is the grass any bluer...

is the grass any bluer...
...in Cincinnati!

Monday, March 16, 2009

America Is Drowning In Plastic


by Kim Thomas
ABC News reported recently that Americans are drowning in plastic, maxed out, buying too much -- and more and more, forced into court as a last resort.

Cameras aren't allowed inside Judge John Ninfo's bankruptcy courtroom in Rochester, N.Y., but he's more than willing to talk about what goes on there.

"I'm not a sociologist and I'm not an academic," he told ABC News' "Nightline." "I'm just a bankruptcy judge from upstate New York who sees what I see around the system every day. But clearly, we live in this competitive, consumptive society where people are bombarded with advertising that tells them that they can have anything that they want, that they're entitled to.
"From what I see every day, is it the consumer credit that has resulted in the skyrocketed filings?" he asked. "There's no question about it."
Around Rochester, Judge Ninfo is called Judge Gung-Ho, partly because he's an ex-Marine but mostly because he's passionate about the pitfalls of consumer debt. (SOURCE: ABC News)

Judge Ninfo was in Lexington last week to speak to high schools on behalf of a local organization called CARE. CARE gives seminars to groups on a number of financial issues, especially those facing today's youth. CARE's speakers address serious questions about the consequences of abuse of credit that you don’t want to learn the hard way, or creating a realistic college budget that you can stick to.

In the Fall of 2002, Judge Ninfo founded the Credit Abuse Resistance Education (CARE) Program (http://www.careprogram.us%29/), a personal finance literacy education outreach program that provides interested and caring judges, trustees, attorneys and court staff members from the Bankruptcy Community to high schools and colleges to share with students their unique knowledge and experiences and to provide them with lessons, tactics and techniques they need in order to help them lead a financially responsible, consumer debt-free life. As of February 2008, the CARE Program has a presence in all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
For information on educational programs visit http://www.careprogram.us/becareful/

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