Daily Thoughts

I guess I should print a retraction, because I checked my county clerk’s website, and there has been no foreclosure notice filed against me. I guess that house must have been the other one on my street that was just auctioned off. I just find it very strange that they would even have a mortgage on that house, since they told me they didn’t write mortgages in Florida. I’ve found out that isn’t true. They do have several offices here.

I also found out that my county has a new law which requires mortgage companies to try to work out something with mortgage holders before they foreclose. I’m checking into that as well.

When I told her I was blogging all my financial woes, my friend said she would be embarrassed to do that. I figure if even one person can get helped by my situation, I’ve done a good thing. There are millions of people in my situation, so maybe it will give someone encouragement.

In the meantime, I’m decluttering and getting rid of just about everything I own just in case I have to move quickly. Once the decluttering is done, and I’ve literally packed up whatever I want to take with me, I may look into selling the house.

It will break my heart that I will lose out on making a decent profit. If I had sold two years ago, like I was planning, I would have made at least $70 thousand. Now, I’ll be lucky if I make $10, but at least I’ll be out of here.

The problem is, I don’t want to be out of here. I just want to be able to live without stressing every day.

Remember those names, because when I’m through, they will never forget mine. Merle Whitehead owns the largest real estate company in NY State, and the 7th largest in the country, Realty USA . This is the most recent article I could find on him.
His company bought First Priority Mortgage, and he is the CEO of that company. He is a very rich man.

This man bought my privately held mortgage. His company didn’t buy it, HE bought it. I was never given an account number or a payment coupon book. I was never put into their computers, from what I was told. Someone in his company just sent me a letter every month asking for my money. They haven’t sent one lately. That’s because I will be three months behind as of this month.

Two months ago, I wrote to them asking for a renegotiation. I laid out exactly what I needed to get on my feet. I got no response, so I contacted the President of the company (who I was told owns my mortgage, but I then found out I was wrong). I got a letter from their attorney informing me that they were considering my proposal. I haven’t heard anything since, despite my making several attempts to communicate with them.

I have been given a runaround and lied to by this company ever since I lost my job and informed them that I did not know how much longer I would be able to make the payments. I made my payment last month. I tried to make enough money to do it this month, but I couldn’t.

My house isn’t even worth much more than what I owe them, not because I was stupid and got an ARM I couldn’t pay. I’ve never refinanced my mortgage. I just live in one of the most economically depressed areas of Florida, and fell on hard times, like millions of other U.S. citizens.

I have said before that part of this is my fault, but not all of it. I won’t take responsibility for all of it. I’ve done everything I am able to do to pull myself out of this hole, but I have physical and mental problems that have made it impossible. I take responsibility for what was my fault.

On a whim today, I decided to see if First Priority had foreclosures listed on their website. They do. I believe my house is one of those listed, because it is the only on on my street listed, even though it has no address.

I’ve received no notices, nothing from this company, yet they possibly have foreclosed on my house and have it listed for sale. I don’t know if this is even legal. Could they have foreclosed on a Florida property through the NY courts without serving me with notice? Slimier things have been done.

I’ve been noticing people riding by my house very slowly. I think that First Priority is letting them drive by in an attempt to sell my house out from under me.

I can’t find out if First Priority Mortgage got any of the bailout money. I’m sure they did, considering who owns it.

When I am done, no one will ever forget the name Merle Whitehead or First Priority Mortgage. I won’t be just another statistic. Somebody needs to make this known, that this man, who has bought and sold more real estate than anyone in the United States, and is a multi-multi-millionaire, maybe even a billionaire, may not be what he seems on the outside. I don’t know him personally,so I can’t tell you for sure. I’m just stating the facts in my case.

There is no doubt whatever that he made multi-millions from the housing boom, that much is clear. He owned the realty company and the finance company. I thought that was illegal, but evidently not.  How can our government allow the people who are selling you the house to also finance it?  That should be covered under anti-trust or something.  It’s just plain wrong, in any case.

I’ve never been into social networking, but I will be now. I’m going to post this to every social networking site I can find. I’d appreciate it if you’d help me.

My friend got fired from Publix because he “stole” a pack of cigarettes. He was a manager, and had been for many years. He didn’t really steal them. He was closing, the registers had all been closed, so he took the cigarettes and left the money in the back room so they could put it into the next day’s till.

