Maine High School Student Proves That Almost Anyone Can Become A School Administrator !

Bonny Eagle High School is located in Standish, Maine

What was Justin Denney thinking ?

Mr. Denney’s actions risked the lives of his fellow students, as well as everyone attending the Bonny Eagle High School (Standish, Maine) graduation last Friday at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, Maine.

What dastardly deed is this graduating senior guilty of ?   Did he bring a loaded gun to the graduation?  No.  Did he call in a bomb scare, or set off a smoke bomb in the Civic Center?  No.  Did he pull the fire alarm just as the graduation ceremonies were about to begin?  No.   Did he release a box full of mice during the pledge of allegiance?  No.  Mr. Denney is guilty of a much more sinister offense.

Mr. Denney’s crime involved taking a bow and blowing a kiss to his mother, as he went up to receive his diploma, which is apparently a capital offense in the State of Maine.  For the depraved indifference to human life that Mr. Denney demonstrated by blowing a kiss to his mother, Schools Superintendent Suzanne Lukas ordered Mr. Denney back to his seat, and he was denied his diploma (see “Blow a kiss, lose your diploma” at examiner.com, where Dr. Todd Berntson describes the conduct of the Maine school superintendent involved as bizarre, absurd,  disturbing, insensitive and hostile).  We shudder to think what sort of draconian punishment might be imposed on a student who is foolish enough to actually do something bad in this school district from hell.

We can picture Justin Denney sitting in a prison cell full of  murderers, felons and hardened criminals.  One of the inmates asks the others what landed them in prison.  One fellow says he killed three people.  The next guy says he robbed a bank.  Another says that he shot a cop.  Then Justin says “I blew a kiss to my mommy”.  The other inmates move away from Justin, fearing for their lives.  Justin Denney becomes known as “that Bonny Eagle dude” that you don’t want to mess with.

Good call, Ms. Lukas.  God only knows what might have happened if other students copied Mr. Denney’s reckless and depraved behavior.  You could have had every kid there blowing kisses to their parents.  Pandemonium would have ensued.  Lives might have been lost.  Fortunately, your quick action prevented a disaster.

We feel that Mr. Denney was way too well behaved, considering the circumstances.  If Ms. Lukas had told US to return to our seat without receiving our diploma, we would have flatly refused to move an inch until the diploma was awarded.  Let them have their goons drag us off  the stage if they wish (we would be screaming “I earned that diploma” and “Don’t tase me, bro” as they dragged us away).  The bigger the spectacle, the better, since there was a civic center full of witnesses who would have been horrified.  Video would have shown up on youtube faster than you can say “Suzanne Lukas”.  Actually, this story has shown up on youtube !

Those who meekly submit to tyrants empower them.  To Mr. Denney’s credit, when asked by Ms. Lukas why he should receive his diploma, he did not hesitate to tell her why he deserved it.

How would Ms. Lukas have felt if, let’s say, she was denied her diploma at her 1968 graduation from Marian Central Catholic High School in Worcester, Massachusetts, because she had acknowledged her parents in the audience ?

To recognize the courage and leadership that Suzanne Lukas demonstrated in the face of adversity, we have awarded her the Routing By Rumor Humanitarian Of The Year award.   If readers would like to express their appreciation and support for Ms. Lukas’ actions, you can visit the Maine Department of Education’s website, and e-mail Maine’s Education Commissioner,  Susan A. Gendron.

Ms. Lukas, you really need to give Justin Denney his hard-earned diploma (preferably with the news media present) before the Board of Education (it is called the “Board of Directors” in the case of this school district) hands you your walking papers, for making the District the laughing stock of the Internet and the State of Maine.  While you’re at it, why don’t you help yourself to a large serving of humble pie, and issue a public apology to Mr. Denney, his family, and the students and parents of Bonny Eagle High School.  Who knows… expressing a bit of remorse for your despicable behavior might even save your job !

