Green Ideas And Word Salads

Do you remember Kate Knuth? When we last heard from her, she was cashing checks as a resilience officer for the city of Minneapolis. It didn’t end well:

Knuth, an environmental educator and former DFL legislator, spent her first months in the job interviewing people and conducting a survey, but had not delivered any finished work product before she resigned.

So what happened? Tell me if you can figure out what happened:

Mychal Vlatkovich, a spokesman for Mayor Jacob Frey, said they’ve begun looking for a replacement and hope to hire someone by the end of March who will focus on the mayor’s goals. He said the mayor’s office did not ask Knuth to step down, but declined to answer whether she was allowed to continue in the position and referred further questions to Knuth and former City Coordinator Spencer Cronk, who is now the city manager of Austin, Texas.

Go ask the guy who moved to Texas. We aren’t sayin’ nothin’.

As you might imagine, this unceremonious departure didn’t sit well with Knuth, who has been rent-seeking for the better part of her career. And unsurprisingly, after her tussle with the tousled mayor, she’s looking for revenge:

Frey’s contentious relationship with the city’s elected representatives, among other issues, got Knuth thinking in January about running for mayor. “Especially in the last year, especially in the last six weeks, there has been an absence” on the part of Frey, she said. “I also haven’t seen as strong of an interest in the basic running of the city that I would like to see from my mayor.”

In theory, revenge is a better motive for running than monomaniacal incoherence, which is what usually delivers the goods around City Hall. But is Knuth coherent? Let’s check out her Jack Handey imitation:

“The thing that I bring is this really strong commitment to moving through the work of structural transformative change, particularly when it comes to public safety, particularly when it comes to climate change,” she said. “Pairing that with [my] experience in, and just liking working within, big public institutions and working with them and through them to make sure they’re serving what we deserve as a city is potentially really powerful and I think something people in this city would really value.”

Dude. But there’s more. Oh my yes, there’s more:

Climate change intersects with progressive economic policies for Knuth. “I think one of the best resilience strategies we could accomplish is if every family had $500 in the bank,” she said. “Whether it’s a car breaking down or the power going out and losing some food, they’re better able to handle that. Does that sound like a climate policy? No, but if climate change increases risks in the most vulnerable [communities] now or even more vulnerable [communities in the future], decreasing vulnerability overall is super important in terms of dealing with climate change.”

That’s just super.

Will Knuth have a chance? Given the puzzle palace structure of elections in Minneapolis, it’s entirely possible. Frey has been weighed and found wanting, but the current competition has Mos Eisley Cantina written all over it, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Coming on like a amalgam of Marianne Williamson and Rachel Carson may just work. 

 

20 thoughts on “Green Ideas And Word Salads

  1. I hate to say it.

    Frey might be the best candidate for mayor.

    Not a good candidate, but the best of the mess. They are all coo_coo for cocoa puffs.

    Minneapolis isn’t getting better any time soon.

  2. That woman is typical of lefties. Use a lot of words, repeatedly and say absolutely nothing. Brilliant!

  3. Minneapolis has ranked-choice voting.
    Frey was elected in 2017 as the “first choice” of 25% of voters. He did not clear the 50% + 1 hurdle until the fifth ranked choices were counted.
    The system is designed to produce weak mayors.
    Until I read his Wikipedia article, I didn’t realize that Frey had only lived in Minneapolis since 2009. WTF? Why would you choose as mayor some upper class twit who is clueless about your city’s history and personality?

  4. who will focus on the mayor’s goals

    The boy-mayor has goals? Well.

    one of the best resilience strategies we could accomplish is if every family had $500 in the bank

    So would it be a one-shot of $500 and afterwards a declaration of resilience? Or would the city be ensuring that there was *always* $500 in the bank account? Kinda like that amount itself is resilient? Were those monies used for beer, drugs, ammo be part of the resiliency program? Would there have to be a city program with rules, regulations, and accounting for the monies spent?

  5. Like MO, I used Wikipedia, but looked up Knuth. She’s a doctor like Jill Biden. And a Fulbright scholar. So really smart and accomplished. Well, not really accomplished unless you think working the academia angle is an accomplishment with intermittent stints in government. She did get elected once or twice so there is that.

  6. So, speaking of Mpls… there was rioting and looting again last night. It was mostly peaceful.

  7. Why $500 and not $1000?
    If it’s a matter of affordibility, why not $250 rather than $500?
    Another dumb-as-a-stump elite, produced by a system designed to produce dumb-as-a-stump elites, because it was designed to produce dumb-as-a-stump elites.

  8. At least rent seeking pretends to be doing something positive. I’d call Kluth an out and out grifter. A no-show job like Tony Soprano would arrange.

  9. jdm;
    Yup! More mostly peaceful crimes taking place, the barricades put back in place by the TikTok whore and the local propaganda machine is silent.

    I don’t want to wish ill will on anyone, but I gotta believe that if more of these bobble heads or, better yet, their news directors, got hit with rocks or frozen water bottles thrown by those mostly peaceful protesters, they might change their tune.

  10. How much fat is in CVS daily profits, anyway? How many days can they restock after being looted before some green eyeshade guy says, “Close that money-losing pit” and another store leaves town?

    There’s a theory that the Sahara Desert was once lush and green but goat herders overgrazed the free fodder and destroyed their own paradise. Could Minneapolis be headed the same direction, for the same reason?

  11. JD, dude… aren’t you half way there already? I mean, look at the demographics!

    And using her tongue like a $5 whore is sure to get this twit elected. She knows her audience.

  12. Knuth’s thought of resilience meaning $500 in the bank is halfway to step one on Dave Ramsey’s ladder to financial stability and independence. The trick is in persuading people that they indeed need to not only receive that money, but keep it in the bank except for emergencies.

    Kind of a weak point among the left.

  13. If ever two cities could have actually used a “Resilience Officer”, it would have been last year. Never saw a RO quoted, or referred to, in any article for either St. Paul or Minneapolis.

  14. The trick is in persuading people that they indeed need to not only receive that money, but keep it in the bank except for emergencies.

    I was going to say….you know that if it came to fruition, a lot of those $500 windfalls would not be saved for future emergencies/problems. A lot of them would be spent on booze, drugs, prostitutes, tattoos, fancy food, fancy purses, cell phones, video games, and other wise purchases.

  15. $500 doesn’t go very far when it comes to fast women or slow horses.

    Now $5,000, that would make a nice start on the weekend. And since it’s all free money and debt doesn’t matter (we owe it to ourselves and in the long run we’re all dead anyway), why not make it $5 million and we can all be rich?

  16. You are thinking about it all wrong, JD. $500 minimum in the bank account. Says NOTHING about credit. Let me see – run up the credit, pay for it with an overdraft on your bank account sending it below zero and viola – goobernment tops it up to $500 minimum. Lather, rinse, repeat. What can go wrong?

  17. From Kate Knuth’s wikipedia page:

    resides in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood of Minneapolis.

    ……..color me shocked and amazed.

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