presumably the one in which there is no ambiguity about the statements in the constitution. cherry picking meaning in old documents happens all the time... most of the time, people only read until they find the bit they agree with and don't go on to read the rest.
what you've just pointed out is an absolute followed by a non-specific qualifier. remember, to a large number of people, "due process of law" is something that only happens to other people. read today's paper for examples.
hence all those amendments that add to or reinterpret pre-existing parts of the document. (the 18th and 22nd are interesting in that way...)
It is a living document, and was meant to be. at least in the specific regulations of it. though I suspect the preamble was meant to be taken as inviolate. if indistinct.
sing it with me now... "...a *more* perfect union..." implying that it is not yet perfect itself. and the constitution full of gaps and qualifiers.
I mean, speaking of documents that are supposed to be inviolate and simple and containing a lot of 'thou shalt not's... I seem to notice quite a bit of those being repeatedly being violated by those that espouse them. so apparently more flexible than you might assume.
School boards don't, but the publishers spend an immense amount of money putting textbooks together, and don't want to spend the extra money it would take to have a different text book that would satisfy every state's rules. In reality, the textbook publishers try to satisfy 4 states, the ones with the largest school markets. they are New York, Florida, California, and Texas. ( in no particular order, but the latter two especially.) currently, with the massive budget cutbacks in California, it is unlikely that the California state school board is going to be purchasing any new sets of text books in the near future, so Texas is the only really large up and coming customer.
for reference, there are papers by Mike Bowler and the book "Lies my Teacher Told Me" by James P. Loewen that cover the nature of how textbooks are put together. add to that the way they are judged, as chronicled by Richard Feynman in "Surely you're joking..." and you can see how there would be a recipe for disaster.
adding to that, you can run the following algorithm on the diff images. 1. blur image by an arbitrary value, 2. darken the image by an arbitrary value. 3. repeat until image is all black.
count the number of repetitions. given various values for steps one and two, you can tune the algorithm to find images that have large areas of mismatch.
possibly not useful to you, but have found it good for validation testing for image manipulation software.
compare both images against the original, not each other. count number of pixels different from the original, then calculate max and average difference between either image and the original.
primarily because they will probably feel like they now have a target that they can attack with impunity. given all the handjobs they've given for the last 8 years, they're probably looking for some payback.
I believe you are correct regarding subcontractor rules, if the subcontractor is not directly tied to a government contract themselves, the rules may not apply.
but as we've agreed, the question is far more complicated than simply measuring "step 5 Profit!!!"
it does make me wonder whether CEO bonuses are used as a way to make those sums come out right.
I used to have a friend at a formerly large computer company that had created a division of people to move another division into a new building. when the move was over, there were a load of people who suddenly realized that despite doing a good job, there was nothing left to do. so my friend's division quietly volunteered to move buildings every six months. consequently a division that had been created on a temporary basis kept getting funded for several years.
however, there is always the possibility that had you voted a particular way, and spent enough time convincing other people to vote that way, you might actually be able to look forward to someone treating the black eye, the possible pregnancy, the psychological trauma, and the potential for punishing the rapist. of course none of this will have prevented you from being raped, but if you can help figure out how to solve that problem, I could see that being of immeasurable benefit for this particular society.
the difficulty is that this whole argument is very incomplete. the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy or a republic is to take an active and continuous interest in the system that governs us. it is not enough to simply wake up every 2 years and throw a vote at someone and hope that things will take care of themselves. if you voted for someone, did you then contact the office of that representative and explain to them why you voted for them.
people wonder why very stupid laws get passed, and stupid people get elected, it's simply because there is a very loud portion of the population, and another very apathetic one. which one do you think is going to get heard, and then protected under the laws that are then passed. who do you think makes the rules that the police (among others,) follow? why do you think that is? the people who get the lobbyist money only get it because they have been elected by people (apparently other than you.) while they may work towards what a special interest tells them to do, they can only do so as long as *we* allow them to do so.
the hope is that if everyone actually takes part in the debate, that you will no longer be "raped," it might actually be consensual sex. though possibly in a marriage of convenience.
