MUTH’S TRUTHS

University Regent “Ranting Ron” Knecht still has his undies in a twist and is now whining that I have “willfully misrepresented (his) actions and words.” He wrote to one person who signed our online petition that “What he (Muth) won’t do is have the decency to put on line the full exchanges between himself and me.”

What? No double-dare?

You’d think a self-proclaimed Einstein with education degrees coming out the wazoo would know about being careful what you wish for.

If Ranting Ron wants me to post the full exchanges between he and I which started this little dust-up…fine. I’m perfectly content to let readers read Regent Knecht’s own words, in full, and decide for themselves whether or not I misrepresented his words. To start, here’s the exact and full text of the email that many citizens sent to Regent Knecht which caused him to fly off the handle in the first place…

Subject:
Reject Partisan, Political Hire of Lobbyist
Message:
Dear Regent,

The hiring of former Democrat congressional candidate Tessa Hafen as a $100,000 taxpayer-funded lobbyist for the university system is outrageous. This kind of Chicago-style ward boss “spoils” hiring is inappropriate in Nevada, especially for a public, taxpayer-funded system.

I urge you to reject the hiring of Ms. Hafen in this capacity.

Short, sweet, respectful, to the point. What public official could possibly get their nose bent out of shape over that? Let’s see, that would be…

—– Original Message —–
From: RonKnecht@aol.com
To: chuck@chuckmuth.com
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 5:44 PM
Subject: Fwd: Reject Partisan, Political Hire of Lobbyist

Two of your spammers spammed me with the spam you fixed for them — and then, when I personally sent back them a response, I got this nervy message. It’s clear who’s decent and reasonable in this matter and what side is a bunch of children with a leftist sense of entitlement.

I don’t know. You tell me. Did Mr. Knecht refer to folks on our “side,” those of us who sent him the original email message noted above, as “a bunch of children with a leftist sense of entitlement” or didn’t he? And did he or didn’t he write that people who use spam filters aren’t “decent” or “reasonable”? And just how does a person using a spam filter equate to having a “leftist sense of entitlement”?

I love hanging people like Mr. Knecht with their own words!

As for the accusation that those of us who signed the online petition “spammed” Regent Knecht…NOT.

“Spam” is defined as “unsolicited commercial email.” The Federal Trade Commission defines spam as “email whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service…”

An email regarding a public policy matter is not “commercial” in any sense of the word. “Commercial” is all those email ads you get for Viagra and Cialis.

Secondly, when you’re a public official and you post your email address on a public website, you are INVITING the public to contact you at that address. I used the address Mr. Knecht has listed on the university system’s website, so emailing him to that address is hardly “unsoliticted.”

In addition, “spam” is when a company sends out an email to a large bulk database of thousands upon thousands (if not millions) of email addresses…again like those Viagra ads…over and over again. The emails Mr. Knecht received, however, all came from INDIVIDUALS who sent just ONE MESSAGE, ONE TIME. It just happened to be the same message because all of us “children with a leftist sense of entitlement” agreed with that message.

So the bottom line here is that no one “spammed” Regent Knecht. And that’s exactly what I told him in my response to his “bunch of children” put-down. Here ‘tis…

So you’re telling me you really don’t know what “spam” is? Receiving online petitions from citizens to an elected official isn’t “spam.” And the person who you received the “spam” confirmation message from didn’t even know you sent him a message. It’s an automatic system. You might want to get one of your students to bring you up to speed on this technology.

Well, that got Mr. Knecht really fired up. Here, allow me to extend him the “decency” of reprinting his follow-up response, in its entirety…

—– Original Message —–
From: RonKnecht@aol.com
To: chuck@chuckmuth.com
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 9:05 PM
Subject: Re: Reject Partisan, Political Hire of Lobbyist

Typical Chuck Muth: You hid behind technicalities to duck the real issue. I know what spam is, and it was an appropriate analog for the 80+ useless e-mails you caused me to get. And I know about automatic spam filters and the fact they didn’t get my return message, because they each bounced another useless automatic message back to me telling me they didn’t get it.
The point is that drive-by thugs, like the two who had the nerve to mindlessly send me their messages, when they had structured their systems to not even allow the courtesy and fairness of a response by me on the same terms on which they e-mailed me are children like you with inflated egos and an entitlement mentality. Can you imagine the howls from people like them and you if I put up a spam filter?

Ron Knecht accusing someone of having an inflated ego is like Paris Hilton calling someone stupid. And no matter how Mr. Knecht tries to spin it, the fact remains that he called at least two of the people who did nothing more than send an email to an elected official “mindless,” “children” and “drive-by thugs.” How professional.

And as for the rest of us, the effort you took to communicate an opinion on a public policy matter to an elected official was, according to Mr. Knecht in his own words, “useless.” So I wrote him back…

Gee, Ron. If you don’t want to hear from the public, why did you run for public office? If you can’t take the heat…

And as we’ve all seen…he can’t.

Just like he couldn’t take the heat when I point out that he supported raising taxes by a whopping $300 million when he was in the Assembly back in 2003. His face turns purple and he goes absolutely ballistic when you point out that he was a tax hiker - just not as big a tax hiker as some others that year.

And you should see him blow a gasket when you point out that he “chickened out” and failed to offer a list of spending cuts as an alternative to the proposed tax hikes that year. He swears he has such a list, but never seems able to find it. Says it’s in his files in a closet at home somewhere. (Probably with Hillary’s missing Rose Law Firm billing records and Jimmy Hoffa’s body.)

If you run into Mr. Knecht, ask him to show you his list of spending cuts from that 2003 session…then stand back and watch him explode.

Assemblyman Knecht talked the fiscal conservative talk back then…but he sure didn’t walk the fiscal conservative walk. No wonder voters booted him out of the Legislature after only one term.

A final note: Mr. Knecht’s biggest complaint in this whole matter is that voters sent him email messages about a public policy issue which he didn’t ask for. But as another voter pointed out, Mr. Knecht did exactly the same thing when he was running for office last fall - not only calling our homes with pre-recorded phone messages during dinner, but filling our mailboxes with his “junk mail” campaign literature that we didn’t ask for.

What’s good for the goose, Mr. Knecht. What’s good for the goose.

Posted on January 20th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada