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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.
Yessssss so glad I've been a Johnson supporter for years, keep up the good fight Gary you have our vote!
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.
And he still sounds better than Trump and Clinton.
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.
Backed Johnson 4 years ago, he's either gone off his rocker since then or just shown his true colors as a racist, homophobic bastard.
What are you talking about?
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.
...and thus loses the lunatic libertarian vote.
I'm libertarian and drivers license requirements are acceptable given the current state of things and the two other candidates. An ideal libertarian world isn't going to just pop into existence.
Right now, Juan Perón and Ferdinand Marcos could run and I couldn't say if they'd be the worst choice.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If this guy actually got elected. We all hate the status quo, but give us something thats not going to throw everything up in the air, and ruin the country. None of the candidates are any good. How bout Bones for President?
Agency *** that even the president doesn't know about. The one that really runs things hidden behind closed doors.
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.
Right, okay. I'm behind him on all that, it sounds super, but it won't happen and we know it. Even if he were elected, none of it would happen. Why? Because while our system might be corrupt, broken, and ineffective; it is very good at preventing change. If I'm being realistic, that's what we (you, I, everyone) actually want. Everyone says they want change, but they don't. What we all really want is for tomorrow to be pretty much like today.
There is no "capitalism" under "libertarianism". Without government to enforce laws, it all devolves into "strong man with big stick takes everything".
Source? I never got that vibe from anything I've seen him say or do, but then I don't exactly monitor his every step.
He can't abolish the IRS, but he most certainly can abolish the NSA and the Departments of Ed, HUD, and Commerce. All of those operate under the authority of the executive branch, and as long as the president doesn't want to spend more money, he can effectively do whatever the hell he wants within his own domain.
The headline makes it sound a bit more radical than it is.
First his beef with the NSA is domestic spying. He says he'd still have "the sattelites" but make sure they were outward looking not domestic. By "sattelites" I am fairly sure he's using that as a proxy for all the NSA does in scooping domestic intelligence. And after all isn't that exactly what gets slashdotter's all uppity. The things that Snowden pointed out? So really for slashdot this is bowling a strike.
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. That's not quite as bad as it sounds. Even if you have a progressive income tax, Where people richer than you or corporations pay income taxes they want higher wages or higher margins and so it drives up the cost of the poor person's consumables. You can make a consumption tax somewhat anti-regressive by making any residual income taxes more progressive. I don't know if Johnston is planning such compensation. I'd like to see his numbers. But I'm not going to flatly reject it.
Eliminatine the dept of education? Well as long as states can manage it, okay. I'm sure congress will tie the fed kickback to the states to educational standards so things won't go to hell in mississippi or texas.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Every morning, there would be a lollipop under my pillow, if President Gary Johnson can just be elected.
Luckily you're just a software retard with no real power, otherwise we'd be back to pre-hunter/gatherer societies.
If the Libertarians wanted any real influence, they'd declare one of the primary parties candidates as theirs and support him/her. Then after the election if that candidate won and say 'we delivered x votes to put you over the top, you owe us, here's what we want you to support'. As it is, all they do is suck just enough votes away to swing the election from one primary party candidate to the other which just irritates the other parties and doesn't make any friends.
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.
Trump has less chance than Johnson.
Because he's not a criminal or a raving nut. Sad but necessary.
Backed Anonymous Coward 4 years ago, he's either gone off his rocker since then or just shown his true colors as a racist, homophobic bastard.
The IRS is also an executive implementation. The GP has no idea what he's talking about.
Britney Spears or Pamela Anderson probably have.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Your dad was Stalin? Cool!
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
There's (almost) no such thing as a "federal" driver's license, so I wouldn't see why a mentally "competent" Libertarian would have a problem with them.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I'll wager $10,000 that Trump gets more votes that Johnson. I'll even give you 10:1 odds - my $10,000 versus your $1,000. You want to take that wager?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Zionism doesn't sound very Libertarian...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Slashdot are capitalist neo-liberals, not commie collectivists.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
any and consumer and employee protections. (Financial) Might Makes Right would be the law of the land.
Unfortunately, Francisco Franco is still dead.
