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Infographics: Explore the Numbers

In just two months this year, Missouri legislators and state-wide officials received more than a third of a million dollars in gifts from lobbyists. Expensive meals, basketball tickets and clothes are all common gifts to the people that craft our laws and govern us.

For years, the three R’s of a basic education have been reading, writing and arithmetic.

While there are some indications that American students are faltering in reading and writing, especially worrisome is arithmetic.

Among the world’s industrialized nations, the United States is far down the list on math proficiency and math literacy, well behind such countries as Liechtenstein and Slovakia.

David Sheff is a journalist and New York Times best-selling author. 

In 2008, he wrote a memoir, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction, about how his family dealt with his son‘s methamphetamine addiction.

In a new book, Sheff argues that addicts suffer from an illness and are not simply victims of their own bad choices.  “We must acknowledge addiction is an illness…and not just bad behavior…because we punish bad behavior…we treat illness,” Sheff writes.

In 2005, President Bill Clinton established the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).  The goal of the ongoing project is to “create and implement innovative solutions to the world's most pressing challenges.”

Caroline Kennedy and her brother John grew up in a culture of words and reading.  Their mother was particularly fond of poetry dating back to experiences as a child with her Grandfather.  On gift-giving holidays, she requested that her children select and recite a poem rather than purchase a gift, which helped them develop a sense of language and rhyme.