(disclaimer:I should point out that I'm not particularly happy using this metaphor as it could very easily be misconstrued as having soft feelings towards rapists. I do not. I just want to make that clear.)
as mighty yar point out, a large amount goes to subcontractors and suppliers, who I don't believe are under such limitations. even if they are, passing the buck down the line conceivably adds another chunk to the profit. hence why Halliburton has so many subsidiaries.
also, bear in mind that you are simply pointing out the profit margin, not how much money gets spread around the company. employee and executive pay are not considered part of the profit. this is largely how some non-profit organizations can pay high salaries and maintain their status.
i.e.: oh god, we had money left over! that's not allowed! quick! pay someone something! expense it!... (wheew, that was close)
not trying to be rude here, because I hate this line of argument. whether you like it or not, if you are living in the United States, YOU ARE PARTICIPATING IN THE SYSTEM!
whether or not you vote. (apologies for shouting)
if you actively take part in the electoral process, you are then helping to shape the system that you are participating in. if you choose to absolve yourself of any responsibility in shaping the society you live in, then a more appropriate analogy would be walking into a strange restaurant, ordering the special, sight unseen, then complaining about the anaphylactic shock from the peanuts you forgot to ask about when you ordered.
on a side note, you analogy is pretty nasty. if a woman, after being raped, only complained about the black eye, I would start by offering post traumatic stress therapy, because there is some serious blocking going on there.
No, living under that system legitimizes it. voting is merely the exercise of what little power you might posess with in it.
if you live in this country, you legitimize this system of government. if you live in it and use the infrastructure, you legitimize it even more. if you accept what a traffic signal tells you what to do, you endorse the system. voting and being involved in the passage of laws is forming the system. if you do not take part, you are the sheep.
what you describe towards the end there is supposed to be the outcome of people electing rational representatives and senators who will have that "diplomatic process" on your behalf. i.e you are supposed to elect people who are good at distilling the needs wants of their constituency rather than electing an ideological tool. because so-called rational people, like you seem to claim to be, absolve themselves of responsibility for making any "effort" ideological tools, who only believe in the winner take all mentality, get elected.
your argument just makes me ill, and the analogy would only be valid if all three are sheep, or all three are wolves. as presented, you are anthropomorphizing two different animals with different needs. (even then, the sheep was out voted. the system would only really be broken in your example if there two sheep, one wolf, and the sheep still end up getting eaten. in your case, the sheep is going to get eaten regardless. so whether or not the sheep votes is completely immaterial. national politics is not that simple.)
saying to the people on the Aircraft carrier "Mission Accomplished" is one thing. absolutely true.
wearing the flight suit and harness to go and make a speech to the american public in the setting of an aircraft carrier that has been moved to a place where it can better provide an impressive looking setting and raising the banner while neatly avoiding mentioning that there was a further much longer lasting 'mission' still in the offing. that was fucking hubris, a gaffe, and using the military, that you have a background with, as a sales prop, in one of the most cynical and partisan ways possible.
Yes, the mission that you describe may very well have been accomplished, but if that is all you see when you look at that speech and the events that led up to and away from it, then whether you like it or not, you have been used. and badly.
WW2 is justifiably cited that way, because the government forced a large number of previously existing companies, (ford, GM etc.) to stop what they were doing and produce war goods. in order to produce that many goods, they had to hire more people. US taxes and bond money pretty much went to pay the wages of a staggering amount of the country.
currently, arms and armor are made by a small subset of companies that specialize in esoteric tools of war. they have fantastic contracts and much of the money ends up in the hands of the corporate management. if not the war profiteer.
also, remember that the plague is "cited as a major force" for starting the rennaissance. in both cases it had a lot to do with thinning out the population. same amount of money, fewer people to share it with...
given that republican campaigners have admitted that their strategy depends on as few people voting as possible, I don't think you have reached a full conclusion.
I do agree with your last statement, but I don't think the answer is asking ignorant people not to vote, but to very seriously take steps to make people less ignorant.
however this does not tend to work in favor of any politician.
they may claim to favor it, but they sure don't practice what they preach... what I don't get is why people keep falling for this every damn election.
they have claimed this 'ideal' for along time now, but I would like to see some evidence of the last republican who actually did reduce the size/cost of government. It certainly hasn't happened in my lifetime.
unfortunately more than one piece of glass is not one of them. for an example, 3 bounces means 1) from the camera to the near glass surface, 2) from the front of the glass to the other side of the glass, to 3) the next thing it hits. if the next thing it hits is a piece of glass, you're screwed, no bounces left.
