Friday, September 19, 2014

Dr. Wehby, now busted on plagiarism, trailing in polls in Oregon

The NRA sure knows how to pick losers and unethical people.

Of course, we have Rand Paul as the pre-eminent plagiarist, but Wehby is apparently following in his footsteps.

from MSNBC.com:
Oregon Republican Senate candidate Monica Wehby, already trailing in the polls against Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, is now dealing with a fresh plagiarism scandal involving her health care and economic plans. The campaign has pulled down portions of its website after news reports revealed instances of language pulled from other sources.
This week, Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski noticed that the health care plan on Wehby’s campaign site was largely identical to a survey conducted by Karl Rove’s political group Crossroads GPS. That would have been embarassing for any candidate, but Wehby has been running on her health care expertise based on her career as a successful pediatric neurosurgeon. It didn’t help that Wehby’s campaign offered up a flip response to the initial allegation.
“The suggestion that a pediatric neurosurgeon needs to copy a health care plan from American Crossroads is absurd,” a Wehby spokeswoman told Buzzfeed. “Dr. Wehby is too busy performing brain surgery on sick children to respond, sorry.”
They couldn’t ignore it for long, however, especially after Buzzfeed discovered the economic plan posted on Wehby’s site also lifted language from several other Republican sources and the story spread across local Oregon outlets. On Wednesday, the campaign removed portions of its website and blamed a former staffer for the issues.

...
“The Wehby campaign wants Oregonians to believe Wehby hadn’t read her own health care and economic plans until today,” Merkley campaign manager Alex Youn told the newspaper in a statement. “That’s ridiculous … This is her policy platform, and it’s the reason she is running.”
Wehby was considered one of the top Republican Senate recruits at the start of her campaign thanks to an appealing biography and a handful of moderate positions (she’s a rare pro-choice GOP candidate) that could play well in blue-leaning Oregon. But her campaign never caught fire, beset early on by revelations that Wehby had been accused of harassment by her ex-husband and an ex-boyfriend.
Recently, Freedom Partners, a Koch-backed political group that has backed Wehby, canceled planned October ads, an indication that big money donors may be giving up on the race. While polling is relatively scarce in the race, surveys have consistently given Merkely a double-digit lead for months.
Cowards blame others for their mistake.  The not-so-good doctor is responsible for her own damn health plan, and if she expects to go play with the big kids in Congress, she damned well better learn to read what goes over her name -- especially if she does not write it.  The woman lacks integrity as well as any original thinking, on top of her dubious medical expertise.

No wonder the NRA supports her -- it appears she is pro-gun, and apparently opposes limiting guns for stalkers, since she is accused of being one herself.

Here is more on the stalker story.

Yup, the NRA endorses people who perform unnecessary surgeries, but run on their medical expertise, and who are pro-gun -- but also stalkers, and let's round that up with a lack of integrity in plagiarism, and a refusal to take responsibility.

I'd have a modicum of respect if Wehby just admitted she borrowed from multiple sources, but she doesn't -- and she doesn't have the courage even to address the topic herself.

7 comments:

  1. I did cite a few articles mentioning the stalking thing, but lets hear what the victim says,

    "Miller, who has since been a prominent supporter of Wehby's U.S. Senate campaign, told Politico that he never sought the order and regrets calling the police."

    http://www.oregonlive.com/mapes/index.ssf/2014/05/monica_wehby_accused_of_stalki.html

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  2. “The Wehby campaign wants Oregonians to believe Wehby hadn’t read her own health care and economic plans until today,” Merkley campaign manager Alex Youn told the newspaper in a statement. “That’s ridiculous … This is her policy platform, and it’s the reason she is running.”

    That is definitely a good comment. It sounds like she's at the very least, delegating without properly supervising. Not a good thing for someone vying for high office.

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    1. Yup. Delegating is good. Delegating and not keeping an eye on the underlings leads to anything from this to things like Bridge-gate and Watergate. Also leads to thousand page bills that few of the folks in office have read.

      Interesting that the Obama administration thinks "we had no idea this was happening" is a good excuse that clears them of blame.

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  3. It seems pretty silly to levy a charge of plagiarism for printing platform statements on a website. It’s not like it’s a submitted manuscript for publication. Did she even represent it as her own original work? I’m sure there are boilerplate platform statements that show up all over the place in politics. Heck, bills have language directly lifted from other bills all the time. Do you think every bill Jeff Merkley wrote was his own original language? Every “Assault Weapon” ban proposed has language copy and pasted from the last failed AWB. Are we calling Dianne Feinstein a plagiarist?

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    1. I'd guess that boilerplate platform statements are pretty common on both sides, and I have no problem with candidates from either side doing it as long as they've taken the time to read over it, and make sure they either agree with it or adjust it to reflect their views.

      However, as Sarge said, claiming an underling did it and they didn't look over it doesn't exactly inspire confidence that the person can supervise their underlings well. I'd add that it also indicates that they may not be willing to put in the time to actually read the legislation before them.


      As for the drafting of legislation, I'd classify that as a separate issue. One reason for lifting language from other bills, and especially from existing laws, is, in theory, for consistency of application. Otherwise you get situations, for instance, like the one the ATF created where they decided that Firearms trusts could not be classified as people. They did this without taking the wording of relevant statutes into account, and someone included that ruling in an application for a trust, as a non-person, to be able to manufacture a new machine gun. The ATF approved it, then realized what they had done and revoked the approval some time later. Some lawyers and non-lawyers have been having lots of fun analyzing the mess created by different parts of the firearms code and relevant regulations defining "person" differently.

      This is similar to why lawyers constantly copy each other's wording when drafting some types of legal documents rather than trying to write something up in a new way and hoping the court will approve the new wording as saying the same thing as the wording in an older, previously approved document.

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    2. I agree that the response from her and her camp to this "plagerism scandal" has been bad. She should have said, "so?"

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  4. "The not-so-good doctor is responsible for her own damn health plan, and if she expects to go play with the big kids in Congress, she damned well better learn to read what goes over her name -- especially if she does not write it. The woman lacks integrity as well as any original thinking, on top of her dubious medical expertise."

    Sorry was this meant to be addressed to Dr. Wehby or to Nancy "you have to pass it to know what is in it " Pelosi?

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