Perhaps it’s also time for the Maine School Administrative District 6 to revisit some of their rules and regulations, which seem more appropriate for a correctional facility or prisoner-of-war camp, than for a school district.  On that note, perhaps Ms. Lukas should apply for a warden’s job with the Maine Department of Corrections.

And to Justin Denney, congratulations on your graduation, and on your 15 minutes of fame.  Andy Warhol was right !

6/18/2009 UPDATE…

It’s now almost a week since Justin Denney should have received his diploma.  Schools Superintendent Suzanne Lukas (her name has become a household word, but for all the wrong reasons) seems to have gone into hiding.  The School District Board of Directors has held a closed-door emergency meeting to discuss the situation, and the Dennys have spoken to an attorney.  Justin Denney still does not have the diploma that he has earned.

Doesn’t anybody in the school system have any intestinal fortitude or common sense ?  Deliver the diploma to Justin’s home in person.  Send it by FedEx.  Have Suzanne Lukas crawl up to the Denney’s front door on her hands and knees, holding the diploma in her mouth.  Whatever.  The important thing at this point is to award the diploma and issue a public apology.  Any administrative action against Ms. Lukas, any lawsuits against the school district, and any changes to school policy will all come in due time.  The longer the school district waits to “make things right”, the more damage that will be done.  Rather than going into closed-door executive sessions, sitting around a conference table and wringing their hands, one of the school administrators or Board members should stand up, take the lead, and put a quick end to this nonsense.  And the families of SAD #6 (aptly named, don’t you think?), should use the next school board elections as an opportunity to ensure that this sort of situation doesn’t happen again.

- Routing By Rumor

Introducing The Sichuan Tengzhong Hummer H1

This week’s bankruptcy filing by General Motors, and indeed the current critical condition of the entire U.S. economy can be traced directly to the wholesale loss of decent paying American manufacturing jobs, primarily to China.  Retailers like Walmart, whose stores are stocked predominantly with cheap Chinese-made goods are thriving, because financially desperate American families can’t afford to shop anywhere else (Walmart employs almost 1.5 million workers in the United States, and will be adding 22,000 more U.S. workers to its payroll in 2009; while this may sound like good news, it is anything but.)  It is a vicious cycle of cheap imports, resulting in job losses and low wages for those still lucky enough to find work, that creates an even greater demand for cheap imports that are destroying the American economy even more.  Probably the only thing that is limiting imports from China right now is the lack of available space on cargo ships.  The U.S. government does not seem to be the least bit inclined to limit imports, despite the damage they are doing to our country.

Now, it appears that General Motor’s Hummer division is being sold to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company.  We feel that dismantling what was one of the largest and oldest American corporations, and selling a portion of it to China is nothing short of treason.  It’s also ludicrous.  Friends, what you are witnessing is an acceleration of the destruction of the U.S. economy.

On a purely practical level, it won’t work.  The type of American buyers who are attracted to a vehicle like a Hummer won’t want a Chinese vehicle.  And as the U.S. economy continues to disintegrate because of exactly this sort of exportation of American brands and jobs, few if any Americans will be able to afford to buy a Hummer, or any vehicle, for that matter.

From a national security standpoint, selling yet another major American manufacturing company to China places America in grave danger. And remember… Hummer is basically a military vehicle, even if it has morphed into a family vehicle for soccer moms on American highways. We’ve said it before on this blog, and we’ll say it again…  Anytime it desires, China will be able to bring America to its knees without firing a single shot.  If China cuts off the supply lines that America has become dependent on, the United States will starve to death.   And we won’t be able to defend ourselves either, because unlike during World War II, America’s manufacturing capacity has all but disappeared.  If you think that melamine-laced pet food, lead-tainted toys, or toxic sheetrock from China are a problem, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

How bad are things getting for U.S. manufacturers?  We went to the Home Depot recently to buy a few sheets of sandpaper, and everything they had was made in China.  It appears that America can’t even manufacture sandpaper any more.

