Meet Justin Denney of Bonny Eagle High School in Maine. He stopped to blow his mom a kiss on the way to receiving a diploma and was told by a school bureaucrat to sit back down, no graduation for him this year. The Justin Denney diploma debacle reminds us why government run organizations, whether they are local schools or Obama’s auto company and massive health care takeover, can rarely be trusted with the people’s business.
Justin Denney Diploma Denied: Big Government Lessons for Obama?
For twenty five years it has been accepted in politics and among the American people that less government is better, at least in principle. The arguments always come over the specifics. Barack Obama is attempting to change that dynamic during the current recession by providing big government answers to everyone’s pet beefs.
It began during the election campaign with the curious message of “hope” without context, implying that people derive hope only through their elected leaders in Washington DC. The consequences of Obama’s depressing message are beginning to sink in. The weight of government largess is sinking the ship of state both financially and spiritually, and explains why his poll numbers are dropping.
Obama’s answer for the auto companies was first to gift them unprecedented billions of dollars in a taxpayer bailout, and then to simply take them over after his program had wasted our money. The financial institutions preceded this exercise in government control the same way. And now Obama wants to nationalize the health care industry so that you can derive medical hope from politicians rather than your own physicians and nurses.
So it is no wonder that the curious case of Justin Denney and an overbearing Bonny Eagle High School superintendent named Suzanne Lukas hit the news this week. He waved to his mom and took a bow, like a handful of excited kids do in each graduating class in every high school in America. She had a big government answer to his hope, which was to rip it away.
Sit down Justin Denney. Your diploma can wait. Get in the back of the line for health care while you are at it. Conformists get their diploma. The politician’s kid needs the transplant more than you. Push aside and move over. Government has the answer for your hope.
More on the Justin Denney diploma fiasco is below in the video report.
Justin Denney (Video)
June 18th, 2009 at 4:22 am
Why are the people with higher educations the nitwits running our schools? This proves that liberalism is a mental disorder. The nerve of this kid to blow a kiss to his mother. Like she had anything to do with his education. Please.
Are you lefties ready for this kind of crazy run government health insurance which will ruin the BEST health care in the world?
June 18th, 2009 at 5:17 am
I still want to think this broad is kidding. Not only did my son wave during his graduation, he stopped and hugged me ( ok..so I was standing by the aisle and didn’t give him much choice) . That was in the late 80’s…sounds like he would be imprisoned by the One’s team if that happened today. This is sickening, and disgusting.
I hope parents there have enough sense left to protest this decision.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:20 am
This is a conservative issue? An issue at all? Seems like this kid is showing some free sprit and freedom, a lack of conformity, what I think of as liberal traits.
What if Justin didn’t pull out a necklace, but pulled out a gay-pride rainbow? And maybe sashayed. Same little delay and celebration. Then would this story be here?
I agree that the treatment appears over bearing, but I wasn’t there. The school wanted an orderly procession and made it clear in writing. Walk up and get your diploma. That they required students and parents sign a code of conduct hints that problems have happened in the past.
Maybe a few people before him had made these small celebration delays and the super wanted to crack down. Maybe this was first one and she wanted to “nip it”. The police were already present and had detained one student.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:21 am
He did not moon the audience, didn’t do backflips across the stage, didn’t unfurl a banner advocating anything – he blew a kiss and waved. That doesn’t come close to being “disruptive” by anyone’s definition except Ms. Lukas’ and held up the proceedings by maybe a nanosecond, if that. It has nothing to do with liberals, conservatives or anything political in between; it has to do with an insecure person with an exagerated sense of her own power and importance. Put her in a desk job, not around people.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:47 am
For twenty five years it has been accepted in politics and among the American people that less government is better, at least in principle.
Are you serious? Both sides of the aisle have been spewing police state drug war rhetoric during the entire quarter century that you mention. The expansion of our criminal justice system and executive branch during this period was unprecedented and resulted in a governmental presence in our private lives that our founding fathers would surely find abhorrent. That doesn’t exactly sound like “less government” to me.
Regarding this Justin Denney situation, he should be moving forward with a lawsuit against his school district. Depriving him of his diploma, even temporarily, could easily have negative ramifications as Justin moves forward to the next stage of his life, whether that be more education, military, the work force, whatever.
The superintendent’s blind, petty insistence on enforcing a minor rule outside of the spirit under which it was created is harming this kid for absolutely no reason.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:28 am
Really?
Only a nitwit ideologue could try to link the Denney graduation flap to right wing criticisms of the the current administration.
Is that the best you can do??
June 18th, 2009 at 7:36 am
@Lee: I’m not sure how much time you spend on this site, but if you read enough posts you’ll learn that pretty much every story makes an attempt to link its subject matter “to right wing criticisms of the the current administration.” It gets downright ludicrous sometimes.
Usually though, the commenters can be counted on to discuss the relevant issues raised by a particular story.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Wow, I just googled for a follow up to this article and find that this entire thing has been spun into an attack on Obama and liberals (Like myself) by you guys. Its quite sickening.