This strikes me as a Very Bad Idea
Review their processes more thoroughly sure... have more have more accountability for their actions, certainly... but get rid of them? I don't want to imagine the can of worms that would open.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Maybe he's thinking of Switzerland.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Consumption tax is a regressive tax policy -- poor people who have to spend their whole paycheck are taxed on every dollar while rich people who invest large portions of their income get off without taxes. This is a tool to increase the gap between rich and poor and I will never support any candidate who advocates consumption taxes.
Promising things he knows full well only Congress can do, that are beyond presidential authority. and knowing full well that no Congress that sits during the next term ever would. Empty promises of ridiculous things.
I'm not sure he could even pardon Snowden without Snowden first being convicted, technically.
No thanks. The tax should always be based on how much you harvest from society.
Hey, that's a nice society you built up with infrastructure, strong military defense, social services and a well regulated market - can I rip that all apart? Libertarians will never start any sort of society - they can only leave an existing one that educated them, let them create/earn wealth, and sells them the goods and services their own country can never, ever make. Gary and his like-minded true believers should leave here and move to their dream country - it already exists - it's called "Somalia".
imagine a soft, buttery paw gently pressing down onto a sleeping soldier's face. forever.
establishment and they will never allow anybody any chance to fuck them
To date the establishment has followed the banksters and them pricks are without a doubt a busload of retards (proven by their ability to go start shit in China and get their ass handed to them in a currency war and screw their own empire), and for that reason no one else can fuck with the establishment any better than themselves. Follow a busload of retards and count yourself in as a retard.
As for the NSA, no reason to get rid of them, their original intended directive could be restored. The corporate espionage bullshit as given an observed chance just isn't working for the big picture, I guess the trick would be to teach the retards to see this.
IMHO, Gary Johnson is not going far enough. While we are at it, we can eliminate the utterly worthless Homeland Security altogether. Let's also get rid of the DEA, move the ATF mission to the FBI and scrap enforcement of tobacco and alcohol. Just cutting those bloated agencies alone would pay for social programs to make life in America better and easier for everyday Americans. I would council caution with eliminating Housing and Urban Development but restructuring it strictly as an advocacy unit for the poor. The Department of Education, could have some value if completely scrapped and built from the ground up with professional educators instead of bureaucrats and politicians. As for the Department of Commerce and the IRS .... let them go bye bye.
At this point it's irrelevant to even bother with other candidates. Whether you dislike him or support him, it's becoming clearer each day that Trump will soon be President Trump.
If that's true, then there's absolutely no point whatsoever in voting for Trump. It's not like you get a prize for betting on the winning horse. You might as well vote for Johnson and try to persuade as many others as possible to as well, because if ending domestic dragnet surveillance is the only thing he's known for then, even if he loses, every single vote for him will be seen as a vote up for grabs for whichever other party adopts that same position in the next election and will influence the actions of the presidents for the next two terms.
You get one vote and if you waste it on voting for the candidate who's "going to win anyway" then you accomplish nothing.
AND, not OR, get it right
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:
I've never regretted my third party votes. I don't look at me as being the problem, I look at everyone else who is too "scared" to vote third party despite the fact they loathe both mainstream candidates. If the worse of two evils wins, it's not because of me - it's because people voted for an evil (lesser or otherwise) instead of someone they actually liked.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
And damnit, Abe Vigoda is finally dead, too...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
In the end, face it: Given the fucked up election system in the US, unless you happen to live in a "swing state", your vote is pointless anyway.
So I have to agree with you: Vote for what you like. Everything else is even more pointless.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A true role model for many, many politicians.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Current system already makes poor stay poor by providing disincentive to work (you lose your benefits faster than your income increases, food stamps can not be saved up to finance a hot dog stand). Replacing it with basic income would give poor more flexibility to rise up and make many workspace regulations unnecessary as people can walk out without fear of destitution.
As for the rich, well the largest companies were going to collapse in 2008 and give smaller car makers like Tesla and others a chance to succeed. Remember what happened instead?
In a truly free market without corporate personhood, people would also go to banks where executives are responsible with their own cars and houses if they lose customer deposits. Think they would still behave as recklessly and take such huge bonuses while the bank fails then?
