Can A Government Body Do ANYTHING Right?

I am finding morbidly perverse amusement in the ongoing revelations about the (now former) Superintendent of Des Moines (Iowa) public schools - an illegal alien with a lengthy rap sheet for drug dealing, car stealing, and weapons violations, who appears to also be in large part a con man. Yet he was nonetheless hired by the school board.

We’re supposed to entrust government to solve big societal problems when they can’t even avoid hiring a person who has a field of red flags flying around him?

In case you’ve missed it, the Des Moines school board hired Ian Andre Roberts to be the district’s superintendent, at a salary of close to $300,000 per year, plus a car. The federal Department of Homeland Security recently arrested him for being in the country illegally.

Mr. Roberts has a lengthy criminal history going back thirty years, of weapons violations, car theft, and drug dealing. And he lied on his resume about his academic credentials (at least). His resume reads like a series of jobs at which he claims to have started gobbledygook programs he takes credit for, but then leaves the job before the costs and failures of those programs catch up with him. He lied about his citizenship. He apparently has six children by five different women.

An immigration judge (who conducted at least two hearings) ordered him removed from the United States.

And the school board didn’t catch any of this?! The school board is blaming the search firm they used, but it’s ultimately the school board’s responsibility to ensure the person they are hiring is qualified for the job.

Oh, and the car he was using for an assortment of illegal activities at the time of his arrest was (as I understand it) the car supplied by the school district.

This is what you get when government runs things.