Archive for January 2006

Every teacher has that one student who leaves them forever changed. For music teacher Denise Schmitz, it was a deaf child she met while teaching in the West Des Moines public school system. The interactions …

Americans spend more per capita on health care than people in any other country and our costs are escalating rapidly. Those who are insured are being asked to pay more of the cost, U.S. employers …

I was not all that happy to learn that my mattress and pillows may have doubled in bulk over the last decade due to a buildup of dust mites and their feces, and even if …

Many of Central Iowa’s most successful business people and strongest community leaders started with nothing, and that’s still our favorite American story — the hardscrabble kid who overcomes all obstacles and climbs to the top.…

Salespeople tell me that these days “price” is all that matters. What do you think?

Me? I think price doesn’t matter, if value and relationship are solid.

Ask yourself this: When price becomes the focus, …

The daughter of an Army colonel, Debra Christopher moved frequently throughout her childhood, even graduating from high school in Turkey, which explains why moving to Des Moines from Austin, Texas, in the dead of winter …

Dear Mr. Berko:

I’m considering owning Ciena, Polycom, Lucent and Oracle. I would invest $6,000 in each issue for a two- to three-year holding period. Please give me your thoughts on each of these, which …

Global economy, meet the global financial reporting language.

XBRL, a computer reporting language that’s already enabling banks and a handful of publicly traded companies to more easily exchange electronic financial reports, could also become a …

You’d better get over here to the state Capitol, the staff told Ed Redfern one afternoon last October; it looks like an emergency. And it was. An entomological emergency.

“People were all over the place …

A proposal by a state agency to build a visitors’ center with a theme of “Roads to the Capitol” has encountered a pothole on its route to the Legislature. The project was not included in …