one thing to remember is that there are many places where the number of samples is limited. in most ray tracers, there is a certain number of samples per pixel, this can vary based on the anti-aliasing method. (one renderer I used to work on used to sample up to 256 times on a single pixel, best.anti-aliasing.ever. for each sample (ray cast) when the ray hit the first surface, there was minimum one ray per light in the scene, more if there were area lights, depending on the size. if the ray hit a reflective or refractive surface, the another ray (or set of rays) would be cast from that point. at which point another set of light rays would be checked for every light in the scene. and so on and so on.
the difficulty with area lights in a ray tracer is that there is always noise. for example if a light is big enough to require say 4 samples minimum, which isn't very big, and it is casting a shadow, any ray that strikes a surface in the penumbra cast by that light may or may not see the full light source. it then averages the light value that it receives. in order for the light source not to cast what would appear to be 4 distinct shadows, it has to randomly vary the part of the light that is sampled. the possibility is that one pixel's sample could return 4 light samples all in shadow, the pixel right next to it could return 4 pixels in full light. you then have to anti-alias that discontinuity by one of a variety of methods, throw more light samples, throw more pixel samples, blur the resulting image, or some combination of the those (and others.) but you can see where the problem is likely to increase render times exponentially.
most 3d renderers in the post production world (PRMan, Mental Ray etc. (though mental ray is a hybrid, and renderman is not a ray-tracer)) take a minimum of 4 samples in each pixel, one at each corner. good, (but certainly not all) ray tracers, in the interest of efficiency will fire a minimum of two samples per pixel, and then add more and more samples in problem areas. any discontinuity will cause more samples. texture discontinuity, lighting, edges etc. to answer Hairy Heron's remark below, it's usually the texture filtering done to prevent this aliasing that's the first subconscious giveaway to a 3D CGI in a movie. smooth gradients are generally the fastest things to render in a ray tracer that works this way.
nobody is suggesting that everyone wants, or should, live in a high-rise apartment. I grew up in an area where it was mostly nothing but single family homes, but there were frequent commercial districts every few blocks. unlike the modern suburban subdivision where you might have miles of houses before you get to a strip of megastores.
density in urban living does not mean 'manhattan', it simply means that housing is interspersed with services in a reasonable manner so that you can stroll to the local store rather than drive. within 5 blocks of the (single family) house I grew up in there were 2 markets, a drugstore, a bakery, a few restaurants and various other commercial interests. we had a barbecue in the back yard, as did nearly every neighbor, and a tree in the front yard that was planted when I was born. but you could still walk to the store, walk to the park, and there were 3 different bus lines that serviced that area. (regrettably over the last few years the bus system there has fallen into disrepair, and service isn't what it was, but you could still get to downtown relatively easily.) the problem you state about not wanting to go to a park with 5000 other kids is solved by having more, smaller parks in the area rather than farming it out to one giant one way off in the distance. same with stores, most of the well laid out cities that I've lived in have made a point to zone commercial areas every 6-8 blocks or so. this is something that isn't done in most suburban sprawl/subdivisions, and as a result, every time you want/need to go somewhere, you *have* to drive.
have you ever flown over a suburban subdivision? you see mile after mile of nearly identical houses on artfully bendy roads, but the nearest store, or bar, or anything is outside the area.
what's really entertaining is the dichotomy of all the people screaming about the invasion of privacy on one hand, while screaming for details on the private affairs on the other. (though true Dodd is a public figure and it is relevant. It's still curious)
I thought this was there to prevent cross state online shenanigans like the enron scandal.
I'm not necessarily sure I would trust the word of someone with an epigram like that at the bottom of the page. (nor anyone who refers to inheritance taxes as the "death tax") if you check out their other principles at that website, you're looking at a deregulation cowboy. (I think slashdot is being played here...)
fwiw, the DHS already does this. if you pay an inordinate amount to your credit card, the transaction can/will be delayed a week or so while it is looked over be the homeland security department. (try it sometimes, one month pay substantially more than you normally pay in a month to your credit card, the transaction may be delayed up to 2 weeks while you are checked out.)
It sounds like from the part of the summary that this is limited to businesses. which already have to itemize much of their business costs and transactions for tax purposes, but there was a hole left for online transactions...
Slashdot Mirror
no, you label them as hypotheses.
presumably the one in which there is no ambiguity about the statements in the constitution. cherry picking meaning in old documents happens all the time... most of the time, people only read until they find the bit they agree with and don't go on to read the rest.
what you've just pointed out is an absolute followed by a non-specific qualifier. remember, to a large number of people, "due process of law" is something that only happens to other people. read today's paper for examples.
hence all those amendments that add to or reinterpret pre-existing parts of the document. (the 18th and 22nd are interesting in that way...)