Trump/Johnson 2016, anyone?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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."
I do not find it moral for people to starve or go without medical care.
To think that wealth is merely a matter of effort is either naive or inhumane.
I'm a libertarian, and I agree - which is why I donate money to the Red Cross, a local children's hospital, and other institutions. While I find Ayn Rand's "objectivism" interesting, objectivism and libertarianism are not the same.
If the government stopped taking so much of my income, I'd donate more. It's absurd you think anyone would want people to starve, go without necessary healthcare, or go without an education - the only difference is the means by which we accomplish these things. Just because you want to abolish the D.O. Education doesn't mean you don't want people to be educated, it means you think there's a better way.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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?
This, exactly. Especially if you live in a state like California or Texas, where one party completely swamps out the other, you have nothing to gain from voting for either major - the Democrats are going to win whether you give them your vote or not, and the Republicans are not going to change because they win in other states. I would vote for Bernie Sanders if he runs as an independent after his loss, but if not, Mr. Johnson here would be a great next step. I don't agree with all of his policies - he need some federal services to oversea the state ones, and there really are times we as a country need to agree on something, or else we'll just fragment apart into many smaller ones. However, he's the only major contender in this race who goes for internet privacy, and if that is enough to influence someone like Mrs. Clinton, I'd be perfectly happy to give him my vote. People view the two parties as the only option because that's what they're parents did, but in reality, you can vote anyone for president - and as funny as Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader are, hopefully by voting for Gary Johnson we can have at least a little influence in our government.
"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
I live in a swing state (Ohio) and my vote is worthless too. The only way it truly matters is if my vote gives a candidate a plurality of the vote in my state AND my state's electoral votes are required for that candidate to win.
If I go out and vote for Hillary Clinton, the only thing that changes is that Hillary Clinton has one extra vote that she wouldn't have had if I did not vote for her.
... and why is it the government's job to keep the rich from getting richer, as long as they're doing it legally?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
.. Large segments freezing to death for lack of shelter, starving to death for lack of food, ...
The sad thing is that, while there are isolated cases of this, that you think it's some huge problem involving "large segments." There's 350 million or so people in the U.S., hearing about a tragedy here and there isn't representative of anything like "large segments."
Stupid sexy Flanders.
There are plenty of municipalities where paying your fee to the local fire department is optional. For some reason, despite the attitude expressed in your comment, those areas aren't burning to the ground and people aren't dying en masse from house fires.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
No other time since the great depression and perhaps the 1850's did America become so disgusted with politics and the heads of both parties. The Whigs are turned into the Republican party is today when they splintered and got an unpopular leader. Hell, Republicans were a fringe party and even Lincoln admitted he was a Whig but turned to the new Republican party.
We have a dismal 15% approval rating of all parties and both houses. We have 2 terrible choices with Hillary or Trump. To top it off we have an angry conservative GOP base who HATES TRUMP and all he stands for. Romney is even considering supporting the Libertarian party but strongly disagrees on it's stance on drugs.
Most people do not know who Johnson is and independents who do like him, but worry he has no traction. If Romney and Paul Ryan endorse him that problem will go away.
Conservatives will fill at home most of the time with a Libertarian president. I think he maybe the next Ross Perot but we will see.
http://saveie6.com/
Um, wot? The Senate and The House of Representatives are the two houses of "Congress," and neither can pass a law without the other. Need clarification. I do agree about pardoning Snowden, though.
Was going to say the same thing. Perhaps GP means "the latter is within the domain of the House," though as pla has noted below, they all fall under the executive branch.
I am supporting Hillary not because I like her, but because I feel Trump is very dangerous! I would love to vote for Johnson if he becomes close in my state and campaign for him if it will make a difference. It is extremely hard to break the cycle but it has been done. When the Whigs disintegrate the radical unknown Republican party took over.
I think Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and others might support Johnson rather than Trump or Hillary. Especially if Sara Palin or Trump campaign against him for revenge.
Ross Perot came close in 1992 with 20% of the vote. This year is different and ripe for a new leader and party
http://saveie6.com/
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?