So, if someone can be fired from Publix for supposedly “stealing” a pack of cigarettes, what are we to do with the multi-millionaire executives who stole $700 BILLION of the taxpayer’s money? My money…your money…everyone’s money.

I do not use the world “stole” lightly. To my way of thinking, the whole bailout is a pyramid scheme cooked up by Bush and Co. to get their buddies as much money as they could before they left office.

How do we fix this? Can they redo the deal once Bush and Co. are gone? By then, will all the money be gone? And where the hell is all this money coming from? We have an astronomical deficit, so where did they get $700 BILLION dollars for these crooks?

And who is ever going to be held accountable for this? Will the execs ever be prosecuted? Where is all the money the mortgage brokers made from their crooked dealings? Will they have to pay any of it back?

I swear, I just can’t take much more of this. The anger is killing me! I’m struggling, and I mean really struggling, and these crooks are walking away with BILLIONS!!

No wonder people are killing themselves right and left.

This is the email I received from Google today:

Hello,

We understand that you are concerned about the payments of your AdSense
account. As mentioned earlier, a credit of $x.xx was applied to your
AdSense account for your earning for the current month and also $xxx.xx from the stopped check was credited back to your account balance. You will
receive a check this month for your finalized earnings.

Please know that Google is not liable for bank fees due to stopped checks.
According to our Terms and Conditions, publishers disabled for invalid
click activity may not receive any further payment and therefore,
payments on any outstanding checks may be stopped. We appreciate your
patience, and apologize for any inconvenience. If you
have any questions, please visit our Help Center at
http://www.google.com/adsense/support, or contact us at
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

What a load of BS. They screw me out of my adsense money, cost me overdraft fees, give me BACK my money (pretty much admitting they shouldn’t have done the aforementioned in the first place), then hide behind their policies to keep from paying me back a measly $8. This is my reply:

Sorry, not good enough. I know you aren’t going to listen, but a lot of other people are, because I’m putting this whole story, every letter, on my blog. You’re coming across sounding very arrogant and unconcerned with the pain you inflict on others.

I understand that according to your policies, you aren’t liable for bank fees, but this was YOUR fault, not mine. It would be a good moral gesture, and since I’m blogging all of this, it would be letting people know that you aren’t so petty as to make a mistake that costs someone money, then to use your policies as an excuse not to compensate them for YOUR mistake. I don’t even know why you closed my adsense. You’ve never given me a reason, just a nightmare. I tell you what. I’ll put up a poll, and people can vote on whether you should give me back my measly little $8.

It may be legal for you not to pay it, but your morality and general business sense is what is in question here. I can see not paying it back if I was the one at fault, but (by your own admission) I wasn’t, was I? Should I get punished for trying as hard as I could to obey the rules?

Your call, but your company is already getting a very bad rep with the government, so I read. Good will goes a long way.

Sincerely,

I’m sure it’s not over yet. They seem to possess a seemingly endless repertoire of canned BS to toss out when the occasion suits.

I will not give up. I want my money, and I want my $8, and I WANT IT NOW!

My city is idiotic. They will not allow you to pay for anything online, on the phone, by debit card, or credit card. It’s check or cash, or you can pay with online banking (which takes 5 days to get there). I don’t guess they’ve been told that debit cards are safer than checks.

I was talking to one of their IT guys one day, and he said that IT has been bugging them for years to get online payment, or at least accept debit cards and phone payment, but nope, no go.

So I called one of our city council members the other day, and told him about this. I told him about how I was trying to pay my water bill. I’ve been having a little banking crisis, what with the Adsense check bouncing, so in order to be able to bathe, I called to ask if I could pay by credit card. Nope…not debit card either. WTF?

Back to the city councilman conversation (got a little lost there, sorry). He said he was not aware that this was the case, and he would look into it immediately. I explained to him that they were NOT running this city like a business, and that they needed to get over having a pay fees to process electronic payments. They could always make us pay a “convenience fee” if they don’t want to put out the money.Although, thinking about that now, this is the city that charged a guy $14,000+ in fines for not getting a $183 license for a $300 swimming pool. I kid you not. Read all about it here.

That “convenience fee” would be so large, nobody would use the stupid thing anyway.

