A volunteer at a St. Charles County food pantry looks over empty shelves.

The number of Americans without enough to eat has reached the highest level since the federal government began keeping track 14 years ago.
About 49 million people — including…

For a guy who focused so relentlessly on health care as a candidate, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has been remarkably quiet of late.
At a time when health care dominates the national debate, Mr. Nixon is one of just six Democratic…

Matson

Poverty is on the rise in Missouri. Over the past nine years, the state’s poverty rate has grown at more than double the national average.
The change has disproportionately affected whites. Poverty remains significantly higher among African-Americans. But the poverty rate grew fastest…

Thomas J. Reese writes in the Washington Post about the pope’s message on the economy:

Pope Benedict’s long awaited encyclical calls for a radical rethinking of economics so that it is guided not simply by profits but by “an ethics which is people-centered.”

“Profit…

Cynthia Davis enjoying what surely is a rare restaurant meal (2001 Post-Dispatch photo by David Carson).

Thanks, in part, to a recent Post-Dispatch editorial, Missouri state Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O’Fallon, was the subject of Keith Olbermann’s scorn this week on his…

Republican lawmakers in Missouri have a problem: They’d like to reduce the number of uninsured Missourians. But they don’t want to admit that their 2005 Medicaid cuts were a mistake — or hand Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon a political victory.
Mr.…

In Missouri, you can live in poverty but still not be poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Adults have to earn less than about 25 percent of the federal income poverty level — roughly $3,700 a year for a single…

Anti-poverty programs stir up controversy now and then.  Why, then, does no one get stirred up over the pro-poverty policies of states including Missouri and Illinois? These states tax the poor, making their poverty worse.

Of course, poor people have always…

Eleven months ago, when the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that Washington University would host the vice presidential debate this year, it was a little like being awarded the ArenaBowl instead of the Super Bowl. Indoor football’s championship game is a…

 After two weeks’ vacation and more than 1,700 Midwestern highway miles, I came home looking for some wisdom. I found it on the editorial page of Sunday’s Post-Dispatch — in a letter to the editor by Dorothy Anderson of Spanish Lake:
“I have…

The sticky issue of charity care — health care delivered by a hospital without the expectation of payment — got a lot of attention last week.

A circuit court judge in St. Louis, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and members of…

In 1963, Mollie Orshansky took a grocery list, performed some simple arithmetic, and immortalized herself in American economics. She became “Miss Poverty.”
Forty-five years later, her grocery-list formula still is the official definition of poverty in America. Using Ms. Orshansky’s method,…

Whatever else is said or done in the next 18 months about reforming the American health care system, tectonic shifts already are well underway.
The latest evidence comes from a new Census Bureau report released last week. It found that the number…

From USA Today:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In the impoverished neighborhood of South Los Angeles, fast food is the easiest cuisine to find — and that’s a problem for elected officials who see it as an unhealthy source of calories and…

Let’s ban all those gloomy national statistics about American kids living in poverty. Not many people pay attention. Those who do may feel bad, but they figure there’s little they can do about it. Mostly, they’re right.

Others misinterpret Jesus’ words in…

The Brookings Institution’s Gregg Easterbrook, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has a thought-provoking piece today:

Democratic attacks on Mr. McCain and Republican attacks on Mr. Obama both seek to punish impermissibly positive thoughts. At a time when there exists a sense…

CARACAS, VENEZUELA
Americans might well marginalize President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela as the megalomaniac who denounced President George W. Bush as “the devil” who left the smell of sulfur in the air after he spoke to the United Nations in 2006.
Chávez…

No, it’s not a cure for cancer. But a California drug company has won federal approval to market a medicine that treats another major medical problem affecting millions of Americans: Oral anesthetic hangover.

That’s the drooling, slurred speech and inability to sip…