I think the problem here is that people don't have a good picture of what that 1% really are - they're generally picturing the 1%'ers of the 1%'ers.
The 1% includes athletes, doctors, professors, engineers, people at the top of their field who are very much still working for it.
You knock that down to the 0.01%, and now you're looking at the CEOs with golden parachutes, the winners in the speculation fund manager market, the inherited wealth crowd, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
... is that Gary Johnson will be eliminated by the voters.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Curbing the growing abuse of Executive Powers is one of the more compelling reasons to support Trump. If he gets elected, decades, even centuries of encroaching executive power will be wiped away. A whole new precedent clipping away at executive powers will begin the day he is inagurated.
so called "fair tax" is really stupid zealotry. First I think everyone realizes a flat tax starting from the very first dollar you earn isn't adequately progressive. So what do the "fair" tax apologists do? well they offer a rebate or large deduction so the poorer folks effectively pay less in the end. So now it's a progressive tax. Well if you are going to add in one tier then why not add in more tiers. A "fair" tax is merely a progressive tax with one knee in it. That doesn't make it better. If there is any argument for the first knee then there is an argument for many knees. People pushing this are just having a purity contest.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So he does seem to understand how executive orders work or the limits of the presidents powers. kinda like Trump.
Evinrude.
Now, that's a real runoff.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Lol, I have a better chance of becoming president than Gary Johnson does.
Hell, my dog has a better chance, and I don't even own a dog.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
So what's your argument? That you have to preemptively shield people from the consequences of their bad decisions? I don't want to live in that world.
I don't think there is a law that says that there must be an NSA.
Wikipedia says that originally the NSA was via a National Security Council Intelligence Directive, which I believe was authorized under the National Security Act of 1947.
It looks like later the National Security Agency Act of 1959 gave official authorization for the President to keep running the NSA but it's all "is authorized to" or "may do this" and I don't see a whole lot that could be strictly interpreted as requiring an NSA.
I'm not a lawyer though. I could be very well be wrong. I think at worst the President would be required to maintain certain Director positions and a minimum amount of surveillance but, certainly, he wouldn't be required to have the NSA spying on everyone.
That's ok. When the jackboots you cheer for come for you, there will be no one left to give a shit.
Are you insane?
Trump has shown that if anything he will be the worst president in decades with regards to executive power.
He has outright bemoaned that he can't eliminate journalists he deems "unfair" thus implicitly advocating censorship or worse against a free press.
Claimed he will build a wall and demand that a sovereign foreign country and ally would pay for it.
Claimed he will eliminate remittance to the aforementioned country by its citizens by arbitrarily changing the entire financial system.
Claimed he will force us companies to close their overseas operations.
Will somehow magically round up millions of illegal immigrants and anyone else he deems a threat.
Openly advocated or was complicit in violence at his rallies.
Somehow intends to skirt the U.S. constitution and impose the first ever religious litmus test for immigration.
At one point claimed to be openly advocating a registration database of a specific religion's followers and places of worship.
Advocated for MORE warrantless domestic surveillance.
All these things are what he has openly said he would do or wants to do. None are of course written down on his platform website (other than the wall) because he doesn't actually have any fundamental knowledge of how to govern.
Duh Law is never bad. That's why we need more LAW ENFORCERS(tm) to force those filthy plebs into compliance.
This. Too many people still believe that just a change of President will make everything better. If the people don't effect a massive replacement of "establishment" politicians with true representatives of the people, any individual or few threats to the establishment will be dealt with as necessary. This is worth billions to a few people calling the shots, getting dirty is what they do.
The gooks are inside the wire people, it's time to call "broken arrow".