So stop worrying about North Korea or Iran or al-Qaeda or the Taliban.  What you should really be worrying about are those shiny new Sichuan Tengzhong Hummers that will soon be rolling down America’s highways.

We wonder if they sell portraits of Chairman Mao at Walmart.  There’s a bare wall in our living room where we could hang it.

- Routing By Rumor

The Death Spiral At The New York Times

Extra, Extra… Read All About It !

The New York Times hikes its cover price yet again.

Another New York Times price increase.

Get ready to shell out more for your copy of The New York Times.

Extra, Extra !

Executives at The New York Times must be taking business strategy lessons from the same experts that have guided the once mighty General Motors to the brink of bankruptcy and needing to take federal bailout money to stay alive.  Shares of GM, once considered a “blue chip” stock that was among the most highly regarded of all investments, and which were trading at close to  $90 a share ten years ago, are now virtually worthless.

The New York Times has announced yet another round of price increases, the third in less than two years , that will hike the newsstand price of their Sunday edition to $5.00 or $6.00, depending on the geographic edition.  The weekday New York Times increases to $2.00 !  And you still don’t get any comics.  The price increases are effective June 1st.

$6.00 for a newspaper?  Are they joking ?  Perhaps New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. hasn’t yet taken notice of the new kid on the block.   Mr. Sulzberger, we would like to introduce you to Mr. Internet.  He’s big, he’s getting bigger all the time, and he’s eating your lunch.

The Internet is eating everybody’s lunch.  This Time Magazine article names the ten most endangered newspapers in America.  And according to this CNN article, at least 120 U.S. newspapers have folded since January, 2008.

Faced with a sharp drop in advertising revenue and falling circulation, the price increases at The Times are likely to just exacerbate the problems facing the newspaper.  Price increases will inevitably produce a further errosion in circulation, which is sure to further weaken advertising income.  A decision to increase prices at a time like this, for many businesses, is tantamount to committing suicide.  We believe that the New York Times has made the worst possible decision at the worst possible time.

Our readers will note that we have not raised the cover price here at Routing By Rumor;  reading our blog is still free!

Understandably, the bean counters at The Times are desperate.  They’re being squeezed from all directions.  But you have to wonder who made the strategic decision that may very well seal their fate.  Perhaps a price decrease, coupled with an agressive advertising campaign would have been the right course to follow.  We believe that with the increasing competition for readers that the Internet has created, along with belt tightening by consumers in the depths of this economic recession, and the drastically shrinking size (the number of pages) of newspapers over the last few years, including the Times, newspapers are increasingly becoming  irrelevant to more and more readers.  It’s not unlike a phone company that keeps increasing it’s rates, in an attempt to offset the loss of revenue from customers who are dropping their traditional phone service, and using cellphones exclusively.  Price increases will only serve to accelerate the trend.

Will the New York Times disappear completely? We fully expect to see a copy of the New York Times on the newsstand in the near future, with a headline of “THE END”.  The fact that you are reading this blog, when you could be reading The New York Times instead, isn’t helping the Gray Lady one bit.  We believe that their print editions are in mortal danger,with The Times becoming an online-only newspaper.

Better buy your Amazon Kindle now !

- Routing By Rumor

Good News For Costco, Bad News For Consumers !

We must be getting old, here at Routing By Rumor world headquarters, because we’re not spotting deceptive consumer practices as quickly as we used to.  If you’re a regular visitor to these parts, you’ve heard us complaining about manufacturers who downsize their products, and about manufacturer’s practices we’ve termed “deception engineering“.

Case in point…  When last month’s “Costco Connection” advertising and propaganda publication  arrived (they call it a “lifestyle magazine” -  believe that, and we have an “infomercial” we want you to watch), we found great news on page 52  (View the April edition of Costco Connection here).  Costco announced, in a two-page article, that while other brands of tuna fish were shrinking their cans from six ounces to five ounces, Costco was increasing the size of their  “Kirkland Signature” house brand of tuna fish, from six ounces to seven ounces.  You don’t read good news like that every day.  Sounds like they’re making an already good value even better.  Break out the mayonnaise and strike up the band.  Happy days are here again!

