Colorado's Democratic legislature and governor thought they were being clever.By putting the screws to online retailers, they could reap millions of dollars in tax revenues from items sold over the Internet and fill the budget gaps created by their failure to control spending and plan for hard economic times.

So they imposed new rules designed to bludgeon retailers into compliance. Sorry, but no dice:

Amazon.comInc. cut ties Monday with Colorado online businesses that help it sell products because of a new state law aimed at getting out-of-state,online retailers to collect sales tax.

The move hurts businesses — many of them small, home-based operations — that earn money by using their Web sites and blogs to link customers to online retailers.Colorado has at least 4,200 such businesses, known as affiliates or associates,accounting for about 5,000 jobs, and most of them rely on Amazon to some degree, according to their trade group, the Performance Marketing Association.

The group's executive director, Rebecca Madigan, said some get only about 10 percent of their revenue from Amazon but others are totally reliant on it.