Must be something in the water

I’m not really a victim of the economy, more a victim of my own stupidity. Even though it was truly for a good cause, I quit my job. I was being harrassed, but I could have stood it. I chose not to. I ignorantly thought I could make a living from my websites, which I couldn’t.

I finally turned to freelance article writing, and it hasn’t been what I thought it would be either. Maybe I don’t work hard enough, maybe I’m just not good enough, but I’m not making a living at it.

Add in the fiasco with Google Adsense, and you have a recipe for disaster. Adsense was my only really stable source of income, unless you count Associated Content, which honestly, makes me feel pretty worthless all in itself. Although it is a steady source of income, being paid between $3 - $6 for an article that takes me sometimes an hour to write (I’m a very slow writer) is not conducive to feeling good about your abilities.

I seem to be self-sabotaging. I want it all now, and when I don’t get it now, I give up and move no to something I think is better. These things unfailingly turns out not to be better, and sometimes worse.

I have clinical depression anyway, and have taken every med available, without success. Oh, of course except for Wellbutrin, which is unavailable to me due to not being able to afford it, and having no health insurance. I was on their free program once, but getting it was like applying for a job with the FBI.

So I can’t really concentrate, and some days I just sit here staring at the screen without a worthwhile thought passing through my head. If one does happen to pass through, it doesn’t stick around long. Guess it doesn’t want to be bogged down with all the negative thoughts kicking around in there.

When your life comes to this point, even small things become monsters. I need to get to the water company today, which is about 5 miles from my house. My car died shortly after I left my job, and since it was a POS anyway, I didn’t fix it, I sold it. So now I have to either catch a city bus or catch a ride with the only friend I have who is willing to take me anywhere. She isn’t willing to take me there today, so I will have to take the bus.

The bus system around here sucks. There is only one bus that goes down each route every hour. That means that I have to walk a mile to the bus stop, catch one bus to the transfer point, wait 45 minutes for the bus going to my destination, catch that bus, do my business, and wait 45 minutes again to do the whole thing again in reverse. This costs me $3 and a half day of my time, which I should be spending writing.

Add to that that it’s cold today, and isn’t going to get much warmer, and I have a horrible day ahead of me.

And for all you well-meaning folks who will want to suggest that I go to social services, we are only allowed to do that once a year, and I’ve used up my allotment for this year. I truly have nowhere to turn. I’m paying this water bill with the last $60 on my charge card, then I truly have nothing.

I know that as lives go, maybe mine isn’t so bad, but right now, it feels pretty awful. Everyone keeps saying I need to find a man to take care of me. That’s another story for another day, but suffice to say, that will not be happening.

If you’re sitting at home, safe and secure, with a decent income, not struggling, please take all those petty worries you have and toss them out of the window. You are blessed. Appreciate it, especially all of you SAHM’s whose husbands make good money, and who are still always bitching and moaning about this and that. Get over it! You are blessed.

For all of you who may have jobs, but who don’t feel your jobs are secure, or who are struggling like me, I’ll pray for you and you pray for me. Maybe we’ll make it, maybe we won’t. At this point, I am in real danger of ending up in the street, losing everything I own, but still, I’m alive I guess. They say where there is life, there is hope. It just doesn’t feel that way.

This country is in an economic recession, or so they say. Today, they said it will get much worse, and in the next two years, we will likely be in a depression.

I don’t think I can get any more depressed.

I’m still waiting to hear from my mortgage holder as to whether they will work with me on my mortgage payments. I managed to come up with a payment this month, which keeps me out of bankruptcy court for awhile, but for how long, who knows. I also managed to come up with the money for my homeowner’s insurance payment. If I let that lapse, I’d be done for. They would have cause to foreclose on me even if I was paid up to date.

I’m sure whoever is sitting around deciding my fate has a fat bank account from all the fees they raked in from unsuspecting victims of the mortgage industry. I’m sure they don’t need my money.

The point is, like I said in my last post, they are sick people. They don’t care if they NEED the money. They just WANT it. They can never have enough of it. They will die and make their heirs very wealthy, and for what?

What will the legacy be of these people who destroyed the lives of so many Americans? Will they go down in disgrace? It doesn’t seem so.

Even tonight Paulson admitted that he was just handing over money to the banks, and they were not using it the way they had promised. The oversight that was promised is not in place. $350 Billion has been handed over to these crooks, and they are doing nothing except lining their pockets.

