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The NSA Would Be Eliminated Under President Gary Johnson (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson says he'd sign an executive order eliminating America's National Security Agency if he wins the 2016 election. And he's also forcefully arguing that domestic surveillance of internet activity and phone calls in the United States is worse than in China. Johnson took issue with an interviewer at The Daily Beast who pointed out that China monitors political dissidents, saying "What do you call the NSA and the satellites that are trained on us and the fact that 110 million Verizon users are having everything we do on our cell phones being data-collected?"
Johnson also wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, replacing both income taxes and corporate taxes with a single federal consumption tax, and says he'd be willing to sign legislation eliminating the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Commerce, which he says fuels "crony capitalism". "I'll sign legislation to eliminate any federal agency that they present me with."
Johnson has also said that if he were elected President, he'd pardon Edward Snowden.
Johnson also wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, replacing both income taxes and corporate taxes with a single federal consumption tax, and says he'd be willing to sign legislation eliminating the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Commerce, which he says fuels "crony capitalism". "I'll sign legislation to eliminate any federal agency that they present me with."
Johnson has also said that if he were elected President, he'd pardon Edward Snowden.
Far more likely that the NSA would eliminate him.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
He knows, we know, he will never have to make good on any of his campaign promises or boasts. He is 100% certain to lose the election.
He can promise anything he wants and it's meaningless. So why not go for the big ones: abolish the IRS but bring a efficient and fair tax enforcement, dismantle the Fed and have a strong monetary policy, kill off Wall Street and at the same time promote free enterprise, yadda, yadda.
Singling out only the universally unpopular NSA ist what a coward would do.
Personal point:
keeping the secret agencies in check & under control = good/wise
abolishing everything = idiotic
bolstering secret agencies further = equally idiot as abolishing them
Hint:
Never choose an extreme, because you can certainly be sure that you are wrong even when you are right.
Eh I dunno, I think it's probably best to just look at a political candidate for what they can do rather than what they say they'll do. For example, he can't abolish either the NSA or the IRS; the former is within the domain of the senate, and the later is within the domain of congress. He can pardon Edward Snowden however, which is basically the only sane thing I've heard out of any of the major candidates for this election year.
If on the one hand we have a giant douche, and on the other we have a turd sandwich, I think a third party candidate could succeed if he's a tic-tac.
Still, voting for him could be the "sensible" thing to do. Especially if you're a in a state where it's already more or less a given how the election will end.
If you're in a red|blue state where the outcome is roughly 70/30 in every election, it doesn't really matter whether you cast your vote for Hillary|Trump. It doesn't even matter whether the state is for or against the candidate you're for or against. Your vote simply does not matter.
You now essentially have three choices. Either you can say "fuck this shit" and stay at home, knowing that it doesn't matter anyway. You can participate in the circus and vote for Hillary|Trump. Or you can show that yes, you would've gone there, you wanted to participate but neither of the two clowns is good enough for your vote, but there is someone who voices your concerns, and he got your vote because of this.
No, this will not change anything. At the very least not immediately. The most you could hope for is that in further elections politicians will try to gain votes and check what agendas moved people. If you can get 5% more votes by catering to the anti-surveillance crowd, they'll go for this.
But then again, since your vote is for the toilet anyway, why not be creative with it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is no "capitalism" under "libertarianism". Without government to enforce laws, it all devolves into "strong man with big stick takes everything".
Oh look, a leftist labeling someone a "racist" for being interested in actual change to help disadvantaged minorities rather than the normal feel-good platitudes put out by the left. So original.
I have said it before and I'll say it again - In the US you don't have the luxury of voting for the person you want to be president, you have to vote against the person you don't want to be president. That leaves no room for third parties.
The fact that two outsiders made such big inroads on both sides of the aisle gives me hope that after Clinton wins this election that there will be enough popular support for replacing the voting system with something like run-off voting. Especially if Trump and Sanders would use their substantial platforms to start the conversation.
