Scott Ashjian has a new web ad calling Harry Reid and Sharron Angle career politicians and saying both are spending machines. Really. It's on the web.

Posted at right.

That's what Sen. John Ensign said when he taped Bob Fisher's "Observations" program, heard on 26 radio stations, before he want on Alan Stock’s talk show this week and distanced himself from Sharron Angle on CityCenter jobs. Ensign spent a half-hour with Fisher, who helms the Nevada Broadcasters Association. I have listened to the tape of the program, which airs next week.

Fisher asked Ensign about the ads and whether it was fair to pinpoint Reid for blame: "Is Harry Reid to blame all by hmself?"

Ensign: “It is a philosophy in Washington….there is a lot of blame to go around... I just have a different economic approach."

On Fisher’s program, we also learned:

----Ensign: “I pride myself on being one of the least partisan people in the U.S. Senate.” That’s him, all right. He went on to talk about Harry Ensign and what a great team it is despite “opposite voting records.” Indeed, his comments about Reid not being alone in the blame for the economy and his words about CityCenter jobs show what a great team he and Reid make.

----Ensign is distressed by the state of journalism, saying the rise in cable networks is because “people see so much bias in the media.” Ensign lamented how the mainstream media are “almost running editorials through the way they report.

And: “You look through and find so many errors in the reporting,” Ensign told Fisher. “There really seems to be a lot of bias in reporting these days.” (I hope the RJ is not offended.)

So, the rise of cable shows is to answer bias in reporting? Really? Trenchant.

----Ensign still believes President Obama’s remarks about Las Vegas caused convention business to be “devastated” and fall “off a cliff” the day after the comments. He said: “The next day their phones stopped ringing…except for cancellations...It’s not my facts and figures; it’s what I was being told up and down the Strip.”

Q.E.D.

----Despite what Harry Reid and many Democrats have said about the stimulus, Ensign says it's not too early to bring back the jury: “The results are in; the stimulus didn’t work.”

What would he have done? Cut corporate tax rates because the country’s are so high. When Fisher pressed and asked about the stimulus helping to avert depression: “I’ll be fair. It did save some government jobs. It didn’t do what could have been done with the private sector.”

----Finally, Ensign sounded a cautionary note after he refused to signal who he might support for president. He suggested President Obama "will be a very strong candidate" and that the Republicans don't have the 2010 balloting cinched.

He did not, however, indicate any interest in an Iowa trip.

So says GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle, using a Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial in which the "newspaper" calls Harry Reid's claim about 1,400 teacher jobs (funded this week) a lie, in a fundraising pitch.

Some great lines in this one:

Just a few weeks ago, a Harry Reid ad featured a teacher falsely claiming her job was saved by Reid. However, further investigation showed that her job wasn’t even at risk. Now he’s dropped on Nevada voters another whopper- that he just saved an additional 1,400 teacher jobs. But the Las Vegas Review Journal called the ad a “work of fiction” and said that Harry Reid just “made it up.”

The worst thing of all? Harry Reid’s friends in the liberal media have failed to call him out on it.

That’s what we are facing in this race. Harry Reid drops millions of special interest money running ads with men holding machine guns, hinting this grandmother of ten supports armed rebellion, and the liberal media laughs. But while he distracts us with deceitful ads and lies, Harry Reid and his liberal allies plan on continuing their deficit spending and increasing the debt.

We must say enough is enough.

Will you stand with me and donate to our campaign?

Will you stand against the liberal media and help me work around them with paid television ads?

Will you send a message loud and clear that we won’t back down by adding $50 or $100 to our total today?

Will you let Harry Reid know that we can’t be intimidated? That we won’t be shouted down by Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow?

Like Ronald Reagan, I have complete faith in the American people. Harry Reid thinks that you can be fooled. He thinks that all who oppose him “don’t have the facts”. He is fully confident that you’ll simply back down to his dirty tactics and let him cruise into the Senate for another six years of his liberal agenda.

But I know better. Americans won’t stand for this kind of left wing governance. They want someone in office who will respect their freedoms and defend THEIR interests, not the SPECIAL interests.

Join with me.

Sincerely,

Sharron Angle, Republican Nominee for U.S. Senate, Nevada

Sen. John Ensign said on Alan Stock's radio show Monday that he only made "one call to one of the banks at the time....I thought CityCenter was an important project....I thought it was important to do what we could...All I wanted to do was make sure the banks were doing the right thing."

You may recall that U.S. Senate nominee Sharron Angle criticized Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for making calls and said she would not have made them.

He went on to say: "We may disagree on this particular point, but as Ronald Reagan said...and I'm sure Sharron disagrees with some of my viewpoints....but we agree at least 80 percent of the time....that's your friend not your enemy."

