Monica Wehby, SECOND incident of plagiarism, and apparent lying

Monica Wehby? 
The INNER, REAL
Monica Wehby,
behind the facade?

 From Oregon Live:

Monica Wehby's campaign acknowledges plagiarism problem, blames former aide who disputes charge

Monica Wehby's campaign on Wednesday acknowledged problems with plagiarism in some of her issue documents and removed them from her website.
Her campaign blamed a former staffer, and it was clear from the context that Wehby and her aides were referring to her former campaign manager, Charlie Pearce, who is now running Dennis Richardson's campaign for governor.

Pearce, who was clearly irked, denied having anything to do with the problem. "I did not author the health care policy or economic policy plans," he said in an interview.

The Wehby campaign scrubbed the issue papers from its website shortly after BuzzFeed reported that chunks of her economic plan closely followed wording from a report by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. Some portions also used the same wording as a plan by a 2012 GOP congressional candidate from California.

A day earlier, the web publication had reported that a seven-point health care plan released by Wehby last year mimicked much of the wording of a survey taken for a group run by GOP consultant Karl Rove.

Wehby spokesman Dean Petrone had called the health care charge "absurd."  But following the second BuzzFeed report, Petrone issued this statement:

"These website pages were authored by staff that are no longer employed by the campaign and were immediately removed once brought to our attention.

That put the attention on Pearce, who assembled Wehby's initial campaign staff and was listed as the contact on press releases detailing the health care and economy plans. He left in a big staff shakeup after the primary when Wehby was struggling to get past controversy over calls to the police made by her former husband and an ex-boyfriend complaining about her behavior.

Petrone, who did not respond on the record to Pearce's statement, denied that Wehby or anyone currently connected to the campaign had anything to do with writing the plans.

However, Petrone said Wehby "stands by the positions she's taken and the ideas.  The act of what was done, she had no role in that."

UPDATE: An email obtained by The Oregonian containing the original Word document draft of the economic policy appears to show that it was written by an employee at Meridian Pacific, a consulting firm working for Wehby, and not by Pearce.  John Peschong, a partner in the firm, told the Salem Statesman-Journal that he couldn't authenticate that the document was produced by his firm and said he couldn't reach the person named in the Word document, who no longer works for Meridian.

Nice piece of work, Wehby plagiarizes BOTH her health plan, AND her economic plan, and then tries to blame someone else who was NOT responsible. Clearly, this woman has problems telling the truth, and we should not be taking her word for ANYTHING.  (Shame on the NRA AND the GOP for endorsing this woman!)

Monica Wehby deserves to be bounced to the curb, not sent to the Senate for Oregon.

"It's all cut and paste"

A lovely critique, in a way, but I have another quote:

"Copying from one person is plagiarism, two research".

Both quotes simplify the issue. What is lacking from them is that mere parroting without understanding shows ignorance. One can quote and then come up with a point, well, that's research. It's showing understanding and backing up your point that takes it from mere "cut and paste".

And as they say "There's nothing new under the sun." So, why should I "reinvent the wheel". Christ, I don't have that much spare time (despite how this may seem).

Commonplace books (or commonplaces) were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They became significant in Early Modern Europe.

"Commonplace" is a translation of the Latin term locus communis which means "a theme or argument of general application", such as a statement of proverbial wisdom. In this original sense, commonplace books were collections of such sayings, such as John Milton's commonplace book. Scholars have expanded this usage to include any manuscript that collects material along a common theme by an individual. Thomas Jefferson had a common place book where he would jot down ideas he thought were important

Such books were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests.

A funny aside, there was this young woman who kept a common place book during the 18th Century (or therabouts), she died and everyone thought she was a genius. Until someone pointed out that was her common place book that she copied the thoughts of others. Never mind her tomb shows her as this literary genius. I'll put up the info when I locate it. Until then, this will remain an anecdote.

Interestingly enough, Commonplaces are likened to blogs (another good post here). Which is exactly where I am going with this.

I will be the first to admit that law isn't the most intellectual of professions (which gets me into another quote I want from C.G. Jung about the medical profession not being very intelectual either--I think it's in dreams). In fact, one could easily set up a computer program that could make legal decisions thus eliminating judges.

Anyway, I hope that my rantings prove useful. They are a way for me to vent. I am feeling particularly frustrated by the Heller decision as my many posts show. It is flawed in its logic, which some people see. Yet for reasons I will get into in future posts, we mostly see praise for this piece of trash called Heller.