Thread: Harry Reid's is the biggest head on GOP's chopping block

Some may not be completely sold on Angle but she is the only game in town...

Personally after going to a meeting of hers she sounded like she was one of us here at Alipac.... She mentioned and answered a lot of questions asked on issues we talk about here, including e-verify, repealing the healthcare law, illegals, SS and Medicare and no she doesn't want to get rid of it just stop them from raiding it and returning the money stole-oops borrowed from it, and making it all more secure for the younger generations to come .... Her ideas are not flakey at all....Mr Reid just loves to twist her words knowing she doesn't have the money to pay for commercials to dispute every thing he says against her....

Also when asked about term limits she said we voted for it here in Nevada and the Federal Government stopped us from enforcing our own term limits...

This is from The Modesto Bee:


Sunday, Aug. 01, 2010
Harry Reid's is the biggest head on GOP's chopping block
By DAVID LIGHTMAN - McClatchy Newspapers
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MESQUITE, Nev. -- Something about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., bothers people, and it's jeopardizing the re-election of one of Washington's most powerful figures.

"President (Barack) Obama is ruining the country, and the only way we in Nevada can stop him is to stop Harry Reid," said Joyce Perata, a retired suburban Las Vegas marketing executive who voted for Obama in 2008 and Reid in 2004.

The political future for Reid, the leader of the U.S. Senate's 57 Democrats, rests with how many agree with Perata, and for now that question remains unanswerable.
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Defeating Reid, 70, would be the biggest single coup that Republicans could achieve this election year. He remains a shaky favorite, if only because he's running against former state legislator Sharron Angle, 61. She's a conservative "tea party" candidate whose controversial stands include calls to privatize Social Security and Medicare.

Such talk keeps Reid-doubters such as Sandy Clark, manager of Dono's Smoke Shop in Mesquite, undecided.

"My original plan was to vote out every incumbent, because I don't think they're listening to the American people," Clark said as she stood in her store, located in a half-empty strip mall in this one-time boomtown 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. "But I can't do that now. I don't really want to vote for Reid, but I also don't like what she's saying about Social Security."

Reid clearly has a tough road ahead. He finds himself the victim not only of sour views about Obama and Washington, but also of his state's dramatic economic downturn.

Nevada, long regarded as a wide-open land of opportunity, is crashing; its June unemployment rate was 14.2 percent, the nation's highest - a full percentage point above perennially strapped Michigan. That makes it hard for Reid to argue that the economic recovery plans he's shepherded through Congress are working.

Typical of the state is the fate of Mesquite. This chunk of desert along the Arizona border has doubled in size since 2000 to nearly 20,000 people, many of them retirees who've poured in from all over the country. Today this predominantly Republican city is a blend of prosperous-looking homes and areas that appear to be hurting; two of the city's five major casinos sit empty.

The entire state has shared that experience. Nevada has grown to 2.6 million people, up from 2 million a decade ago. A lot of newcomers "look at Senator Reid and he seems bland, charismatically challenged. They don't know him, except as a horse trader in Washington," said Eric Herzik, professor of political science at the University of Nevada-Reno.

Reid, the son of a Searchlight, Nev., hard rock miner, is seeking a fifth Senate term. He was ahead by only 1 percentage point - 43-42 percent - in a Mason-Dixon/Las Vegas Review-Journal poll taken July 26-28, down sharply from the 7-point lead he held in a poll by the same sponsors taken July 12-14.

He reminds voters in ads and stump speeches of what he's done for the state, most recently his successful push for a new veterans hospital in southern Nevada. He also promotes his role in helping save thousands of jobs by urging banks to keep the massive Las Vegas City Center project afloat when investors were reluctant to keep it going.

Perhaps most fortunate, he's running against Angle, who won a bitter multi-candidate primary running as an outspoken conservative. It's not clear how much she'll unify the state's Republicans, let alone woo reluctant Democrats and independents.

Read more: http://www.modbee.com/2010/08/01/127550 ... z0vT6rTRxe

She's trying to soften her approach, but the rough edges remained as she addressed about 125 people recently at Spiedini's Ristorante in Summerlin, a middle-class Las Vegas suburb, during a meeting of the Spring Mountain Republican Women.

Angle blasted the Reid-led health care overhaul as "classic Harry Reid following (liberal community organizer icon) Saul Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals' playbook." She insisted that people should be able to opt out of Social Security and set up "personal accounts."

Angle has come under fire because during a May debate she said, "We need to phase Medicare and Social Security out in favor of something privatized."

The crowd frequently applauded her comments, though not everyone was pleased. The last question to Angle asked her why she'd be a better senator.

"I'm not Harry Reid," she said.

Las Vegas retiree Barbara Riolo was unimpressed.

"She's a little more polished now," Riolo said, "but she doesn't answer the question." Riolo backed another candidate in the primary, and remains undecided.

Reid has two challenges: Remind people of his deep ties to his home state and plant doubts about Angle. His TV ads pound those doubts home night after night, emphasizing her controversial comments.