Or are they?

It turns out that it’s good news for Costco, but bad news for Costco members (and, we suspect, for those cute little tuna fishies).  While it’s true that they have increased the size of their Kirkland Signature tuna fish by 16.6%, to seven ounces, consumers are not getting more tuna for their money.  The article in their Costco Connection magazine somehow forgot to mention the fact that the price per can actually increased even more than the size of the can!  Bottom line: You get more tuna per can, but the price per ounce has increased.

Silly us.  We thought we might be getting more tuna fish for the same price.  In actuality, while the size of the cans was increased a whopping 16.6%, the price per can has increased an even more whopping 20%.  Packs of eight 6-ounce cans  had sold for $9.99 in area Costco Wholesale warehouses.  Now that they have introduced packs of eight 7-ounce cans, Costco has raised the selling price to $11.99, a 20% increase.  By the way, didja ever notice how most grocery items at Costco seem to be sized so that the average price per package is around $10 or $12 ?  Throw 9 or ten items in your cart, and you just spent at least $100.  But we guess that’s the whole idea of shopping in a “warehouse” club.   And why does the price of everything have to end in “.99″, ie: $9.99, $11.99, $14.99 ?  We realize that Costco didn’t invent that pricing strategy, but if you’re shopping in a place like Costco, which says it caps  it’s margin** (see below) at 14%, it seems like a suspicious practice to cynical little us.  Like maybe if their normal markup dictates a selling price of $12.35, it gets rounded UP to $12.99, just because someone at Costco likes the number 99, and rounding it up to an even $13.00 might seem, well, excessive.  Yes, we know that 13 is not an even number, but you get the point.  Besides, 1300 IS an even number, which is sort of odd, when you stop and think about it.  Then again, maybe we’re paranoid, and when they have an item that should sell for $12.35, they decide to give their members a break, and round the price down to $11.99.  Yeah, right.  All we know is that if you look at your receipt the next time you shop at Costco, just about everything except random-weight packages of meat, poulty, fish, etc., will end in “.99″.  But even those random-weight items will have a unit price ending in “.99″, such as $5.99 per pound.

But then, there are a lot of odd things at Costco, like the fact that they will accept any credit card in your wallet, as long as it is from American Express.  And the fact that they don’t offer grocery bags, so you end up throwing 500 loose items into your car in the parking lot.  And the fact that they won’t accept any manufacturer’s cents-off  coupons, unless they are distributed by Costco themselves.  And the fact that they have pretty limited hours of operation, especially for the lowest-cost membership holders. And the fact (according to this New York Times article), that Costco refuses to accept food stamps (now issued as debit cards) for purchases.  And the fact that you’ll find horrifically environment-unfriendly packaging of many small items (especially electronic items) at Costco, which doesn’t seem to be getting Costco members too upset.  We’re talking huge plastic blister packs (which can’t be recycled, at least where we live), or combination plastic and cardboard blister packs, so that these small items are less likely to be stolen.  In our opinion,  some of the terribly excessive packaging at Costco and other warehouse-type retailers qualifies as a crime against the planet, even if it doesn’t happen to be illegal.

Now, we’ll admit that we aren’t going to stop buying Costco tuna fish.  It’s actually excellent quality tuna.  It is quite possibly the best quality tuna we have ever found, at any price.  But those good folks in Seattle must think their customers are idiots.  To be sure, the price per ounce has increased only slightly, and it’s still a good value.  But shamelessly hyping the increased size of their cans of tuna fish, and not mentioning that it’s now more expensive and was actually a better value before they increased the size of the cans isn’t what we would consider good news or being straightforward with their customers .  In our opinion, it borders on deceptive advertising.  Of course, you can’t  expect that manufacturers will go out of their way to let you know when they raise prices, downsize a product, or substitute cheaper ingredients, either.  What we don’t like is the fact that, in our mind at least, Costco’s announcement paints a picture that it’s now a better value, when the opposite is actually true.