It is a living document, and was meant to be. at least in the specific regulations of it. though I suspect the preamble was meant to be taken as inviolate. if indistinct.
sing it with me now... "...a *more* perfect union..." implying that it is not yet perfect itself. and the constitution full of gaps and qualifiers.
I mean, speaking of documents that are supposed to be inviolate and simple and containing a lot of 'thou shalt not's... I seem to notice quite a bit of those being repeatedly being violated by those that espouse them. so apparently more flexible than you might assume.
School boards don't, but the publishers spend an immense amount of money putting textbooks together, and don't want to spend the extra money it would take to have a different text book that would satisfy every state's rules. In reality, the textbook publishers try to satisfy 4 states, the ones with the largest school markets. they are New York, Florida, California, and Texas. ( in no particular order, but the latter two especially.) currently, with the massive budget cutbacks in California, it is unlikely that the California state school board is going to be purchasing any new sets of text books in the near future, so Texas is the only really large up and coming customer.
for reference, there are papers by Mike Bowler and the book "Lies my Teacher Told Me" by James P. Loewen that cover the nature of how textbooks are put together. add to that the way they are judged, as chronicled by Richard Feynman in "Surely you're joking..." and you can see how there would be a recipe for disaster.
It comes with graphing calculator. which would seem to be tailor made for what you're trying to do...
Bambi vs. Godzilla?
how could you leave out such a classic?
adding to that, you can run the following algorithm on the diff images.
1. blur image by an arbitrary value,
2. darken the image by an arbitrary value.
3. repeat until image is all black.
count the number of repetitions. given various values for steps one and two, you can tune the algorithm to find images that have large areas of mismatch.
possibly not useful to you, but have found it good for validation testing for image manipulation software.
compare both images against the original, not each other.
count number of pixels different from the original, then calculate max and average difference between either image and the original.
decide which parameter means more to you.
go forward from there.
primarily because they will probably feel like they now have a target that they can attack with impunity. given all the handjobs they've given for the last 8 years, they're probably looking for some payback.
I'm buying more Tums...
The Apple users were much more oriented toward software and graphic applications. They were more interested in what a computer did then how it did it.
I wonder if anyone else agrees with me that the short name for a deregulationist neo-con is "anarchist"
congratulations on getting out.
I believe you are correct regarding subcontractor rules, if the subcontractor is not directly tied to a government contract themselves, the rules may not apply.
but as we've agreed, the question is far more complicated than simply measuring "step 5 Profit!!!"
it does make me wonder whether CEO bonuses are used as a way to make those sums come out right.
I used to have a friend at a formerly large computer company that had created a division of people to move another division into a new building. when the move was over, there were a load of people who suddenly realized that despite doing a good job, there was nothing left to do. so my friend's division quietly volunteered to move buildings every six months. consequently a division that had been created on a temporary basis kept getting funded for several years.
pretty sad really.
this is true,
however, there is always the possibility that had you voted a particular way, and spent enough time convincing other people to vote that way, you might actually be able to look forward to someone treating the black eye, the possible pregnancy, the psychological trauma, and the potential for punishing the rapist. of course none of this will have prevented you from being raped, but if you can help figure out how to solve that problem, I could see that being of immeasurable benefit for this particular society.
the difficulty is that this whole argument is very incomplete. the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy or a republic is to take an active and continuous interest in the system that governs us. it is not enough to simply wake up every 2 years and throw a vote at someone and hope that things will take care of themselves. if you voted for someone, did you then contact the office of that representative and explain to them why you voted for them.
people wonder why very stupid laws get passed, and stupid people get elected, it's simply because there is a very loud portion of the population, and another very apathetic one. which one do you think is going to get heard, and then protected under the laws that are then passed. who do you think makes the rules that the police (among others,) follow? why do you think that is? the people who get the lobbyist money only get it because they have been elected by people (apparently other than you.) while they may work towards what a special interest tells them to do, they can only do so as long as *we* allow them to do so.
the hope is that if everyone actually takes part in the debate, that you will no longer be "raped," it might actually be consensual sex. though possibly in a marriage of convenience.
