Criminal repugican Refuses Mandatory Background Check Before Taking Office

While they are sometimes embarrassing, there aren’t likely many politicians out there who would decry the thought of a background check before taking office. After all, shrub’s DUI arrest didn’t prevent him from stealing office. This is exactly why some people are scratching their heads over a newly elected school board member in Georgia, Stan Jester, refusing to take a background check.

Stan Jester Refuses Background Check

The chairman of the DeKalb School Board, Dr. Melvin Johnson, has stated that everyone working for the school district, including those who are just volunteering, must undergo a background check and fingerprinting. He says he was actually surprised by the fact that Jester refused this process.
Jester would defend himself by saying the following:

“It is a conflict of interest to be investigated by the agency I was elected to oversee. It should be done by a third party.”

Well, that sort of makes a little sense. In a warped kind of way. What exactly, though, does Jester think the difference of these two background checks will be? Does he think the school board will make something up in his background that he won’t be able to disprove?
Jester would go on to say:

“I do not object to a thorough background check or being fingerprinted. In fact, last week, I sent the chair a copy of my background check completed by the Dunwoody Police Department. Additionally, I have already made arrangements to have my fingerprints taken by the DeKalb County Police Department to address anyone’s concerns.”

Well, that seems all right then. While it may be a little childish to refuse a background check by the school board, everything should be okay since he had police perform his background check, right?
Wrong.

The Tale of Two Background Checks

We all know what a police background check reveals: a criminal record. Shouldn’t that be the end of the story for Jester? Of course not. Anyone who has ever undergone an employment background check knows that it’s more than just criminal records that are checked for.
Credit records, for instance, are viewed as imperative for those in positions of trust, and are a common part of employer background checks. These checks also often include education record checks. After all, how else can you prove a person is telling the truth about their educational background?
Employer background checks also often uncover non-criminal court records and past employer information. Even character references and professional licenses are often checked.
Now, this isn’t to say that DeKalb School Board’s background check includes all of these. The simple fact, though, is that employer and criminal background checks are starkly different. As someone who will be involved in the education of our children, shouldn’t we know a bit more than “he’s never been arrested”?
Neither was Manson, until he was.

The repugican connection

Now, Jester has made sure that he’s listed as not affiliated with any party on the ticket. This would be a smooth move for a repugican in a county that’s predominantly African American, such as DeKalb, but it probably wouldn’t matter either way since Jester ran unopposed.
Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to say that Jester was a repugican just because of his incredibly shady decision not to undergo the school board’s background check. Maybe then, we can look at the fact that his wife, Nancy Jester, sought the repugican nomination for the Georgia State Superintendent of Schools.
There are undoubtedly marriages between repugicans and Democrats out there, but Nancy also bragged about receiving the endorsement of Debbie Dooley, a teabagger co-founder and member of the Board of 'teabagger patriots'. Now, if you’re a Democrat or a logic-oriented repugican, please tell me whether there’s any amount of love in your heart that could have you stomach someone with links to the teabaggers.
Let’s keep going, though; Stan also has his own “fact checker” site. After all, why should he trust all those other legitimate ones out there to tell the truth? He often posts these stories on his Facebook page as support for his ideas, but in addition, you get an awful wingnut vibe from reading his posts.
On one of his posts, for instance, he lists off the reasons why having immigrant children enrolled in public schools is bad. In another, he tells John Evans, the president of the DeKalb County branch of the NAACP, that instead of fighting discrimination against African Americans, he’s fueling “the fires of racial tensions.”
He even goes on to quote Martin Luther King Jr. to justify his statement to Evans. As we all know, it’s a common tactic of repugicans to claim Martin Luther King Jr. as their own. Seems even after over 150 years, wingnuts still believe they can own a black man against his will.
Jester even openly speaks out against taxes while speaking of how badly the schools in his county are doing. Because he probably has other ideas, besides increased funding, to get the schools back on track.
So while Jester may say he’s unaffiliated on paper, he’s apparently nothing more than a repugican, potentially teabagger in nature, who managed to get elected thanks to a lack of opposition and now thinks that a background check proving his worth is asking too much.