I wonder what else is in that 20 percent they disagree on. Social Security? Maybe. Government is not God? Doubtful. Having an affair and then using the parents as a conduit to pay off the mistress' family and then engaging in a cover-up and trying to get the husband a job, with allegations of quid pro quos? Probably.

Audio at right.

(By the way, does it occur to anyone else that some of these folks who call into these conservative radio shows and ask certain questions might be Democratic plants? They are relentless.)

Ex-Gov. Bob Miller said he and former Govs. Richard Bryan and Kenny Guinn (shortly before Guinn died) told a group of Reno business leaders that the budget cannot be balanced "without some additional revenues." Miller's comments came Monday during "Face to Face." He said the governors were urging the business folks "to provide some political cover because eventually, whoever wins, is going to have modify his position. Otherwise, you're not going to have a balanced budget."

"That's just going to happen," Miller said on the program. "It's something nobody wants to hear, but it's a reality."

So a bipartisan group of governors told Reno business types what's in store but the two candidates don't know it?

"I would have to believe it's wishful thinking on their part to suggest otherwise," Miller said, wryly. "The reality is it's not going to work any other way....You just can't make the numbers add up any other way...There's no reason to believe that in the next biennium we're going to magically come out of this recession and have huge increases in money to solve the problem."

The fact is: Anyone with knowledge of the budget knows it, business leaders and lawmakers are meeting privately to discuss possible solutions and it's only the two candidates who won't acknowledge it.

Some of the most powerful figures in Northern Nevada are hosting a fundraiser for GOP gubernatorial hopeful Brian Sandoval at some private suites in the Eldorado. The mayor, the state Senate legend, gaming figures and a business boss -- oh, and their wives -- will all be there.

See the invite at right.

The aftermath of Sunday evening’s first gubernatorial debate has provided the consensus that Rory Reid, despite a relentless attack from the opening gun, drew little blood from Brian Sandoval, so: Status quo and Sandoval retains a commanding lead.

The debate was not viewed by many folks anyhow, so the evening’s impact was minimal. The coverage didn’t do either candidate any favors, although it tended to ignore Reid’s apparent lack of understanding of how the state education budget works and Sandoval’s leap of faith that teacher unions simply will sit down with him and accept his broadsword to the schools budget.

And, of course, with both candidates committed to allow taxes to sunset and no hope of stimulus funds being repeated, they will both have to cut education to get to the numbers they claim because it is more than half the budget. And they essentially reaffirmed this at a school – Andre Agassi prep – that has achieved remarkable results but with twice the per pupil funding of the school districts they are proposing to leech money from next year.

There are basic canards that each man has predicated his plan on – Sandoval has no long-term plan yet and will avoid releasing one for as long as he can – that reveal how they hope to skate through the election with fuzzy math and leaps of faith. But Reid’s insistence Sunday that Sandoval is cutting education while his plan would not simply is false based on his own document and history.

Let’s look at Reid first:

He has vowed to continue the current state employee furlough plan and says it would save $480 million. He insists education was held harmless and would be under his plan, too.

But that doesn’t add up.

First, the furlough plan included education, It’s right there in Senate Bill 3 of the 26th special session: “temporarily authorizing school districts to require employees to take unpaid furlough leave”

What that means is that the districts had to choose between furloughing employees or, if prohibited by union contracts, find the savings elsewhere. Here’s the law's distribution of cuts:

K-12 (funding reduced equivalent to a 4% salary reduction) $196M

NSHE (funding reduced equivalent to a 4% salary reduction) $48M

State Employees (12 furlough days per year or a 4.6% salary reduction) $57M

Total savings $301M

As state budget boss Andrew Clinger told me: “You can’t get the $480 million (in Reid’s budget plan) without K though 12. They are two-thirds of the number.”

(In case the Reid folks try to impugn Clinger’s credibility because he works for Jim Gibbons, he is as solid as they come and Reid even invoked Clinger's numbers during the debate on the room tax money left in the coffers.)

So when Sandoval said Sunday Reid does not “know your own budget plan because it seeks to cut education,” he was right. And when he said it was a “dramatic cut,” he was also right.

I am not sure if Reid does not get this or is simply ignoring the math that show two-thirds of state personnel cuts are teachers. The way state government funds education is this: Money is sent to school districts and they decide, after bargaining with unions, how it is spent. Not sure if Reid’s plan really gets this.

Sandoval, though, had a problem of his own, although of a different kind when he parried Reid’s consistent attacks on his cutting education, supposedly by $533 million. “Nowhere in my plan does it call for the layoff of a single teacher,” Sandoval declared.