(disclaimer:I should point out that I'm not particularly happy using this metaphor as it could very easily be misconstrued as having soft feelings towards rapists. I do not. I just want to make that clear.)
as mighty yar point out, a large amount goes to subcontractors and suppliers, who I don't believe are under such limitations. even if they are, passing the buck down the line conceivably adds another chunk to the profit.
hence why Halliburton has so many subsidiaries.
also, bear in mind that you are simply pointing out the profit margin, not how much money gets spread around the company. employee and executive pay are not considered part of the profit. this is largely how some non-profit organizations can pay high salaries and maintain their status.
i.e.: oh god, we had money left over! that's not allowed! quick! pay someone something! expense it!... (wheew, that was close)
not trying to be rude here, because I hate this line of argument. whether you like it or not, if you are living in the United States, YOU ARE PARTICIPATING IN THE SYSTEM!
whether or not you vote. (apologies for shouting)
if you actively take part in the electoral process, you are then helping to shape the system that you are participating in. if you choose to absolve yourself of any responsibility in shaping the society you live in, then a more appropriate analogy would be walking into a strange restaurant, ordering the special, sight unseen, then complaining about the anaphylactic shock from the peanuts you forgot to ask about when you ordered.
on a side note, you analogy is pretty nasty. if a woman, after being raped, only complained about the black eye, I would start by offering post traumatic stress therapy, because there is some serious blocking going on there.
No,
living under that system legitimizes it.
voting is merely the exercise of what little power you might posess with in it.
if you live in this country, you legitimize this system of government. if you live in it and use the infrastructure, you legitimize it even more. if you accept what a traffic signal tells you what to do, you endorse the system. voting and being involved in the passage of laws is forming the system. if you do not take part, you are the sheep.
what you describe towards the end there is supposed to be the outcome of people electing rational representatives and senators who will have that "diplomatic process" on your behalf. i.e you are supposed to elect people who are good at distilling the needs wants of their constituency rather than electing an ideological tool. because so-called rational people, like you seem to claim to be, absolve themselves of responsibility for making any "effort" ideological tools, who only believe in the winner take all mentality, get elected.
your argument just makes me ill, and the analogy would only be valid if all three are sheep, or all three are wolves. as presented, you are anthropomorphizing two different animals with different needs. (even then, the sheep was out voted. the system would only really be broken in your example if there two sheep, one wolf, and the sheep still end up getting eaten. in your case, the sheep is going to get eaten regardless. so whether or not the sheep votes is completely immaterial. national politics is not that simple.)
saying to the people on the Aircraft carrier "Mission Accomplished" is one thing. absolutely true.
wearing the flight suit and harness to go and make a speech to the american public in the setting of an aircraft carrier that has been moved to a place where it can better provide an impressive looking setting and raising the banner while neatly avoiding mentioning that there was a further much longer lasting 'mission' still in the offing. that was fucking hubris, a gaffe, and using the military, that you have a background with, as a sales prop, in one of the most cynical and partisan ways possible.
Yes, the mission that you describe may very well have been accomplished, but if that is all you see when you look at that speech and the events that led up to and away from it, then whether you like it or not, you have been used. and badly.
WW2 is justifiably cited that way, because the government forced a large number of previously existing companies, (ford, GM etc.) to stop what they were doing and produce war goods. in order to produce that many goods, they had to hire more people. US taxes and bond money pretty much went to pay the wages of a staggering amount of the country.
currently, arms and armor are made by a small subset of companies that specialize in esoteric tools of war. they have fantastic contracts and much of the money ends up in the hands of the corporate management. if not the war profiteer.
also, remember that the plague is "cited as a major force" for starting the rennaissance. in both cases it had a lot to do with thinning out the population. same amount of money, fewer people to share it with...
given that republican campaigners have admitted that their strategy depends on as few people voting as possible, I don't think you have reached a full conclusion.
