Test the Bump

Delaware's lone Congressman Mike Castle may not be a believer in the bump.  Castle appeared on the program in a taped segment that aired November 9.  (Click here to see the interview.)  By coincidence, the very next day the Susquehanna Polling and Research firm started a poll of the U.S. Senate race in which Castle is running.  Fate had established a perfect method of putting the "bump" to the test, or as it turns out, put it to rest.  According to the poll, Castle trails Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden by five percentage points.  That's a drop of 26 points since the last Susquehanna poll in April.  If Colbert had the impact he claims, Castle's numbers should have gone up, especially against a candidate who may or may not be in the running.  (Biden says he's "very seriously considering" running for the Senate, but he doesn't have timetable on when he'll decide.)

Party Foul?

Maybe the problem isn't that the Colbert bump doesn't exist, maybe it just doesn't work for Republican candidates.  Maybe the Colbert bump is partisan.  Colbert plays a conservative commentator on TV, but usually ends up mocking many Republican ideals, which could play more favorably with D's than R's.

University of California-San Diego political science professor James Fowler examined this idea in a report published in a journal of the American Political Science Association.  His research found that Democrats saw an increase in fund raising following an appearance with Colbert, while Republicans saw a drop in campaign donations.  "Republicans, if anything, the evidence sort of suggested that they might be harmed by going on this show," says Fowler.  "There almost appears to be a 'Colbert bust' for Republicans who go on the show."  Fowler says it's more difficult to isolate the impact of the 'bump' on an individual candidate.  That's because to get real results, you would have to compare Castle's result from going on the show to another candidate in a similar situation against a possible high profile candidate who did not go on the show.  "So if somebody from the Kennedy clan announced that they are running against someone who went on The Colbert Report, that might be a good comparison.  In this case, it's just hard to know."

The president of Susquehanna Polling Jim Lee attributes Castle's poor showing in the poll not so much to the lack of a "bump", but rather due to his vote against health care reform on the Saturday night before the poll started and before the interview aired.  "I think that some of the media attention on that vote certainly was captured in this survey, since we started this poll literally two or three days following that vote."  Lee says, from what he's read, the coverage of Castle's 'no' vote seemed to be slightly negative.  "One of the reasons why Biden is doing better in this poll among Democrats than back in the spring, is because of that no vote," says Lee.  He says while Castle's vote may have hurt his numbers with Democrats, which have a good majority in registered voters in the state, it may have helped his standing among Republican voters.

First Bump

(WARNING: Self-promotion ahead)  The Colbert Bump may not have helped Castle, but could it be that his possible opponent got a bump of his own?  Beau Biden appeared in an interview on WHYY's Delaware news magazine First (Video here) before the vote and before Castle's appearance on cable.  According to the poll, not only did Castle's numbers fall by 15%, but Biden's numbers shot up by 11%.

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Hundreds of union workers rallied in the shadow of Pier 98, which is nothing more than a run down remnant of what was the past of the shipping business in Philadelphia. State Representative Bill Keller is a dredging supporter. He says environmentalists who are against the deepening of the river channel need to know research shows the work won't cause any problems.

Keller: There's 12,000 pieces of paper that say this dredge is safe, it's good for the economics it create jobs and has zero environmental impact. There's 12,000 pieces of paper that say that. Science says that. What do they say they want one more piece of paper, it's all bull *bleep*.

Union officials say the dredging could provide thousands of jobs and revitalize the port and the region's economy.

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Pennsylvania law justifies the use of deadly force in self-defense, but requires people outside their home or workplace to try and retreat first, if they think that's safe and possible.

A bill before the House would eliminate that provision, and reads a threatened person "has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his ground and use protective force, including deadly force."

Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico says if the bill passes, it would open up a loophole and allow drug dealers charged in shoot outs to claim a legitimate defense.

Marisco: The defense attorney's going to have a tool to raise, and that's going to be that he didn't have the duty to retreat, that he acted in self-defense. And we'll have that guy-probably an illegal gun carrier – he'll be acquitted and released back on the street to purvey violence, to provide more drugs. That's what's going to happen.

An NRA statement says the bill "will reinstate the law prior to the time when criminal-coddling judges and courts started putting the rights of criminals before the rights of the law-abiding."

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Councilman Jim Kenney says the increase in bicycling has caused havoc.

Kenney: Everyone needs to share the space. And we need to get the current problem, which is speeding bicycles on the pavement and not following traffic directions, we need to enforce that more to get the message out and then everything will calm down.