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
These babies have 3D scanning ability so they can record video of us having sex in our homes and even scan our brain and monitor thoughts. Here are the patents and whistleblowers backing it all up. The scanning technique is called earth gauss MRI/electron spin resonance and interferometry. They can hit citizens with the scanner transmitters to electronically assault and irradiate. Its the ultimate electronic warfare weapon. drrobertduncan.com obamasweapon.com
They want the government to force me to give them money instead of having to say "thank you." Add in government bureaucracy, and you get a worse return on investment to make the people getting "feel better" about themselves. I will put it this way - and this is the libertarian kind of thinking that most people don't like, but I will not change - I don't want people being comfortable living off the labor of others. I would give it because I don't want people to starve, but I don't want their gratitude - they ought to be ashamed of themselves for not being able to provide for themselves and use that as incentive to work harder. I realize some people just can't, which is why I believe in charity (and which is why objectivism and libertarianism are actually somewhat incompatible on that issue), but otherwise the ones NOT using the charity of others to improve their lives, when they can, to the point they don't have to take charity SHOULD feel ashamed about it.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Actually, you can be lazy and not counter what I wrote because your article doesn't counter what I wrote - there are municipalities that do that, and the smart people pay the optional tax, and the dumb ones don't - libertarians want you to be able to make that choice for yourself, even if it's a stupid one. But given the choice, most people pay. The interesting aspect is that you can't claim it adversely affects the poor - because in most municipalities they don't even have the option, yet they somehow manage to pay their property taxes.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Trump being ridiculously abusive is the entire point. His policies are so insane that Congress will likely take back all the power that they've given the President, especially the PATRIOT Act and such.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
And he still sounds better than Trump and Clinton.
After all his eliminations, would he eliminate himself from the President's office?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
OK truly sad.
Are you insane?
Trump has shown that if anything he will be the worst president in decades with regards to executive power.
He has outright bemoaned that he can't eliminate journalists he deems "unfair" thus implicitly advocating censorship or worse against a free press.
Claimed he will build a wall and demand that a sovereign foreign country and ally would pay for it.
I'm pretty sure you'd support a wall if there were solar cells on top of it. It'd totally power the entire U.S.
So state's are small and homogeneous enough that it's totally okay for them to pass such regulations? It's just the bigwigs in Washington that you want out, but the bigwigs in Sacremento/Albany/Juneau/whatever are totally fine?
But they're not fucking assassinating political candidates or office holders.
The NSA will never engage in political assassination. The CIA doesn't take kindly to other people drinking their shake....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
So if you travel a lot, you need to maintain 51 distinct drivers licenses? Wow, what a fucked-up country. No wonder you get the politicians you get.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Someone with even less chance of winning than Ð'ÐÐÐÐмÐÑ ÐYÑfÑÐн. (Dig at Slashcode's limited character set.)
Including, obviously, the NIH and the CDC. The guy is either an idiot, or incapable of working out what the words coming out of his mouth actually mean. These are serious defects in a politician, no matter what the stripe of his or her policies.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Totally agree, we really need to do presidential year campaigns as a suite of politicians that have a comprehensive set of purposes. It isn't enough to change the President, you need to change Congress as well otherwise you'll get the situation with Republicans and Obama where nothing gets done. Of course, Republicans are doing it as a strategy, considering they have fought every appointment of anything in the Federal government. But I digress. If we align them altogether with a unified messaging then there might be more traction. We put too much focus on a President to fix things when that actually belongs to Congress.
He can get them from the local prison populations
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.
Wow, you guys really are out there...
Libertarianism is a response to national level governments. Libertarianism has no objection to government on the local level. Even if you were going to ascribe to the notion that state government is too large a conglomeration to properly represent "local" residents, what objection would any Libertarian would have about people demonstrating a level of mastery before being "permitted" to drive unsupervised? Do they think people don't die from avoidable car accidents???
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
So if you travel a lot, you need to maintain 51 distinct drivers licenses?
State driver license privileges are not recognized or enforced on a federal level in the US. Each state determines their "relationship" to other states. Most states just blanket accept out of state drivers licenses as acceptable for use in their jurisdiction. Most states do not accept foreign driver licenses. Its a given that any out-of-state driver is responsible for complying with local driving laws, and can be arrested for violating them. Adjacent states usually have reciprocal arrangements to deal with each others drivers. If a person is ticketed out-of-state for a driving infractions, and manage to remain outside of that state, they usually aren't extraditable by the other state, or can be dunned outside of the state.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
It is entirely possible that the NSA has contributed to the thwarting of terrorist activity somewhere, sometime(s); even though we may have not heard about it.
