions or axes. This is a very common misconception that unfortunately science fiction has not helped. It is more like a convenient graph of 4 different parameters And again it reflects the reality that our naive idea of independent time is an illusion. The bowling ball and marbles on a rubber mat (to represent a solar system) analogy is also flawed because it tends to make us treat time as a spatial axis. While a great deal of special relativity can be understood intuitively, Minkowski space can only really be understood mathematically. All of the analogies are really hopeless. Our brains are simply not currently wired to understand time as a fourth axis, no matter how elegant and beautiful it makes the equations.
another one is that a bachelor's degree is not really that impressive in Europe
It's not really impressive in any first world country (and even a lot of third world countries). For any decent job you are expected to have a (4 year) bachelors degree in something relevant. In addition to relevant experience. A Masters or PhD is obviously a plus in certain kinds of jobs. In other jobs it is required.
As far as masters programs in the US being free, I never heard of that. One masters program that I was looking at officially costs around $50,000 USD/year, but you are saying that my advisor would pay that for me? Sweet.
TPB has it too.
IANAHRO, but the topic is interesting. I was snooping around and I found this link which discusses equipment and antennas and has some relevant videos. This site has some info on the various ham bands that might be relevant. It mentions that the sun spot cycle is a problem right now for long distance communications that bounce of the ionosphere. From that site it looks to me like the 20 meter (14mhz) and 40 meter (7 mhz) bands are your best bet. I wouldn't want to have to rely on repeaters on mountain tops. I'd get myself a Yaesu FT-817 and plan to rely on the busy 20 meter band to bounce the call for help off the ionosphere. I'd also look into using an amateur radio satellite. Even though you only get one 15 minute window every 24 hours it's better than nothing. It seems most of those satelites work in the 2 meter band. So an FT-817 would also cover it. But it seems that a small dish antenna might be your best bet to transmit to the satellite. A yagi would probably be easier to pack though. You might also look into a helium balloon or kite aerial antenna. A very cool/geeky way to maybe get above the mountains. I wouldn't want to rely on having to summit a mountain when you have an emergency. I would assume we are talking about something like a broken leg or worse. Despite all these budget communication options if you really value your life and have some money I would go with renting a satphone.
Except technically the sequence was VHS/Betamax -> Laserdisc -> DVD. Laserdisc had seeking, random access etc. The quality of the better discs was very close to DVD and there were no compression artifacts. Some people say that Bluray is the new laserdisc, which would make DVD the new VHS. I still have like 50 or so laserdiscs and my Sony laserdisc player still works fine. I prefer DVD though. I think part of the miraculous success of the DVD format (even converting people from renting to buying) was due to the small size. I prefer it for that reason and also for the higher resolution. And if there's one thing that recompressed 8GB bluray movies have tought me it's that resolution trumps compression artifacts.
The picture would be flawless.
And more importantly (to the studios) it would be impractical to rip even to a 3 terabyte drive. This is the best copy protection the studios could ever ask for.
I can't help wondering how many of these replies are from Comcast employees. They have already shown themselves willing to fill courthouses with shills. So why not slashdot? Am I just being paranoid? With millions spent on advertising why not have at least a few slashdot posters in their pocket as well. That's not to say there are genuine concerns about trusting the government. I'm sure some of the posters are legit. I have some concerns as well, but I still don't see how there could be any negatives to a simple net neutrality law. I think the basic rule is that anything good for Comcast is bad for us.
FAIL. Elections, they happen every two years.
Changing the actors does not change the play.
If the problem with government is that it no longer serves the will of the people
It never did. It is in the very nature of governments that they serve their own will. They are their own master and answer only to themselves. Elections just change the names involved. Nothing can change the nature of the quasi-organism known as government. It exists to serve itself. It has always been that way and it will always be that way. Occasionally, be sheer accident, this quasi-organism does something the people regard as good. Net neutrality would be a perfect example. Wouldn't it be nice if we could pass a net neutrality law *without* increasing the power of the FCC? Or just increase their power solely over net neutrality issues and not over the internet in general?
If the democrats are "centrist" then so are the republicans. Socialists probably see the American democratic party as centrist just as Libertarians see the Republicans. At least when it comes to economic issues. For issues not directly related to economics the Republicans are actually further left than the democrats. Although both parties often agree on such issues, which is what gets us things like The Patriot Act and the DMCA. Of course, in terms of actions both parties are virtually identical. It is only their words that differ. Democrats pretend to care about the poor and "social justice", egalitarianism etc and the Republicans pretend to care about free market economics.