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.

Comments

And he means it .. literally ..

[burni2]

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.

Re:And he means it .. literally ..

[Fire_Wraith]

People forget that the part of the NSA that does spying is just that - part of it. There's also the Information Assurance Directorate, whose sole job is to make computer and communications systems in the government _more_ secure. They're the people who brought you SE Linux. And of course, never mind the fact that there are foreign countries that probably need spying on (North Korea, just to name one). The problem was never about the NSA's very existence, it's about what it's been pushed into by the people in charge in recent years.

Now, if you want to talk about an agency that's been horribly toxic to civil liberties, and really is not serving a positive purpose at all, to abolish, why don't we talk about the DEA?

Re:And he means it .. literally ..

[dcollins]

Yikes, no citations. Let's fix that. The following is from the Swedish government education site. Executive summary: Sweden has centralized and uniform funding, entrance exams, curriculum, teacher training/certification, and grading. Even independent charter schools must follow the same system!

From the age of six, every child has equal access to free education in Sweden. The Swedish school system is regulated through the Education Act, which ensures a safe and friendly environment for students. The act mandates nine years of school attendance for all children from the year they turn seven...

New education act

The new Swedish Education Act of 2011 contains basic principles and provisions for compulsory and further education, pre-school, pre-school year, out-of-school care and adult education. It promotes greater oversight, freedom of choice, and student safety and security.

New curricula

New consolidated curricula for compulsory schools for all students, Sami schools, special schools and upper secondary schools came into force 1 July 2011. The curricula contain new general goals, guidelines and syllabuses. The pre-school curriculum includes clearer goals for children’s linguistic and communicative development and for science and technology. Mandatory national subject tests are held in years 3, 6 and 9 of compulsory school to assess student progress. There are also new qualification requirements for areas including upper secondary school studies.

New grading system

The old Swedish system with four grades from Pass with Special Distinction (MVG) down to Did Not Pass(IG) was replaced by a new grading scale with six grades from A to F in 2011. A to E are passing grades, with F as a failing grade. Grades are assigned starting in year 6. The new grading system is very similar to the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), the standard grading system for higher education in Europé.

Teacher certification

As of 1 December 2013, professional certification is required for school and pre-school teachers on permanent contracts. The decision, a milestone in Swedish education policy, aims to raise the status of the teaching profession, support professional development and thus increase quality in education...

Same rules apply

In Sweden, charter schools must be approved by the Schools Inspectorate and follow the national curricula and syllabuses, just like regular municipal schools.

https://sweden.se/society/education-in-sweden/

Re:Too Bad He's Shown His True Colors

[Opportunist]

Right now, Juan Perón and Ferdinand Marcos could run and I couldn't say if they'd be the worst choice.

Re:If shove came to push...

[TrekkieGod]

Far more likely that the NSA would eliminate him.

They'd try, but it's ok. Captain America wouldn't stand for that anymore than he stood for SHIELD's bullshit.

I mean, if we're going to talk about the fictional pop-culture portrayal of the NSA, Captain America is fair game, right?

Look, I don't like what they're doing anymore than you do. They're way exceeding their authority, they shouldn't be allowed to collect any data domestically. But they're not fucking assassinating political candidates or office holders. If we start using that type of hyperbole, we stop getting taken seriously when we complain about the shit they ARE doing.

"libertarianism" == "mafia rule"

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no "capitalism" under "libertarianism". Without government to enforce laws, it all devolves into "strong man with big stick takes everything".

headline is misleading

[goombah99]

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.

Re:If shove came to push...

[the_povinator]

I'll probably get modded down for saying this, but I know people who have worked with the NSA, and these people have always been very impressed with how seriously NSA employees take the legislative limits on what they can do.

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.