BVDH The Blog

Column 4/25/08: Clinton Doesn't Get It

Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Democratic primary gave us the same overall result as the ones that came before it: none whatsoever. Pennsylvania was built up to be the decisive primary, just as New Hampshire, all the Super Tuesday states, Ohio and Texas had been before, but the result was as inconclusive as all the others.

Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama in Pennsylvania by 10 points. It was a big enough win to give her the slimmest of hopes of actually getting the nomination, so she’ll stay in the race at least another two weeks until May 6, when North Carolina and Indiana vote. But she only picked up 12 delegates and still trails Obama by 130 overall delegates and by more than 150 pledged delegates.

The Obama campaign sent out an e-mail on Tuesday night saying Clinton “lost her last, best chance.” This is true. Pennsylvania was Clinton’s last real hope of changing the math of this primary race. Obama will end up winning more delegates — elected ones and total delegates — going into the Democratic Convention in Denver. Clinton’s only hope is that the superdelegates rush to her side and overrule the will of the people.

Column 4/17/08: Now Flying: Empty Airline Promises

Have you ever heard of Skybus? Aloha? ATA?

What do they have in common? They are all airlines that have declared bankruptcy and ceased operations in the last three weeks. A fourth airline, Champion Air, has announced it will cease operations and the end of May. And a fifth airline, Frontier Airlines out of Denver, recently declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will be reorganizing under court supervision while continuing to operate. That’s five airlines all in serious trouble in a short period of time, all of which are in need of some unanticipated savior.

Then on Tuesday, Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines announced they were going to merge into a single entity. Even though both airlines achieved significant cost savings through bankruptcies last year, they decided that they needed to combine in order to become stronger, survive, and continue to do business another day.

Column 4/4/08: Keeping Our Heroes Waiting

Fighting for one’s country is the highest level of service someone can give to their nation. Fighting for another country because you believe in its values is even more remarkable. The United States has millions of brave men and women who serve our country in the armed forces. But there is a subset of these men and women who serve in the American military as citizens of other nations.

There are about 20,500 members of the American military that are not U.S. citizens. They are often called “green card warriors,” since they are permanent residents, but they do not have citizenship. Attempting to answer their needs, in October 2001 President Bush signed into law an act granting active-duty non-citizens who have served in war since Sept. 11, 2001, the right to apply for immediate citizenship, bypassing most of the hassles that go into the normal citizenship application process.

But as with many things in our government, immediate does not mean immediate, and we still have thousands of non-Americans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan under the American flag. This is a disservice to these brave men and women who believe in our country enough to fight for it even though they can’t yet partake in the benefits of citizenship.