That is true, so far as it goes and if you ignore basic facts. Sandoval’s leap is that the unions will work with him so no one will be laid off when he cuts the schools budget, which he acknowledges he will do – a 4 percent pay cut across the board for state employees. That means either the unions agree or….the teachers will be fired. Sandoval just refuses to acknowledge the possibility that the teachers unions will snub his proposal. What then?

Said Reid on Sunday: “He’s asking for teachers to do something they won’t do.” Probably so.

So both candidates, in very different ways, are being disingenuous about what their plans might entail, although Reid’s transgression seems more egregious. I think Sandoval is a thoroughly flawed messenger in pointing it out, though – he has not presented his own budget plan, so we are relying on his short-term deficit plan based on a much smaller deficit than actually existed and the frontrunner is delaying any release of a plan to address the most important issue facing the most important officeholder in the state.

And again: They both would cut education.

“My budget holds education harmless,” Reid said in the second half of the debate. Not if he is claiming $480 million in furlough program savings, it doesn’t. And if it does, he is cutting the other third of state employees’ pay by huge amounts. Reid also criticized Sandoval for his lack of commitment to class-size reduction, which he claims he will not cut.

But none of these numbers make sense – and not just for Reid. This doesn’t even include the additional costs they don’t talk about for instituting merit pay programs or so-called value-added assessment – good idea, perhaps, but not free.

And, I repeat: We are still waiting for Sandoval’s plan.

Some other, more minor points, about The Great Education Debate:

----I saw it twice – once in person and once on TV. Reid was more relaxed and aggressive, staying on message. Sandoval was more intense and defensive (he had to be). For those who watched, I’d say Reid probably came across better.

----Reid’s basic points of division, besides his disingenuous use of budget cuts, was that Sandoval’s choice program favors the rich and that his plan would provide assistance rather than punishment to struggling schools. Sandoval suggests that Reid’s is warmed over empowerment rhetoric while his would really change the status quo (no social promotion or teacher tenure, vouchers).

----For more of my thoughts, go on my Twitter feed and follow my live tweets:

Tweets

I have previously wondered how many Angle tapes are out there to compete with the jobs/Social Security/slush fund/Government is not God classics. I know the answer is: A lot. But I am starting to think there may be one a week (or more) floating around in the cyberspace ether, some of which Angle took off her website after the primary. (But nothing on the Internet is ever really gone, is it?)

Case in point: On today’s fifth anniversary of Katrina, a Democrat supplies a tape of Angle during her 2006 bid for Congress talking about how she would have opposed the $62 billion in relief that only 11 House members opposed (no one in the Senate voted no). The federal version of “41 to Angle,” perhaps.

During an interview on conservative KLAV radio in 2005, which she once had up on her site, Angle invoked Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, who she claimed said he was voting "no" because the Katrina money was not carefully accounted for. The truth is Pence actually wanted the money to be offset – Human Events was so proud of him, it gave Pence “Man of the Year” in 2005.

But Pence actually voted FOR the $62 billion. His “yea” is right there in the congressional record after someone named Pelosi.

The day after the Sept. 8, 2005, vote, even House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told The Wall Street Journal: “It's too important to play politics with. It's too important to second-guess."

Contemporaneous news stories indicate Pence the budget hawk was taken to the woodshed by Speaker Dennis Hastert and Delay, presumably because his demands for offsets were not so politically wise in his leaders’ minds. Pence and his Republican Study Committee continued to push for offsets after the vote, pointing out ballooning deficits and angering many with their talk of cuts.

This kind of stuff is right in Angle’s wheelhouse, and judging by her more recent position on unemployment benefits – that they spoil the unemployed, even if they are offset – it’s reasonable to assume that Angle would have voted "no" even if any offset had been approved. But listen to what she said – I have posted the audio at right – and make your own call. This is the classic debate – are there times when relief, to hurricane victims or unemployed folks, takes precedence over deficit-reduction, at least in the short run?

The Republicans can and will keep airing Harry Reid uttering his infamous “war is lost” remarks. But most of his controversial, 30-second-ad-ready comments are not on tape. Almost all of Angle’s are. Her problem is she keeps creating so many recent ones that the Democrats haven’t had to use as many of the old ones.

Conservative blogger and activist Chuck Muth and his pal, Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, have sent a letter to state Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford trying to capitalize on controversy over his "Money for Something and Your Access Ain't Free" solicitation, since withdrawn. The pair asks a series of questions -- some serious, some over-the-top and purely to vex -- in the probing and obnoxious missive, which I have posted at right.

Gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid says he can balance the budget through a series of cuts and consolidations and squeezing revenues from the feds and tax deadbeats, among other ideas. Does it add up? Get out your calculators.

See plan at right.