The Governor Of Maine Has Stolen My Children’s Christmas Presents

The governor of Maine has stolen my children’s Christmas presents, presents that were made possible only by the generosity of my readers.

Maine passed a law trying to extort sales tax money from Amazon, by claiming that if an Amazon Associate lives in Maine, then Amazon is a Maine company and must collect sales taxes here. That was about as wise and useful as it sounds. Amazon immediately cancelled all their Maine Associates’ accounts, so the state will collect no sales tax, and everyone that derived income from their Associates accounts will lose all of that income, and so won’t pay any tax on that, now, either. My situation is even worse than most. Because of some sort of clerical error, Amazon thought I still lived in Massachusetts, and never notified me that my account was being cancelled, and didn’t instruct me to remove my Associates links when they notified everyone else, so in addition to forfeiting all future Amazon Associates income, I will also forfeit the last thirty days of Amazon income I’ve already earned. My wife and I had hoped to use that money to put presents under our Christmas tree for our children. Amazon Associates money is not “mad money” for us. I do not know exactly how I’m going to make up the shortfall in our income next year.

The fact that we will not receive this income any longer cannot diminish my gratitude to my readers for the kind and thoughtful gesture of trying to support this blog with their purchases. I want to thank everyone once again for reading, and commenting, and using my supplied links for as long as they lasted, and for hitting my tip jar, and for supporting my children in their musical efforts.

I hate to complicate this explanation of the disappearance of all my Amazon links, but in addition to Amazon, Google has cancelled Google Checkout as of the 20th of this month, so I will not be able to have that tip jar on my blog any longer, either. I’m very grateful to everyone that donated funds via that avenue also. As far as I know, the PayPal button still works, but it’s only noontime, and the way things are going this week, by five o’clock the entire Internet might be turned off.

I must admit that I do not feel like I am a citizen of Maine any longer — I just live here– and I have no regard whatsoever for Massachusetts, the state of my birth. Hell, I barely feel like an American anymore. But I do feel as though I belong to a community of virtual citizens instead. They are scattered, of course, but they’re generous, and intelligent, and forward-looking, kind, hardworking and salubrious, as I hope we are, and their Intertunnel nation is the only one I have any affection for now.

I was raised a Catholic, though that upbringing has done me precious little good for a long time. But I recall that I was taught, as the Bible says in Luke, to “pray for those that abuse you.” So, here goes: This is me, saying a prayer for that rat-faced, greedy, grasping, porcine, boorish, gibbering, moronic stuttering clusterfark of a troglodyte pedlar we have for a Governor.

It’s times like these that make me wish I had been raised by Evangelical Christians, instead of Catholics, so I could proceed directly to the “laying on of the hands.”