The Elbert Files

Des Moines plays an interesting, if distortive, role in “The Plot Against America,” the current HBO miniseries based on Philip Roth’s 2004 novel of the same name.

The book and the miniseries tell an imagined …

Economist James Paulsen calls it “Recession by Proclamation.”

Rather than waiting for two consecutive quarters of economic retraction – the usual definition of a recession – experts jumped in last month and declared a COVID-19 …

Experience teaches that major developments tend to occur as sudden bursts of activity separated by much longer periods of relative dormancy. 

This is true in genetics, where archaeologists have learned that millenniums can pass without …

For most of the first half of the 20th century, the Des Moines Coliseum occupied the downtown site where a federal courthouse is now being built.  

Although the Coliseum burned down in 1949, it remains …

Many of the environmental problems associated with farming, including flooded fields and polluted waterways, can be traced to land management, soil expert Doug Peterson told a group recently at Plymouth Church in Des Moines.

Land …

The U.S. government and the state of Iowa are headed in opposite directions on debt accumulation. While federal officials pile it on, Iowa leaders shun it.

Both are wrong. 

The federal deficit totals more than …

Decades ago when I was a political reporter, I thought there was no way Iowa’s Democratic presidential caucuses could get more arcane or convoluted.

Boy, was I wrong.

I never thought the Iowa caucuses were …

February is Black History Month, which makes this is a good time to recall one of Iowa’s most successful, if least known, civil rights heroes.

Alexander Clark was a black man who lived in Muscatine …

“Are you going to caucus?” 

The question came from deep inside a fur-lined parka. 

“You know better than to ask me that,” I said to my friend K.C. when our paths crossed on Grand Avenue …