Archive for March, 2011

“Collective Bargaining and Social-Worker Abuse”

Last week the New York Times ran a chilling investigative account of what goes on at New York group homes for the developmentally disabled, where employees in hundreds of cases appear to have abused or mistreated residents with impunity. Per the Times:

…in 25 percent of the cases involving physical, sexual or psychological abuse, the state employees were transferred to other homes. The state initiated termination proceedings in 129 of the [399] cases reviewed but succeeded in just 30 of them, in large part because the workers’ union, the Civil Service Employees Association, aggressively resisted firings in almost every case.

Revelations like this should be front and center in the unfolding debate over public employee unionization, but often aren’t. [h/t: James Sherk, NRO “Corner”]

Schools for Misrule: next week at Heritage and in Chicago

At NRO “Corner”, Hans von Spakovsky invites readers to my noon talk next week at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. And on Thursday the Heartland Institute in Chicago will have me at a lunchtime member event.

I’m also happy to announce that next Thursday night, barring news-related bumps, I’m set to appear on one of radio’s premier discussion shows, WGN’s Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg.

You can (and should) buy the book here, or at your favorite bookseller.

Update: Adorno & Yoss law firm to dissolve

“[B]efore founding partner Henry ‘Hank’ Adorno was suspended for his handling of a $7 million class action settlement[, the] Florida law firm was once the nation’s largest certified minority-owned firm.” [ABA Journal] Our earlier coverage of the Miami fire-fee scandal (“A case of unchecked avarice coupled with a total absence of shame,” wrote one judge) is here, here, here, here, and here.