Matt Blunt Beats Mentally Disabled

Or so one might think from this St. Louis Post-Dispatch story:

For two years, the Missouri Department of Mental Health kept sending mentally retarded people to a privately run home, even though its owners had a history of abuse and neglect and were barred by state law from caring for them.

During that period, 11 residents at the Kansas City-area home were choked, slapped, kicked, pushed to the floor and hit with a broom. One resident died.

A state audit criticized the department for the using the home. The audit also found that three other homes - two in the Kansas City area and one in St. Louis - employed workers with criminal backgrounds to care for mentally retarded residents. Before they were fired, the three workers sexually abused residents at those homes. The department declined to identify those homes.

The findings have parents fretting about what will happen to their severely mentally retarded children if the state-run Bellefontaine Habilitation Center closes, as Gov. Matt Blunt wishes.

Governor Blunt doesn't support beating the disabled; he does, however, support some fiscal responsibility to the state taxpayers. Also, accidentally, it might turn out to be better for the disabled who rely on the state for their support if the state doesn't directly minister them:

Of those investigations, 1,180 - about 75 percent - involved mentally retarded residents living in homes run by private businesses. The remaining 392 involved residents in the state-run centers. There are 5,352 mentally retarded residents in privately run homes, about 81 percent; and 1,275 are in centers run by the state.

So 75% of investigations involve privately-run homes, but 81% of the state's disabled and cared for live in those homes. So it sounds to me that the mentally-disabled are slightly better off in the privately-operated homes than in publicly-operated homes. However, that statistical correlation cannot hysterically bash the governor, so let us, like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ignore it.