Politics
Finding a local message in pope's Congressional address
Pope Francis’ speech to Congress Thursday morning — where he stressed the need to bridge the political divide — might as well have been directed at Kansas City lawmakers, said the Rev. Mark Lewis, director of the Thomas More Center for the Study of Catholic Thought and Culture at Rockhurst University in Kansas City. “Kansas City is…
KC week in review: elections, minimum wage and the Schweich issue
The news sounded implausible. Just weeks after Missouri State Auditor and candidate for governor Tom Schweich took his own life, his aide and communications chief, Spence Jackson, is found dead in his Jefferson City apartment of a single gunshot wound to the head. Also on this edition of “Kansas City Week in Review”: Seattle and…
What if just one agency was in charge of food safety?
Walking through the warehouse of food processor Heartland Gourmet in Lincoln, Neb., shows how complicated the food safety system can be. Pallets are stacked with sacks of potato flour and the smell of fresh baked apple-cinnamon muffins is in the air. Heartland Gourmet makes a wide range of foods from muffins and organic baking mixes…
Conversation: With Cindy Circo
Kansas City, Missouri Fifth District Councilwoman Cindy Circo interview with Mike Shanin on KCPT’s Ruckus.
Without immigration fix, dairies struggle
America’s dairies rely on immigrant labor to milk cows and care for the herd. Many owners of the country’s largest dairies say that they’re unable to find employees. A comprehensive fix to the immigration system seems like a longshot in the new Congress, leaving some dairies struggling to keep up.
Will Kansans support lowering the sales tax on ‘healthy’ food?
A Kansas City-based nonprofit organization says a recent poll shows widespread support for exempting some foods from the Kansas sales tax.
Ashley Jones-Wisner, state policy manager for KC Healthy Kids, says the survey conducted for the Kansas Health Foundation showed that 86.6 percent of Kansans supported exempting fruits and vegetables from the state sales tax.
In Missouri legislature, stage may be set for more abortion restrictions
Missouri’s abortion regulations, among the strictest in the nation, may get even stricter. Several lawmakers have already pre-filed abortion-related legislation in both the state House of Representatives and Senate.
‘Fed Up’ asks: Who’s to blame for obesity?
Just who’s to blame for the childhood obesity epidemic? Over the years, the finger has been pointed at parents, video games and vending machines, to name a few. To the makers of the new activist documentary, “Fed Up,” the bottom line of blame lies with a simple substance poured into our diets every day: sugar. And the pushers of what this film calls a drug and “the new tobacco” are the food industry and our own government.
Doctor running for lieutenant governor swears by ‘direct primary care’ model
Wichita physician Josh Umbehr has never understood the traditional model of health care reimbursement — the one in which doctors and hospitals fill out pages of forms to bill a patient’s insurance company for everything from a $3 test to a $30,000 surgery. “You don’t have car insurance for gasoline,” Umbehr said in a recent phone interview. “Why would…
Commentary | Let Common Sense Prevail In Battle Over Religious Liberty
The very day in late February that five Republican candidates for president participated in a smash-mouth debate in Texas with much moaning and gnashing of teeth about the erosion of religious freedom in the United States, these things also happened: I gathered with Episcopalians, Catholics, and mainline Protestants for a Bible study I help to…