Question is: Is this really (President) Gary's plan to have us all THINK the NSA will have gone away; while actually keeping it now covertly?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
About a million people voted for him four years ago. He's likely to be on the ballot for president in all 50 states. Do you know how hard it is to achieve that? Americans have been brainwashed into thinking the views of two parties are sufficient for getting a handle on the problems our country faces. Well, guess what....?! And, a lot of people happen to be disgusted with the RP & DP nominees. They deserve to know there is a viable alternative. One of the principles on which this country was founded is "no taxation without representation." Well, Gary Johnson represents the views of a lot of Americans. Maybe we should care about what people in other parties have to say. In the end, we're all Americans!
Replace it with what? It's perfectly reasonable to talk about reigning-in a rouge agency like the NSA, but it actually provides a valuable and necessary service.
Right now, Juan Perón and Ferdinand Marcos could run and I couldn't say if they'd be the worst choice.
Might as well be Juan with Hilary running. She thinks she's Evita. All the way down to her policies and actions. Maybe Andrew Lloyd Webber could write a musical about her as well.
An EO can't eliminate an agency. It takes Congress to do that.
he'd just be murdered if he tried it.
The USA has never been "free" and is increasingly less so, thanks to our two-party system of idiocy.
In the UK, we have the Monster Raving Looney Party and their "Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_Party); in Denmark there's the Union of Conscientious Work-Shy Elements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Conscientiously_Work-Shy_Elements). These are deliberate jokes - can we assume this is the American version?
Wrong.
The Dept. of the Treasury can not be eliminated, as it was founded on direction from the Constitution.
The IRS itself, didn't exist until the Civil War (and that should be a very big clue to you as to how legal it is).
The Revenue Act of 1862. Look it up. It's the sole basis for the IRS, and it was unconstitutional as the Constitution REQUIRES taxation to be uniform - which the tax code has never been.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
What you're saying is that voting disenfranchises people and removes their ability to exercise self-determination if they either lose, or don't vote.
If the implications of a vote have such broad reaching implications as to change the course of history, to impoverish people or to make people rich, then the system is wrong: it is a system designed to increase inequity, as power always begets power. Yes, democracy increases inequity.
And, to wit, you can't fix a system by being a part of the system, particularly not a dichotomy like our political system. That isn't how the money and vote brokering works. Sorry: you become a part of he system by being a part of the system. It's already happened with Johnson - he's "sold out" the libertarian party, significantly - and it will happen further.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Right now, Cthulhu could run, and I couldn't say if it would be the worst choice.
I have no vote. Both Hillary and The Donald are absolutely unacceptable. I will not vote for either of them under any circumstances.
Since I live in Calipornia, where Hillary is guaranteed 65%+ of the vote even if she spends the rest of the campaign holding Black Masses and sacrificing toddlers to Molech on the steps of the Capitol building, who I vote for is quite irrelevant anyway.
No, you can only get a license in the state you live in. Other states accept out of state licenses, but they often have different driving laws; the process for getting (and keeping) one is also usually somewhat different between states.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Many libertarians would just argue that it's not the federal government's place to tell states what they can and cannot do about licenses; that would be an issue for people in each state to address.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Libertarianism is a response to national level governments. Libertarianism has no objection to government on the local level.
No, libertarianism is an ideology founded on, and ultimately defined by, the Non-Aggression Principle. All governments by their nature incorporate acts of aggression which they deem "legitimate"—taxes and regulations being the most obvious examples. The claim that their acts of aggression are "legitimate"—whether based on the "divine right" of kings, the mythical "social contract", popular acclaim, or any other excuse—is what sets governments apart from other organizations, both law-abiding (no aggression) and criminal (no claim of legitimacy). As such, consistent libertarians oppose governments of all forms and levels; there is no exception for "local" government.
Of course, the larger and more intrusive the government, the more vehement the opposition, so libertarians tend to focus most on the federal government. The long-term plan, however, is to maintain this opposition against the highest extant level of government until individual liberty is eventually achieved.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Fuck off bootlicker.
Given that you were exposed to spelling and grammar for years at school, yet remain functionally illiterate, that seems the triumph of hope over expectation.