Since when is raising the price (per ounce, per pound, per gallon, etc.) of a product, while at the same time, forcing you to buy more of it at once, a good thing for consumers ?  What ever happened to the warehouse club concept that as package size increases, so does value ?

For us, the appeal of shopping at Costco isn’t so much about price, as it is about quality.  After all, shopping at Costco means an extra shopping trip,  an annual membership fee, not getting your groceries bagged, often waiting in long lines at the checkout, limited shopping hours and very limited product selection.  Indeed,we can buy many identical items for less at the local supermarket, especially when they’re on sale or if we use manufacturer’s coupons.  What we like most about Costco is that the quality of their private-labeled items, such as their tuna fish, is generally superior to not only the national brands, but any brand at any price.  Even Jimmy Kimmel shops at Costco.  Watch Jimmy shopping at Costco on youtube.  We never knew a trip to Costco could be so much fun.

An article entitled “Costco’s Artful Discounts” (Business Week, October 9, 2008), says this of Costco CEO James D. Sinegal… “he’s constantly pushing his buyers to find creative ways to lower prices and add value while getting his managers to crank up their efficiency efforts”.  It seems to us that Costco’s new 7-ounce cans of tuna have failed to deliver the lower prices or added value which Mr. Sinegal is so fond of.  What they do seem to have provided is a lot of hype for Costco’s marketing efforts, and very likely a higher profit margin because a product’s shipping and packaging costs (especially for canned items) decrease (on a percentage basis), as container size increases.  There is very little difference in the cost of manufacturing a 7-ounce tin can, compared to a 6-ounce tin can.  In fact, in the case of Costco tuna fish, the old and new cans use exactly the same size lid; but the walls of the can are slightly taller.  Costco is also very good at finding ways to minimize shipping costs, for instance, by having their vendors redesign packages so that more of them can fit onto a standard shipping pallet.  We wouldn’t be surprised if Costco’s next “improvement” to their Kirkland signature tuna will be to offer it in new and improved square cans.  Think of all the space that will save in the pantry, and the fact that you won’t have to worry about your can of tuna fish rolling away, should you drop it.  That’s always been a big problem for households that live in hilly areas.  Now, if the United States mint would only start issuing square pennies !

1919 Australian Kooka Square Penny

So, what have we learned today, class?  We’ve learned that you get less for your money when manufacturers shrink the size of their products,  and sometimes, you get less for your money when manufacturers increase the size of their products.  Heads, you lose.  Tails, you lose.

Dear Costco… May we please have our old 6-ounce cans of Kirkland Signature tuna fish back again?  They were a better value.

Then again, maybe we should just pay our money, eat our tuna fish (mercury content and torpedoes be damned), and keep our mouth shut.  Mother always said you shouldn’t speak with your mouth full, and now it’s 16.6% more full.

- Routing By Rumor

**  “Margin” is not the same as “markup”.  For instance, if you buy an item for $1.00, and sell it for $2.00,  your markup is 100%, but your margin (the percentage of the selling price that represents your profit) is only 50%.   We’ve always felt that putting things in terms of profit margin instead of markup, especially as markups become greater, has the effect of making a seller’s prices seem more reasonable.

Not All Half-Gallons of Ice Cream Are Shrinking !

A Costco Wholesale location (image from schaperco.com)

Amid the pandemic of shrinking products that is sweeping the nation, its nearly impossible to find a half-gallon container of ice cream that is still a full half-gallon, or 64 ounces.

