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Do you still want to complain about America? The View From My Front Porch With Larry L. Peel larry@ioncinema.com We all know the drill...some slick salesman contacts you offering to make you rich if you just invest a little money to help get things started. Most of us know that there is no such thing as a “get rich quick” plan, if there were, there would be no poverty. Still, some people are so desperate or so naive as to believe the pitch and the hype, and turn over their Faded fashions find resurgence in modern trends By Bobby Moore Guest Writer rmoore 7 @ my.west ga .edit Have you ever been a little ashamed to wear something and then years later find out that those same dreaded clothes became fashionable? I was in Boy Scouts for years. In fact, I outlasted most of my friends and became an - : gvvt I^P^>' — Sir -^RM|ffiL "m —rf— —— — l " <^— -"“"^ WBm sx - • Campus l,ve carroli™. ■ii#^& ; s£ ❖QUAD J ( .;ir roll ton - <&mmßP Visit us. 2, t *S. 4 Bedroom <i/hirtmenls with private bathrooms OIK* ( (>jj/iVi7i?.\ •'. \"V(i .\,\.' ■ • :." : . ■ rWI 770.214.8435 <S> -A. „„ h,r, m UjUJ hard earned money. Sometimes the con artist is caught, sometimes not. Sometimes it even goes horribly wrong. In August 2006, Mary Winkler allegedly killed her husband Matthew during a fight over money she lost to a Nigerian Internet scam. Nothing I have seen or heard of here in the states compares however, to what one man in China is accused of. According to CNN. com (quoting Beijing Eagle Scout. We entered Boy Scouts and got our new khaki uniforms when we were 12 (1994), which means we were right at the age when we first became all self-conscious and really started noticing girls. Over the next few years, a lot of things changed about all of the guys. Dirty magazines News) Wang Zhendong of a province in North China, created a phony business selling ants to consumers, and raking in over 3 Billion yuang ($387 million). The company was reportedly going to offer wines, tea and medical elixirs to be used to relieve things like arthritis. Now I spent 20 years as a medic, and I don’t claim to know everything about medicine, but the thought of drinking wine, tea or anything else with ants, as an ingredient would make me think twice about whether I really was in that much pain in the first place. My personal tastes aside, it seems there started showing up on camping trips, some folks actually went on dates occasionally and of course some of us discovered cars and motorcycles. One thing never changed, though. None of us wanted to be seen in our uniforms. Granted, we thought the uniforms looked nice, and our parents paid a lot of money for them, but we Opinion is a great demand for the products in Asia, as Zhendong and his “managers” convinced over 10,000 people to sign over 100,000 contracts before he was caught. The investors were coaxed with promises of up to 60% profit. Zhendong sold the investors bags of ants for 10,000 yuang each, when the actual value of the ants was a mere 200 yuang. The Chinese government investigated the practices of the bogus company in 2005 and found that Zhendong spent 798 million Yuan on himself and his friends and squandered the rest. His 15 managers were each sentenced to had our middle school reputations to protect. We were especially cautious if there were girls around. Those insecure thoughts amuse me now, but back then being labeled a good little Boy Scout was a horrifying thought. All kinds of effort would be put into not being seen in our first class uniforms if anyone 5 to 10 years in prison and fined between 100 and 500,000 Yuan each. Investors were only able to recoup 10 million Yuan, and one investor was so upset that he committed suicide. Wait, the strangest is still to come. When Zhendong went to trial, his defense was simply that he didn’t know the first thing about raising ants and was “quite unclear” that the amount he was charging was so far above the actual market value. Ok. so someone tell me how this person managed to convince not only 15 people to work for him, but 10,000 people to believe he knew what he was doing? had band practice or a soccer game at school before our Tuesday night meetings. Now, after all of these years, the guys are still changing. Everyone but me is married now and a lot of the married fellows have kids. As far as I know, we all have careers, too. Perceptions of those uniforms have changed * Now then, back to the original topic of this little jaunt off my porch. If this happened in America, this guy would get 20 or 30 years most likely to think about his intelligence quotient. In China, they see things a bit differently. They apparently figure that someone that stupid should never be allowed to breed, or for that matter breathe. He was sentenced to death, and they don’t allow a million appeals and public protests. He will die. Soon. Still think America is a bad place to be? Support our freedom, support our ground troops. as well, apparently. I was in the ultra trendy Junkman’s Daughter shop in East Atlanta the other evening before the Heart Attacks show at the Star Bar, and there was a whole rack full of Boy Scout uniform shirts with all kinds of different patches on them. See Fashion page 5