Our tax lawyer has written some technical langue for our website. The bottom line is that we will be purchasing debt of people who are most likely insolvent and if you are insolvent there is no tax implications. Period. Even if they are not insolvent the chain of events that would have to take place to result in this counting as taxable income is highly unlikely. It's not impossible, but it's very very very (lots more verys) unlikely.

The long answer is much longer and more technical but rest assured, we are aware of the tax implications and it's not a problem.

To build Orca, the Romney campaign turned to Microsoft and an unnamed application consulting firm.

This sounds like a lot of failed IT projects in large corporations -- dreamed up by upper management types who don't know anything about tech, then farmed out to consultants and tech vendors for the actual implementation. The consultants and vendors then either proceed to wander in the weeds expensively due to lack of direction, or actively seize on the client's ignorance and take them for a ride.

The problem is that the people nominally in charge of the project, the upper management types, don't have the experience or expertise to know they're getting taken for a ride until it's too late. So there's no way to hold the contractors accountable, or to get the train back on the rails once it's jumped off.

Slava is a deep thinker, which makes me very excited to take a look at RethinkDB.