Because he's not a criminal or a raving nut. Sad but necessary.
Second, a federal consumption tax. Now normally a consumption tax is regressive: if you spend your whole pay check, as a poor person, then you are paying a greater share of the tax.
You mean you have a higher tax rate - not pay a greater share of the tax. One purchase of a Bentley by a rich person would cover the consumption taxes of 10 average families...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
No, the key word is not "share". The key word is not even mentioned.
Yes, the wealthier will pay a lower proportion of their income as taxes, but why is it relevant? They will still pay more taxes. The question is : what is fair? Is it fair for someone to pay more taxes simply because he's more successful? And if a person pays more taxes, will he get something in return for his greater contribution to society?
The idea that people should pay taxes according to their abilities and receive services from society according to their needs is communism. To me, communism is "regressive".
The problem with the people you're arguing with is they are skipping over the 50th to 99th percentile of the people to complain about the 1% at the top - and they're willing to "punish" all the people in the middle just to get at that 1%. They say "look at Bill Gates" or "look at Paris Hilton," not look at the people making six figures that are having as much problem putting their kids through college because they're ineligible for ANYTHING because they make "too much." They get ZERO benefits because of their incomes, but are paying top or near top effective income tax rates. In the U.S. you are punished the most for making more up until you get that 1%, who only pay capital gains (if that) and have the means to avoid taxes. That's not how it should be, but god forbid Paris Hilton can flash her money around.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Except that, like the other candidates, he can't act unilaterally in most of these cases - it's just an agenda, and I don't consider taking the government back to the ideals of when it was founded (no, not entirely) is "extremism." The government has so far exceeded it's constitutional boundaries it's ridiculous. The RIGHT way to accomplish the things you probably want to keep (things like the D.O. Education) is actually have a constitutional convention to make it actually be something the federal government is legally allowed to do. Abolish all these things, and see if the people actually want them through the process of constitutional conventions. Want single payer healthcare? The current constitution disallows it, have a constitutional convention. Want to ban firearms, or severely limit their availability? Constitutional convention.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
In this case you do get a prize for voting for Trump: the best candidate gets in power for the next 4 years, and likely even for the next 8.
The reward associated with this prize is a restoration of America to its former glory. Immigration law is finally enforced for the first time in decades, strengthening the American economy. Unjust free trade deals would likely be thrown away, again strengthening the American economy. When America's economy is strong, like it was in the 1950s and 1960s, America accomplishes great things.
The last 40 years of open borders and unjust free trade have nearly destroyed America. That's why it's time to leave those policies behind and move forward with President Trump leading the way.
Yeah, the glory days of the fifties. The world was in ruins, most governments were new and fragile, and millions of people had died. I don't think you really understand that decade - the US did well despite the policy at the time, not because of it. The US became what it was because everybody else in the world had to deal with the fallout of the war, whereas the US's physical location shielded it from that. Furthermore, it was the war itself that directly brought the US out of the depths of the Great Depression. Without the incredible amounts of weapons exported, we'd still have absolutely no working rights, working 16 hour days for a dollar a day - in other words, what most developing countries endure today.
Are you seriously advocating for Mr. Trump to start a world war? Maybe you should look up what the 30's in the US looked like, because that's where we'd be heading if you want to follow the glorious policies of the past.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
To my mind SELinux's value comes from it being free software. The freedoms of free software allow us to vet, run, share, and modify SELinux and make sure it does what we need it to do. Coming from NSA is nice because I'm sure the NSA hires skilled programmers who worked on SELinux, but I'm not going to trust any non-free software coming from the NSA because non-free software (regardless of purpose or stated intent) is untrustworthy.
The drug war (the US's longest war?), which seems intimately tied to the Drug Enforcement Agency, certainly is a horror.
Digital Citizen
What, like Guantanamo Bay was going to be closed under President Obama?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If the laws violate the Constitution, then the Judiciary will point that out, and those bad laws will be invalidated
+5 Funny?