First, manufacturers, including one of the downsizing leaders, Breyers (Unilever), shrunk their half-gallon ice cream containers to 56 ounces. More recently, almost all brands have downsized yet again, to 48 ounces (1.5 quarts). See our previous article about Breyer’s shrinking their ice cream containers. These days, the freezer at Routing By Rumor headquarters usually does without ice cream. Funny, but when we walk down the frozen food aisle in the supermarket and see the miniaturized containers of ice cream, we loose our taste for the product.

By the way, we realize that we may be jumping to conclusions by blaming the ice cream manufacturers for cheating us out of our hard-earned ice cream. It is entirely possible that this is what is actually going on.

But ice cream lovers (and lovers of value) rejoice ! If you shop at Costco Wholesale, you will still find full half-gallons of “Kirkland” ice cream. Sixty-four creamy, delicious, luxurious, decadent, fat-laden ounces. At about $4.50 per half-gallon, it’s less expensive than the anorexic-looking downsized containers of name-brand ice cream at the supermarket, which contain 25% less product. And Costco’s house brand of ice cream is available in any flavor you like, as long as it’s vanilla. That reminds us of what Henry Ford said about his Model T back in 1909. Poor Henry. He never knew the joy of shopping at Costco.

Henry Ford with his Model T Ford

One of the tenents of shopping at Costco is that you sacrifice variety for value. You also have to buy a carton of two half-gallons at a time, but how many people are going to complain that they are forced to fill up their freezer with ice cream ?

One thing you won’t have to sacrifice is quality. Costco branded products have never disappointed us. We have found them to always be superior to the national brands in quality and/or value. Here’s a particularly stark example. Gallon containers of milk are $2.25 at Costco. Many local stores charge more for a half-gallon of milk than Costco charges for a gallon ! There are many items at Costco that are priced at less than half of what you’d pay at your local supermarket.

Lest you think that we are little more than shills for Costco, you’ll want to know that we aren’t crazy about everything at Costco. While many items at Costco might be slightly less expensive than your supermarket’s everyday prices, you’ll pay less, sometimes a lot less, at your local supermarket when it’s on sale. Meat and poultry are perfect examples of this. And when you consider that many items at Costco are sold in huge packages, it won’t be a bargain if you have to throw away half of it because you couldn’t finish it before it went bad. For instance, a 25 pound sack of flour, a gallon of mayonnaise, or a five gallon jug of vegetable oil are just a bit more than we need. An interesting thing about these institutional-sized packages is that in many cases, the price per pound/quart or whatever unit of measure is used, is not significantly different from your normal supermarket-sized packages. With some items, such as Del Monte or Libby ’s canned vegetables, you sometimes end up paying more per can at Costco, despite having to buy a case of a dozen or so cans of peas or string beans, than you would if buying a single can at the supermarket. Same thing goes for cans of soda (”pop”, for our Southern readers). We think that in some cases (pun intended), Costco hopes you think you’re getting a bargain simply because you’re forced to buy such large quantities at a single time. Call it “warehouse club buying momentum”, if you will. When you get home and start calculating whether that two-gallon jug of mustard that will last you for the next twelve years was really a good buy, you start to have some regrets, even though it was only nine cents an ounce. The bottom line is that you have to keep your guard up at all times when shopping at a warehouse club. For us, we’re better off purchasing many items at a local supermarket.

When you factor in the obligatory ID check at the entrance to Costco, which is guarded by Cerberus himself (good doggie !), and the veritable strip search before they’ll let you leave, a trip to Costco isn’t a bowl of cherries (but it is arguably a bowl of vanilla ice cream). At least Costco doesn’t conduct a cavity search. We get enough of those when we visit our dentist.

Even if you don’t have a Costco membership, you can still do better when you shop at your local supermarket. While most supermarket half-gallon house brands of ice cream have shrunk to 56 ounces, they are still a better value than the 48 ounce containers that have become the new standard among the name brands, and the house brands are usually very good quality.

Now, if Costco can manage to keep their half-gallon containers of Kirkland ice cream a full half-gallon, why can’t all the the other brands manage to do the same ? That has to qualify as one of the great mysteries of the Universe.