Stupid stupid stupid
Velazquez under fire for plagiarism
HELENA – Democratic U.S. House candidate Tracy Velazquez of Bozeman found herself apologizing profusely Thursday after passing off direct quotes, comments and specific initiatives of John Kerry’s presidential campaign as her own.
During a press conference in Helena on Thursday, Velazquez presented three of Kerry’s initiatives for war veterans as her own, and said the “Military Bill of Rights” she proposed was “based” on Kerry’s bill of rights.
In fact, the Military Bill of Rights she proposed is almost identical to the one published on Kerry’s Web site. And the three veterans’ initiatives listed on her press release clearly came directly from Kerry’s Web site.
…
Additionally, a handful of comments in Velazquez’s four-page speech were very similar, and in some instances identical, to comments Kerry made in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ 105th annual convention in Ohio on Wednesday and to passages on his Web site.
For example, Kerry’s Web site says: “If you take care of us and our country, we’ll take care of you.”
Velazquez said in her speech Thursday: “If you take care of us and our country, we’ll take care of you.”
Velazquez apologized, and said she didn’t write the press release or the speech. She said her staff, which is young and possibly “naive,” produced the documents.
“I certainly apologize if there were things taken out of his speech,” Velazquez said Thursday. “There was no intent to deceive.”
Absolutely mind bogglingly stupid. I doubt there was any intent to deceive and she is a political newbie, but this is really really dumb. She may not have been close to Rehberg in the race, but this just pushes her farther away. Christ.
I’m not sure why this makes a difference. Apparently her speech writers were not up to date on plagiarism. And, after all, she is supporting the same things that her presidential candidate is. So she didn’t cite kerry, big deal. What bothers me is that the sainted Rehberg gets away with almost everything, including voting for the biggest tax breaks for the rich and the biggest deficit in history, yet is too cheap to uphold the honor of Montana and get a decent place to live in Washington, D.C. Maybe his wife could buy back one of the houses of people unhappy with the big deal subdivision and send it to him.
Well, it’s a basic bipartisan honesty issue. It’s not a major deal to me, I think it was an honest mistake and I agree with the point you make, that it’s her own candidates’s positions, but I think it hurts with the general population. But, we’ll see. It is attention, after all.
Jeff: One of the things I don’t understand is why the Gazette chose to put it on the page one top line with an editorial headline.
It headlined the Montana section in the Missoulian. You mean it was the top headline (main section) in the Gazette? That’s a bit much.
That’s what I thought, too. Can’t understand it. Wrote them a letter saying so.