Reid himself told an audience of liberal Democrats in Las Vegas recently that "the contrast couldn't be stronger. Neither this state or country can afford candidates like my opponent for the United States Senate."

Reid has a motivated network of boosters who can recite what he's done for their community. In Mesquite, for instance, City Councilwoman Donna Fairchild talks effortlessly of how "Harry Reid truly believes in small town America," how he helped get money to have a local highway interchange rebuilt, and helped fight having a coal-fired electric plant built nearby. Instead Reid has fought hard for alternative energy.

"He does his job in a very quiet way, and he does what he can," said a satisfied Virginia Loomis, a retired teacher who moved here three years ago from upstate New York.

Nevertheless, at the Stateline Casino, a favorite Mesquite hangout, the lunchtime crowd is largely unenthusiastic. This is a blue-collar crowd, hanging onto their jobs or living on retirement income.

"Time for a change. There's too much government," said Mike Butchko, a sales representative.

Still, like others, he's not completely sold on Angle. These folks may be wary of government, but they like their Social Security and Medicare.

"I'd like to see Harry go, but Angle has some crazy ideas," said Mike Ward, a retired engineer. "I just may leave the ballot blank."

Read more: http://www.modbee.com/2010/08/01/127550 ... z0vT6xevP1


Kathyet



http://www.modbee.com/2010/08/01/127550 ... -head.html

Harry Reid: His real impact on Nevada
‘No one can do more’ motto is not only misguided, it’s also false

Geoffrey Lawrence

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Harry Reid says that "No one can do more" for Nevadans than he does, as U.S. Senate majority leader. But do the senator's claims pass muster?

Reid's claims rely on the misguided premise that the purpose of a United States senator is to plunder federal taxpayers from other states in order to benefit the senator's home state. In fact, the true mission of a senator should be to protect citizens from exactly that type of mob-oriented, devil-take-the-hindmost rule by standing up for principle and taxpayers everywhere.

Nevertheless, even by Reid's own ill-conceived doctrine, the numbers indicate that he's abjectly failed to "bring home the bacon."

When Reid got to Washington, D.C., in 1983, per capita federal spending in Nevada was 16th highest among the states. Since that time, per capita federal spending in Nevada has fallen to 50th among the states, according to the Tax Foundation. Only 65 cents of every dollar paid by Nevadans in federal taxes now returns to the Silver State in the form of federal spending. In other words, no U.S. senator has done less, bringing federal dollars to his or her home state, than has Senator Reid.

At the same time, the senator has pursued schemes that uniquely penalize Nevada. An example is the federal health-insurance takeover legislation. The so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, pushed through the Senate by Reid, attempts to reduce the number of uninsured Americans by — among other ploys — greatly expanding state-run Medicaid programs. The intent behind this was to offload much of the legislation's massive expense onto state governments, thus manipulating downward the Congressional Budget Office's scoring of the bill's direct costs to the federal government.

Significantly, the bill will impose a proportionally larger unfunded mandate on the Silver State than it will on any other state. Reid's unfunded mandate will almost certainly mean future spending reductions for education, public safety and infrastructure, as more state funds must go into Medicaid spending.

"But surely," Reid supporters will argue, "a state with high-ranking congressional leaders will have higher growth prospects." Not so, according to recent research at Harvard University.

That research shows that even if high-ranking congressional leaders are able to use their seniority to leverage higher amounts of federal spending in their home states, the increased spending does not lead to new job creation. In fact, higher federal spending is correlated with lower private-sector sales, employment and research-and-development spending. According to the authors of the new study:

Some of the dollars directly supplant private-sector activity — they literally undertake projects the private sector was planning to do on its own... Other dollars appear to indirectly crowd out private firms by hiring away employees and the like... A third and potentially quite strong effect is the uncertainty that is created by government involvement.

The authors show that these results hold true, whether states are large or small, over the entire 40-year period examined. The results are most pronounced in states that have geographically concentrated firms — such as Nevada's gaming and mining industries.

The most impressive aspect of these findings is that the authors do not account for the cost of increased federal spending within the targeted states. They assume the money comes for free — ignoring the fact that federal spending must be financed through higher taxes or increased borrowing — meaning that the spending itself is the cause of private-sector malaise.

Hence, the Silver State is actually fortunate that Senator Reid has failed to deliver on his mantra as the one who can "bring home the bacon." Perhaps he should take note of this and retool his message.

Nevadans need a congressional delegation that will defend taxpayers and prevent their resources from being confiscated by the federal government in the first place. The last thing our statewide community needs is a tax-and-spend delegation that is myopically hell-bent on fighting for a piece of the federal booty.

That doesn't create jobs or wealth. Creative men and women do — if they are left free to pursue their dreams.

Geoffrey Lawrence is a fiscal policy analyst at the Nevada Policy Research Institute. For more visit http://npri.org/.




http://www.npri.org/publications/harry- ... -on-nevada


Kathyet