I do agree with your last statement, but I don't think the answer is asking ignorant people not to vote, but to very seriously take steps to make people less ignorant.
however this does not tend to work in favor of any politician.
they may claim to favor it, but they sure don't practice what they preach... what I don't get is why people keep falling for this every damn election.
they have claimed this 'ideal' for along time now, but I would like to see some evidence of the last republican who actually did reduce the size/cost of government. It certainly hasn't happened in my lifetime.
unfortunately more than one piece of glass is not one of them. for an example, 3 bounces means 1) from the camera to the near glass surface, 2) from the front of the glass to the other side of the glass, to 3) the next thing it hits. if the next thing it hits is a piece of glass, you're screwed, no bounces left.
one thing to remember is that there are many places where the number of samples is limited. in most ray tracers, there is a certain number of samples per pixel, this can vary based on the anti-aliasing method. (one renderer I used to work on used to sample up to 256 times on a single pixel, best.anti-aliasing.ever. for each sample (ray cast) when the ray hit the first surface, there was minimum one ray per light in the scene, more if there were area lights, depending on the size. if the ray hit a reflective or refractive surface, the another ray (or set of rays) would be cast from that point. at which point another set of light rays would be checked for every light in the scene. and so on and so on.
the difficulty with area lights in a ray tracer is that there is always noise. for example if a light is big enough to require say 4 samples minimum, which isn't very big, and it is casting a shadow, any ray that strikes a surface in the penumbra cast by that light may or may not see the full light source. it then averages the light value that it receives. in order for the light source not to cast what would appear to be 4 distinct shadows, it has to randomly vary the part of the light that is sampled. the possibility is that one pixel's sample could return 4 light samples all in shadow, the pixel right next to it could return 4 pixels in full light. you then have to anti-alias that discontinuity by one of a variety of methods, throw more light samples, throw more pixel samples, blur the resulting image, or some combination of the those (and others.) but you can see where the problem is likely to increase render times exponentially.
most 3d renderers in the post production world (PRMan, Mental Ray etc. (though mental ray is a hybrid, and renderman is not a ray-tracer)) take a minimum of 4 samples in each pixel, one at each corner. good, (but certainly not all) ray tracers, in the interest of efficiency will fire a minimum of two samples per pixel, and then add more and more samples in problem areas. any discontinuity will cause more samples. texture discontinuity, lighting, edges etc. to answer Hairy Heron's remark below, it's usually the texture filtering done to prevent this aliasing that's the first subconscious giveaway to a 3D CGI in a movie. smooth gradients are generally the fastest things to render in a ray tracer that works this way.
nobody is suggesting that everyone wants, or should, live in a high-rise apartment. I grew up in an area where it was mostly nothing but single family homes, but there were frequent commercial districts every few blocks. unlike the modern suburban subdivision where you might have miles of houses before you get to a strip of megastores.
density in urban living does not mean 'manhattan', it simply means that housing is interspersed with services in a reasonable manner so that you can stroll to the local store rather than drive. within 5 blocks of the (single family) house I grew up in there were 2 markets, a drugstore, a bakery, a few restaurants and various other commercial interests. we had a barbecue in the back yard, as did nearly every neighbor, and a tree in the front yard that was planted when I was born. but you could still walk to the store, walk to the park, and there were 3 different bus lines that serviced that area. (regrettably over the last few years the bus system there has fallen into disrepair, and service isn't what it was, but you could still get to downtown relatively easily.) the problem you state about not wanting to go to a park with 5000 other kids is solved by having more, smaller parks in the area rather than farming it out to one giant one way off in the distance. same with stores, most of the well laid out cities that I've lived in have made a point to zone commercial areas every 6-8 blocks or so. this is something that isn't done in most suburban sprawl/subdivisions, and as a result, every time you want/need to go somewhere, you *have* to drive.
have you ever flown over a suburban subdivision? you see mile after mile of nearly identical houses on artfully bendy roads, but the nearest store, or bar, or anything is outside the area.
what's really entertaining is the dichotomy of all the people screaming about the invasion of privacy on one hand, while screaming for details on the private affairs on the other. (though true Dodd is a public figure and it is relevant. It's still curious)
just to be fair...
feeling a little defensive are we?
I thought this was there to prevent cross state online shenanigans like the enron scandal.
I'm not necessarily sure I would trust the word of someone with an epigram like that at the bottom of the page. (nor anyone who refers to inheritance taxes as the "death tax") if you check out their other principles at that website, you're looking at a deregulation cowboy. (I think slashdot is being played here...)
fwiw, the DHS already does this. if you pay an inordinate amount to your credit card, the transaction can/will be delayed a week or so while it is looked over be the homeland security department. (try it sometimes, one month pay substantially more than you normally pay in a month to your credit card, the transaction may be delayed up to 2 weeks while you are checked out.)
It sounds like from the part of the summary that this is limited to businesses. which already have to itemize much of their business costs and transactions for tax purposes, but there was a hole left for online transactions...