I try not to complain around here. I don’t think this is the proper forum for airing our personal laundry. From the very beginning, I have wanted this blog to be about ideas…with a few personal antics {compliments of my beloved children} on the side. But I’m hoping you’ll indulge me today because I’m just…so…frustrated.
Exactly five-and-a-half years ago yesterday, I started this blog. I had been reading blogs for a time, and for even longer than that, I had written a little–and sometimes a lot–almost every single day. This started when I was a little girl, and continued through high school, and college, and {save a year-long hiatus after I had my firstborn}…through life.
I never wrote for the money, and I don’t intend to stop.
But the money has been nice. And I suppose I should thank all of you for this, because without all of you shopping the Amazon affiliate links all these years, there would be no money about which to say such things.
Why am I talking about money?
Well, if you read The Drudge Report, for instance, then you probably know that my state passed an internet tax, one which is in direct violation of the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution {the U. S. Supreme Court ruled this in Quill v. North Dakota}. Governor Brown says this is “a common-sense idea” which I suppose is true if law and justice mean absolutely nothing.
Where are we to flee, and who will protect us, when there is no rule of law?
I heard on the radio last week, this rumbling about a new “Amazon tax.” I knew that when some other state had tried this a while back {was it Illinois? I think I remember that it was}, that Amazon fired everyone in that state who worked for them.
Good for them! Someone has to stand up for the rule of law, and I appreciate them doing so.
And I knew then that the same would happen here if the law passed.
Well, pass it did, as part of our recent budget package.
And so, last night, not long after Governor Brown signed the budget, Amazon fired me.
Along with all of their other California affiliates.
Sigh.
The amount of money I have made through all of this has not been a lot. Until the last year or so, it wasn’t even enough to cause me to pay income tax.
But it has made a world of difference to us. It has paid for Christmas gifts and birthday gifts. It has allowed us to send books to people who needed them. Last year and this year, it paid for almost all of our school books.
I was thrilled to know, that after all these years, my husband wasn’t buying his own birthday gifts from me.
I am sure you all understand. Most of you know a lot about making sacrifices for your family in order to homeschool. We have sold a house, moved jobs, and worked jobs and hours we don’t like, in order to be able to do this. We have gone without nights out and coffee drinks and vacations in order to make sure that we could afford a proper education for our children. And you have done the same.
And so I’m sure you understand what it might feel like to know that your entire school budget has just been wiped out.
I am just so angry. This is the second time I’ve lost an affiliate because of the government {the first time was when the FDA shut down the Wilderness Family Naturals affiliate program back in 2009}. The government is a greedy beast and it will stop at nothing to take money out of the pockets of hard working citizens. And this just makes me feel ill. First my WFN affiliate. Then, we move to a neighborhood where the school creates a “special federal district” that allows them to steal charge an additional tax fee of more than $500 per year per household in addition to our property taxes, a fee which goes up every year, regardless of property value, and has no sunset provision at all–a fee which just goes up and up into the sky, with no end in sight.
I love California. I love living near the beaches and the mountains. I love living near first, second, and third cousins. I love the farming and the oil and the relative ease of home educating. This is our home.
But for the first time I considered that maybe we should just leave.
We can’t, obviously, at least not right this minute, but it is sure a temptation after being burned so personally.
It feels personal, even though it’s not.
It’s not personal, it’s business, right?
Anyhow, all of this to say that I’ll be taking down the affiliate links in the side bar, and generally moving some things around. None of this will make me stop writing, of course, for the writing has always been done for the love of it.
20 Comments