As my grandpappy Moby used to say (like, this morning), “What would a day be without another scandal from Amazon?” This time it centres around tax avoision (it’s a word, look it up) strategies and general corporate douchery.

Following a 70 percent earnings increase last quarter, the company this week terminated its business relationships with its Colorado affiliates. The move was a response to new Colorado legislation compelling online retailers to either collect the sales taxes that every other business collects, or at least disclose that customers must pay the levy to the state themselves.

The bill was pragmatic, seeking to raise much-needed revenues as Colorado’s infrastructure and schools buckle under a $2 billion budget shortfall. But Amazon, indifferent to such emergencies, reacted with punitive petulance, sending a deliberate message to lawmakers in every other state: Make us play by the same tax rules as other businesses, and your state will be punished, too.

The company, you see, fears that most capitalist of principles: fair competition. It instead relies on a rigged market.

Here in Canada, one of Amazon’s pseudopods, presumably holding a shark with a bear and a laser strapped to it, has slipped across the border and surrounded the House of Commons. Will the Harper government let them in? Well, considering stupid evil* is a specialty of the entire Conservative party, one can only guess. But it’s not just government-spoon-fed slack-jawed yokels and predictably vitriolic Albertans/905ers that like the idea: some thinking individuals are on Amazoodle’s side too… Enter Michael Geist.

Amazon.ca is now well-entrenched in the Canadian e-commerce landscape and seeks to create its own Canadian distribution channel. The plan requires government approval, which recently led to predictable outcries from the Canadian Booksellers Association. The CBA wrote to Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore – who must decide the issue – to urge him to reject Amazon’s application.

It argued that Amazon’s entry would “detrimentally affect independent businesses and would raise serious concerns over the protection of our cultural industries. Individual Canadian booksellers have traditionally played a key role in ensuring the promotion of Canadian authors and Canadian culture. These are values that no American dot-com retailer could ever purport to understand or promote.”

The CBA’s attempt to cloak the issue as a matter of Canadian culture is unsurprising, but Moore should recognize this for what it is – a transparent attempt to hamstring a tough competitor that ultimately hurts the Canadian culture sector.

* Stupid Evil: that is evil that doesn’t involve violence or the direct ruination of others. Also known as “stevil”.