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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.
abolishing everything = idiotic
Why? What does the NSA actually do that makes the least difference to you on a daily basis... Other than waste your taxpayer dollars to strip you of any pretense of privacy, of course?
Even the Department of Education - Don't mistake them for having anything to do with actual "education": the Department does not: establish schools and colleges; develop curricula; set requirements for enrollment and graduation; determine state education standards; or develop or implement testing to measure whether states are meeting their education standards. They do little more than enforce discriminatory racial quotas by deciding who to throw our tax dollars at.
On the consumption tax, as I understand it, he's proposing eliminating state and federal income tax, instituting a flat-rate consumption tax instead. Taxes for purchases of "basic necessities" would be prebated (which actually appears to amount to a universal basic income in the form of a check to anyone holding a social security number).
Quick, let's centralize the destruction of cultures in the US. Last time we did that we were very successful.
NSA people work in big office buildings, in a corporate-like environment; they're tightly controlled. It's not like the CIA used to be where you were in a field office somewhere and your superiors weren't always 100% sure what you were doing.
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I have a lot of sympathy for libertarian ideas, but party leaders need to start thinking how to win elections in a democracy that includes voters with diverse political convictions. I can think of a platform that will appeal to a healthy fraction of Democrats and Republicans:
Which part of the NSA is it which sabotages encryption standards?
Retired AF intelligence officer here. Feeling like I'm touring Plato's Cave! Gary Johnson's proposal would not strip the military services of their SIGINT capability. He believes the military should have all the resources it needs to defend the country. As others have said, he wants to dismantle that part of the NSA structure that targets the USA, i.e., American citizens. Some discernment please. I saw that interview. The interviewer was unfairly painting Gary as an extremist. He's not. He's a patriot. This is America. Spying on our own citizens in un-American. I'm proud Gary is standing up for freedom.