News & Issues
Stories from around the Kansas City Metro area on a variety of topics.
It's TIF in a GIF
Here’s a quick summary of TIF — Tax Increment Financing — what it is, how it works, and its impact on the Kansas City metro. Flatland’s Mike McGraw and The Pitch‘s Steve Vockrodt examine the project in recent reports and join KCPT’s Nick Haines on this week’s edition of Kansas City Week in Review.
North Kansas City Food Trucks? Maybe Not
During the month of August, neighborhood folks and foodies visiting North Kansas City’s Macken Park enjoyed a more diverse choice of local food than is usually offered in the city. The recent arrival of food trucks transformed the relatively quiet park into a hub of sophisticated lunch options, offering everything from authentic Cuban sandwiches, to colorful upscale tacos, to Asian-fusion cuisine, all made fresh on the spot.
Sound smart this weekend
THE REARVIEW: (Three stories to have in your wheelhouse) 5 Skills President Obama Will Need To Survive A Day With Bear Grylls (NPR) Bear Grylls is the President of Awesomeness, what with his mad post-apocalyptic survival skills. So it’s fitting he’s taking the actual POTUS on a trek through the Alaskan wilderness for an episode of Running Wild with…
Can You Use That In A Sentence? Dictionary Adds New Words
Oxford Dictionaries has added a slew of new words, and let’s just say these awesomesauce entries will have you fangirling. Rly. Many entries are food-related: fast-casual, adj.: denoting or relating to a type of high-quality self-service restaurant offering dishes that are prepared to order and more expensive than those available in a typical fast-food restaurant cakeage, n.: (informal) a charge made…
Upside Down-Land: Bitter Harvest
As Cerner and other businesses use TIF to ensure their growth, Kansas and Missouri keep squeezing their poorest citizens.
Upside Down-Land: Cerner's TIF Transplant
Neal Patterson personifies 21st-century Kansas City entrepreneurialism. He is his generation’s Henry Bloch or Joyce Hall, the head of a company he started from nothing — Cerner Corporation — and made KC’s most prosperous business. Cerner, a health-information technology firm, makes more than $3 billion a year. The company’s market capitalization — the value of…
Take 5 for your health
Officials, Farmers Preparing For Fall Bird Flu Outbreak Amid Ongoing Mystery Farmers and agriculture officials are gearing up for another round of bird flu this fall, an outbreak they fear could be worse than the devastating spring crisis that hit egg layers and turkeys in the Midwest, wiped out entire farms and sent egg prices…
Welcome to the working week
Using figures from the American Time Use Survey, NPR’s Lam Thuy Vo created this graphic and story What Americans Actually Do all Day Long, In 2 Graphics in 2012. Has much changed for any of us?
Lawsuit Alleges Medicare Fraud At Lawrence Memorial Hospital
A former emergency room nurse at Lawrence Memorial Hospital has filed a federal “whistleblower” lawsuit alleging that the hospital falsified patient records to obtain higher Medicare and Medicaid payments. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan. on behalf of Megen Duffy alleges that top hospital officials knew about the fraud, which…
A challenge, from TEDxKC Speaker Martin Pistorius: Expand your possibility
There’s a long list of things TEDxKC speaker Martin Pistorius can’t do, speaking and walking being one of them. There’s another list, a list that rivals the first one in length. That is the list of things he can do: run a business, express himself expertly, engage and command a room like he did at…