Is it any wonder I’m depressed? I am tired of being a victim. From now on, I’m going to fight back, with words and actions. I’m going to let the world know just what I think should be done to fix this country. I’m sure a lot of people will agree with me, but what are YOU going to do?

We the people truly do have the power here. Without us, there are no banks or mortgage companies or mega-corporations. Without us, there is nothing.

I say we should start shopping locally, refuse to put our money into these stupid, greedy banks, and let them fall. Let them fall hard and fast. Let them make a huge crashing sound that will be heard around the world.

Let’s take care of each other and see what they think of us then. Let’s refuse to enlist in their armed forces, and refuse to fight their wars. Let’s refuse to be victims of their games anymore.

Let’s JUST SAY NO to the greed and corruption that IS this country.

WE are the people, and WE have power. Let’s show them just how much.

Sign Our Petition To Google

My story started on September 9, 2008, when I posted an article on Hubpages speaking out against the sexy picture hubs that proliferate there. This evidently angered the owners of said hubs, and they started attacking everyone on Hubpages who had spoken out against that sort of posting.

I received a warning notice from Adsense on October 6 that my ads were found on a porn site. I wrote them back, explaining the situation, and they said they were aware of it, and that I should whitelist my adsense account. This consists of going in and designating only which sites you want ads to appear on. I had corresponded back and forth several times with adsense support, the last correspondence being on October 13, 2008, when I said I had whitelisted my account, but I was very concerned about the click-slamming. I never got a reply from them, and assumed they were aware of the situation, and would take care of it. Evidently not.

As soon as I whitelisted my account, the pornographers evidently started click-slamming my legitimate sites’ ads. I had been dealing with a personal crisis, and had not visited my adsense account in a few days to check the stats. Suddenly, today, I get a notice that my adsense has been disabled. Of course, I appealed, but from what I’ve heard, no one ever gets reinstated, so I’m not going to worry about it, although I had just started making a little money on adsense. I was waiting for my first check, which I should have received next month, and now I don’t even have a way to find out how much legitimate money was in my account, or if I will ever get paid.

This problem with stolen adsense codes being put onto porn sites is one Google is well aware of. Instead of going after the perpetrators, however, they are going after the victims! WHY? This is a question they refuse to answer, no matter how many times it is asked.

This is the text of the email I received notifying me that they had disabled my account. Evidently, many other people are receiving these too lately.

Hello <name>,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve
taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information
by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_US.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team
——————————
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

Notice the words “your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers”. That’s a very strong statement, and since my account only made about $30-$50 a month, I don’t see where it could be any significant threat. Of course, Adsense will not tell you what sort of “significant threat” you’re creating for their advertisers. Seeing as most of their advertisers are spammers and get rich quick scammers anyway, I don’t mind posing a significant threat to those people.

The fact is this - Google is in financial trouble, just like the rest of America. The Alley Insider recently wrote about cost cutting at Google . Perks are always the first to go. But Google is talking about cutting back on hiring.

On October 20, in a Bloomberg interview , Eric Schmidt said that customers advertising budgets were “under stress”.

“All of us are vulnerable,” he said. “It’s a race between a contraction in advertising, which would affect everybody, and a very positive shift from offline to online.”

So is this really what this is about? Are they just disabling accounts that are starting to get paid? It seems that in the past, many adsense accounts have been disabled just as they were starting to be profitable. So is allowing users to dispaly adsense just a scam that Google is pulling off, which only allows you to have ads if you aren’t making any money?

All I know is that in my case, Google is victimizing a victim. I am the victim of some crazed pornographer, probably a mentally ill individual, who has nothing better to do than to try to ruin people’s lives. Not that losing my adsense account will ruin my life, but the whole thing is just so unjust that I’m going to suggest something here that I’m sure Google will not like.

I’d like to hear from everyone who has been affected by this wholesale disabling of Adsense accounts for unknown reasons. I want to get a lawyer involved, someone who will volunteer to represent the thousands of us who have been slammed down by Google with no reasonable explanation.

I have created a petition to demand that Google answer our concerns, and reinstate our accounts. You can sign our petition here.

It’s time we started standing up to these big corporations who think they can just do whatever they want to us with no repercussions! Someone in corporate America needs to start answering for their actions! If we stand together, we are a formidable force. Sign our petition today !