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He says he won’t leave his position as Treasury Secretary, despite a recent Rasmussen poll where 42% of Americans indicated his work has boarded the failboat (and 47% of investors showed no love; dude, you can’t make Main Street OR Wall Street happy?), but should Timmay ever find himself out on his arse, where do you think he would end up?

Well, per this image provided by LOLFed reader Michael S. we’re thinking he could amuse himself by harassing truckers at the “Dixie Boy,” Maximum Overdrive-style.

Add to:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Nov. 20, 2009

For more info contact:

Still Productions

Bill Still

thesecretofOZ@gmail.com

The Secret of Oz Banned on Amazon

After being on Amazon.com for only three days, the new film on the economy, “The Secret of Oz” has been banned by Amazon.com.

“You may no longer sell on our site,” said Amazon.com in an email to Still Productions at noon today.

“This came completely out of the blue without warning, and without any shred of legitimate cause,” said Director Bill Still.

Amazon.com’s email cites “performance” issues. “We took this action because your selling performance has fallen below our standards.” It referred Still to their “Customer Experience Metrics” page to see what the problem was, but a check of that page showed no performance issues whatsoever. See screenshot below.

Still has appealed the ban. Amazon says they usually respond within 24 hours to appeals.

This is no joke. Mr. Still had his movie listed on Amazon for 3 days before they pulled it. Below is the full text of Amazon’s letter:

“Hello from Amazon.com.

“This is an auto-generated message to let you know that we have blocked your Amazon.com seller account and removed your listings. You may no longer sell on our site. We took this action because your selling performance has fallen below our performance standards. If you still have items to ship, you are required to take appropriate steps to resolve your pending sales. Your Seller Account will remain accessible and you are encouraged to refund or ship pending orders.

“If you wish to appeal this decision you may do so by following the instructions in Your Seller Account at [http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/management/your-account.html]. An appeal should include a clear plan of action that addresses all reasons for failure to perform; including but not limited to your inventory management methods, your fulfillment practices, and customer service improvements. Appeal requests are usually responded to within 24 hours.

“Your Customer Experience Metrics and goals are published daily for your review here [https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/customer-experience/summary.html]. Reviewing them may help you understand where your selling performance has fallen short of our standards. You can also review the performance related notifications we have sent you in the past here [https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/customer-experience/perf-notifications.html].”

Mr. Still then went to Amazon’s site to discover that, indeed, all his “performance metrics” were perfect, having never failed to deliver a movie the same day or any other issues whatsoever – as you can see in the screen shot above.

I would appreciate the widest possible dissemination on this as this movie is too important to the future of Americans, and their understanding of our money system, to lose. Please pass it along to other bloggers and to any media outlets you know.

Although wide dissemination through Amazon was the goal, The Secret of Oz can still be purchased from Bill’s site via PayPal:

“The Secret of Oz.”

Related or not, we also learned that this moving is now being discussed in “higher circles” at the very time that the Fed’s opacity is under attack. Note the Oz analogy now coming into use:

Coincidentally, this action by Amazon follows the movie’s first “rejection” from a film festival after being screened in 9 film festivals and winning multiple awards:

Just this past week, the Peak City Film Festival in Apex, NC, a suburb of Raleigh, NC, rejected the film after first accepting it. The film festival is going on this weekend, here’s how they phrased their rejection:

Dear Producer,

Your entry in the Peak City Film Festival has passed through our jury process, but regretfully, will not be screened. Our judges have determined your entry did not meet the criteria for a completely family-friendly production due to certain elements of language or actions, regardless of how small…

I’ve seen the film twice, there is no language or action in the film that is not family appropriate, the Wizard of Oz movie itself would be less family appropriate.

I sincerely don’t know if these things are connected, but this film deserves the widest possible dissemination. Nothing short of our nation’s and children’s futures may depend on the spark it hopefully ignites.

Thank you,

Nathan Martin

Michigan Faces Government Shutdown (Again) – September 29, 2009

The thing is, it is unnecessary for us to have reached this point at all. Political posturing and stupidity are the reasons that we do not have a budget right now! The Republicans passed a balanced budget in June of this year. See for yourself here: http://www.senate.michigan.gov/sfa/StateBudget/AppropriationStatus.pdf At first it was ignored, and then the administration started cherry picking the most harsh parts of the budget and using scare-tactics to play up the idea that we’d be devastated if we passed this budget. Boloney! The fact is, Michigan is operating on a budget level that was based on millions more people and millions more jobs. We have been hemorrhaging residents and jobs for the past decade and it had done nothing but accelerate in the past 4 years. Now what we have is a government that is far bigger than is even remotely necessary for the number of residents of the state. This government MUST shrink. It also doesn’t help that Jennifer Granholm and her administration tell lies like, ‘We’ve cut everywhere we can,’ when clearly, she has done no such thing – she, and I DO lay the blame directly at her feet, has passed more pork, and more ridiculous increases in spending than any other governor this state has ever had.



Are there difficult cuts in this Proposal? Absolutely – but no more than we as residents have had to face in our personal and business lives.

Every person in the State of Michigan has had to examine their budget and drastically cut their spending. Individuals and businesses alike. There is no reason that this government should not or cannot do this as well. Call your Michigan Legislator and tell them to cut the crap (literally) and vote to pass the Budget Proposal we’ve had since June!

FedUpUSA will be blogging live from the Michigan Capitol Building’s gallery via Twitter all day. The link to follow us on Twitter is on the left.

The Debt Revolt Is On – September 28, 2009

Had enough with bailing out insolvent banks with your taxpayer money, only to have them stab you in the back? Then this video is for you.

Liberals seek health-care access for illegals – September 28th, 2009
Democrats give demands

Fearful that they’re losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access.

Backdoor amnesty, followed by an immediate increase in benefits to those that are in our country illegally is being proposed by Congress.

How many times do we have to say NO before they understand us?

Perhaps we should fire up the fax machines, phones, and computers again and let them know our feelings on this issue, in no uncertain terms.

As Subprime Lending Crisis Unfolded, Watchdog Fed Didn’t Bother Barking – September 28th, 2009

The visits had a ritual quality. Three times a year, a coalition of Chicago community groups met with the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators to warn about the growing prevalence of abusive mortgage lending.
This Story

They began to present research in 1999 showing that large banking companies including Wells Fargo and Citigroup had created subprime businesses wholly focused on making loans at high interest rates, largely in the black and Hispanic neighborhoods to the south and west of downtown Chicago.

The groups pleaded for regulators to act.

The evidence eventually led Illinois to file suit against Wells Fargo in July for discrimination and other abuses.

But during the years of the housing boom, the pleas failed to move the Fed, the sole federal regulator with authority over the businesses. Under a policy quietly formalized in 1998, the Fed refused to police lenders’ compliance with federal laws protecting borrowers, despite repeated urging by consumer advocates across the country and even by other government agencies.

The hands-off policy, which the Fed reversed earlier this month, created a double standard. Banks and their subprime affiliates made loans under the same laws, but only the banks faced regular federal scrutiny. Under the policy, the Fed did not even investigate consumer complaints against the affiliates.

As always, read the rest of the story at the link above.

So, let me get this straight: The subprime lending crises happened NOT due to a lack of regulation, but due to a lack of investgation by the regulators? Someone should alert Congress, because they on The Hill seem to believe that we need MORE LAWS that will no doubt go unenforced in the future! I bet you already have their phone number, don’t you?