Kenney wants to dramatically increase the fine for riding on the sidewalk, to $300 dollars. He would also ban, and then confiscate, what he calls brakeless, or fixed-gear, bikes.

Biking advocates oppose Kenney's approach, favoring education.

Andy Dyson is the director of Neighborhood Bikeworks, which teaches bicycle safety to kids.

Dyson: I do agree that bicyclists should never ride on the sidewalk. What people have to look into is the reason they're riding on the sidewalk because people feel danger on the road. I think that's the issue to address because if cyclists feel safe on the street you won't find them on the sidewalk at all.

Councilman Frank DiCicco wants bicycles registered, at a cost of $20 dollars a year.

Health care issues have plagued Delaware's prison system for years, with a series of lawsuits and even federal investigations.  DOC Commissioner Carl Danberg says the latest RFP will allow vendors to provide just a portion of prison health care service, rather than bid to provide all health care needs of inmates.  "We expect this flexibility, and the increased competition it is expected to provide, will foster improved medical care and cost savings," says DOC Commissioner Carl Danberg.

St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services has been providing health care for Delaware inmates since 2005.  Danberg says the company's performance over the last three years has been "deficient" in areas.

"These benefits will help Delawareans who have been hit hard by the national economic recession get back on their feet," said Governor Jack Markell (D).  He says turning around the state's economy takes time.

The Department of Unemployment Insurance will be sending out notices to unemployed residents who may be eligible for the benefit extension along with instruction on how to receive those benefits.  The maximum unemployment insurance for Delaware works is now 93 weeks, compared to 79 weeks before this emergency extension.  Workers who recently started receiving benefits or who start collecting between now and the end of the year may not be eligible for the extension.

The planned south Philadelphia slots parlor has run into delays, financial difficulties and neighborhood opposition.

Last September, the Gaming Control Board gave Foxwoods six months to submit a new financing plan for its riverfront casino. This week, a proposal to extend Foxwoods' deadline disappeared from a table games bill – shortly after it was made public. No one in Harrisburg seems to want to take credit for the extension.

Now Philadelphia State Representative Mike O'Brien says he doesn't think the project is viable.

O'Brien: If these facilities can not generate revenue than it is time to pull the license and start again.

Local State Senator Larry Farnese agrees.

Farnese: They should shut the door on this and we should move forward. And the city of Philadelphia should move forward on this. I think its a bad idea to try and give them additional time. Because they've never convinced anybody and they've never done anything to prove they can do what they say they're gonna do.

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, an investor in the project, recently defaulted on debt on related to the Foxwoods Resorts Casino in Connecticut.

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials toured parts of Atlantic and Cape May Counties today to survey damage from last week's Nor'easter.

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New Jersey officials joined the federal teams in reviewing the damage. New Jersey Emergency Management Office spokesman Nick Morici says it may take several days to determine whether they'll seek a disaster declaration from the President to provide federal funds.

"There's no guarantees for anything. We're only going to guarantee that we'll be out here until the recovery process is over, gathering data, making sure that we present the best package possible based on the facts at hand. And then we will forward that over to the appropriate parties."

The wind and surf eroded beaches and dunes along the shore and caused water damage to some homes and cars. Local officials have estimated the damage in the tens of millions of dollars.

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Among the cuts are 138 staffers from the Department of Environmental Protection. David Masur is Executive Director of the group Penn Environment. He says the cuts are an invitation for illegal polluters to continue to break the law.

Masur: Polluters really run roughshod over our environmental laws. Many polluters violate their permits and if you cut the Department of Environmental Protection's budget, it will inevitably make it more challenging to enforce our laws and make sure that illegal polluters are dealt with appropriately.

The cuts will bring the state's total staff layoffs to 769 since last month. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell says if the employees union had agreed to furloughs, the cuts wouldn't have happened.

Pennsylvania's corrections chief says the problem got worse when a temporary moratorium on parole was instituted last year. This resulted in fewer inmates getting released.

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After a parolee killed a Philadelphia Police officer last year, Governor Ed Rendell issued a halt on all inmate paroles pending a report. The moratorium lasted just two months but it was long enough to clog a system already overburdened with a growing prison population.

John Goldkamp is a criminal justice professor at Temple University who issued the review of the state's parole system. Goldkamp says the challenge will be to keep the prison population down, while at the same time insure public safety.

Goldkamp: Its payback time. We've been going through now a couple of decades of longer sentences, mandatory sentences, one strike, two strikes and we've really developed our prison population. Well everybody's sentence comes to an end sometime.

Goldkamp says the state needs to prepare for an increase of inmates re-entering society.