The whole thing sickens me, and I dont think of it as a liberal or a conservative issue, its a human issue. But this sickens me as well, using this guys misfortune as fuel for some kind of hate machine.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Suzanne Lukas whatever meds you’re taking get to your family physician ASAP the side effects have damaged your brain… You need to resign, and take a course in anger management before you flip out again, the next time it could be terminal.
June 19th, 2009 at 12:49 am
I don’t think Ms. Lukas will have a job much longer. But I am highly amused that the Right has so little legitimate to hate over that they are linking this with our POTUS and bigger Gov.’t. In fact, this is the result of over-indulgent SMALLER gov.t. A litlle town where a “nobodys” are allowed to delude themselves into thinking they are gigantic “someones.”
As for you Right Wing Haters: your conerns over our POTUS do not BEGIN to touch the disgust I have had the last 8 years, as I watched thousands of our young be killed in the name of Cheney’s paranoia charged patriotism, and the stolen election that put him in charge of W and the country in the first place. He turned us into Iran! So if you don’t like what’s happeneing, get used to it. The country, even many level-headed Republicans have figured it out and are sick of it and “the times they are a changin’!”
Ha HA!
June 20th, 2009 at 1:49 am
you know you just make a fool of yourself as well as your cause by making ridiculous arguments like this. Obama is responsible for this? sure. I thank god for people like you every day, your fringe lunacy is what has shamed the republican party out of the running. Please, continue to make a fool out of your party to ensure anyone on the cusp with a level head sees you as the whackjobs that you are.
ps. thanks for Obama! couldn’t have done it without you!
June 20th, 2009 at 1:57 am
btw. I’ll bet money that the woman voted republican
anyone who thinks the repubs are any less ‘big government’ than the dems are drinking the kool-aid in buckets. Honestly, read a book.
There are plenty of Republicans out there i respect, whether i agree with them or not. And plenty of them are brilliant. But overall the over reliance on the on the idiot vote has made them a joke. If they want their party to recover they’ve got to drop nuts like you.
but then again, you keep the world laughing at them.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Have you gone completely mental?
There is ZERO association between Obama and what the nutcase, Suzanne Lucas, did to Justin Denney. This lame attempt to draw a common thread between an Obama presidency and this heinous act of graduation buzz-killing is a sad reflection of the right wing’s creative process.
On the other hand, the only thing I love the more than flop sweat and the odor of right wing desperation is watching Rush Limbaugh cry for more Rx drugs. Keep flailing your arms Republicans, I’m enjoying watching your party fall deeper into the political quicksand.
What did you do with the Real Republican Party?
June 20th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I attended fall 9th grade in that school and it was so backwards there my science teacher told me in front of the class in answer to my question about photons and momentum that I should leave and go to a better equipped school in the new york area so I would have a better chance to go to college. He never even tried to answer my question or refer me to a source. That about sums up my experience there. The people are very conservative, do not like outsiders, and are absolutely uncurious. They had such a lack of electives I remember sitting in study halls counting the ceiling tiles.
July 5th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Dear lord, I can’t stop laughing. This post is surreal at best, and delusional at worst – come to think of it, probably both.
Seriously, it reads like a parody. Trying to connect this with Obama and liberalism has got to be one of the biggest stretches in logic I’ve come across in a while. Sorry, but making Limbaugh-esque connections between two unrelated things in a hilariously pathetic attempt to disparage an administration you don’t like is not going to rescue your own party from irrelevancy.
Funny though.
July 5th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I went a fall semester to Bonney Eagle High and I can tell you it was a pretty conservative place(read white and rural) that didn’t cotten much to outsiders. I use to walk through groves of pine trees for a mile to get there. My teacher in science class publically told me to go to school in the New York area when I started talking about photons having momentum to a question…. and I remember it was impossible to find an after school job of anykind, so I went door to door trying to sell garden seeds for the coming spring and nobody would buy them, not one. But surely Lukas reneged on Justin who earned his degree. Administrators and Teachers have to be prepared for a little graduation “enthusiasm” and I think she was white and is he black? Just disgusting. I hope the governour called her directly and her boss and read her them riot act. This isn’t America at its finest. Justin was betrayed by the adults that ran his school and publically humiliated. I hope she gets fired.
July 5th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
To your larger question I would ask one of my own. Where do you think our economy would be today if bush and obama hadn’t of bailed out the banks and big wall street brokerages? I think its a useful question. They absorbed all that money and still are canceling our credit cards, raising the interest rates, lowering the limits, and not solving the mortgage problem. They wont even make business decisions to adjust down principles where clearly it would save the homeowner. Would it be much different if they hadn’t of bailed them out? I keep getting things in the mail telling me my citi credit cards are not ones I would ever want to use again. Now Chase just wrote me this past week to tell my they are raising their interest rates on their cards substantially. Unfortunatelly before the crash these guys bought up so many stand alone credit card companies(MBNA, ATT, etc) it creates a big problem as to which card to even use. Also I hear in general, the banks and brokerages are set to pay another super big bonus year to many of their employees. Seriously, and its only becuase taxpayer money saved them they can do this, yet they too reneged on the agreement to keep our credit system alive and well. Now everday I wonder what new changes of terms letters I will get that will affect me. And I am paying above the minimums and early. It looks to me like our credit system is still cratering and affecting the average working joe.