Tag: john walsh
First-Term State Lawmaker Faces Hasty Campaign In Montana Senate Race

First-Term State Lawmaker Faces Hasty Campaign In Montana Senate Race

By Kurtis Lee, Los Angeles Times

For Montana Democratic state Rep. Amanda Curtis, victory this November in her state’s U.S. Senate race will be a difficult task.

The first-term state lawmaker from the mountain town of Butte was selected Saturday by state Democrats as the party’s nominee in a special convention hastily assembled after U.S. Senator John Walsh bowed out of the race this month in the wake of plagiarism allegations.

With little money or statewide name recognition, Curtis is thought to have an uphill climb to beat GOP nominee Rep. Steve Daines in a midterm election that is less than three months away.

“It’s nearly impossible for her to beat Daines, just like it was difficult for Walsh,” said David Parker, a political science professor at Montana State University. “She has three months to get her name known around the state and it’s likely to be a wave year for Republicans, so she’s just put in a difficult place.”

When Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock appointed Walsh in February to replace longtime Senator Max Baucus, Democrats had hoped that they could retain the seat because Walsh’s credentials included service in the Montana National Guard and in Iraq. But polls leading up to Walsh’s exit from the race had him trailing Daines.

Curtis, a 34-year-old high school math teacher, has strong support from unions in the state, which will bankroll her campaign and look to blunt some of Daines’ $1.7-million war chest.

After Walsh’s exit from the race, some urged former Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer to run against Daines to give the party a recognized nominee who could quickly raise money.

“Now, the party has a schoolteacher. She’s known in Butte, but in political circles around the state she is not a household name,” Parker said. “She’s essentially the party’s scapegoat this fall.”

Curtis bested rancher Dirk Adams in Saturday’s nominating convention.

Republicans need to pick up six seats to take control of the Senate, and Montana is one of a handful of states with open Democratic seats they hope to capture. The others include West Virginia and South Dakota, where Sens. Jay Rockefeller IV and Tim Johnson are retiring.

Matt Canter, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, declined to comment on the battle Democrats face in Montana, but said Saturday that the committee plans to support Curtis.

Jim Larson, chairman of the state Democratic Party, called Curtis a “force to be reckoned with.”

“As a teacher, Curtis has a unique insight into what matters most to Montana families,” Larson said.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

With John Walsh’s Exit, Montana Democrats Prepare To Select New Nominee

With John Walsh’s Exit, Montana Democrats Prepare To Select New Nominee

By Kurtis Lee, Los Angeles Times

A pair of state lawmakers and a bank-regulator-turned-rancher are set to square off Saturday in a special nominating convention to replace embattled U.S. Senator John Walsh (D-MT), as the party’s nominee this November.

The convention comes after Walsh dropped his bid last week to retain the seat after allegations that he had plagiarized parts of a 2007 paper he submitted for an advanced degree at the U.S. Army War College.

Democrats have an uphill climb to retain of control of the seat held by longtime Senator Max Baucus before he was tapped to become the U.S. ambassador to China. Walsh’s appointment in February by Democratic Governor Steve Bullock gave Democrats faint hope that they could retain the seat, because Walsh’s credentials included service in the Montana National Guard and in Iraq.

The plagiarism accusations, first made by The New York Times, undercut that image; Walsh later apologized for any mistakes in attribution before dropping his election bid.

At Saturday’s convention, Rep. Amanda Curtis, state Senator David Wanzenried and rancher Dirk Adams will seek to replace him as the Democratic nominee. Curtis, a first-term state lawmaker from Butte, received the endorsement this week of MEA-MFT, Montana’s largest labor union, which represents teachers and state employees.

Polls leading up to Walsh’s exit from the race found him trailing U.S. Rep. Steve Daines, the Republican nominee.

“Steve Daines is one of the strongest candidates in the country, was well-positioned to defeat Sen. Walsh and is well-positioned to defeat whichever Band-Aid candidate Democrats select,” said Brad Dayspring, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Republicans need a net gain of six seats to take control of the Senate, and Montana was one of three states that they had been counting on. The other two are West Virginia and South Dakota, where Senators John D. Rockefeller IV and Tim Johnson are retiring.

“It’s always been clear that Democrats’ chances were slim here in Montana,” said David Parker, a political science professor at Montana State University. “This is a conservative state in a year where the GOP has national momentum leading up to November. Add in a candidate with little to no money and low name ID, it’s nearly impossible to retain this seat.”

Republicans also appear increasingly confident in Iowa, where the Democratic candidate, Rep. Bruce Braley, has stumbled repeatedly. But Democrats hope their incumbents in four other closely contested Senate races in North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas and Alaska can pull through.

Curtis said Tuesday she was “encouraged and optimistic” about replacing Walsh on the ballot. “We’ll work hard this week and look to secure the support at the convention. … From there, it’s onto November,” Curtis said.

Wanzenried, 65, has served in both the state House and Senate, and while speaking to the Billings Gazette on Monday, he said he’ll tout experience in state government as a selling point to delegates.

Adams, a former senior federal banking regulator who ran against Walsh in the three-way June Senate primary and captured just 13 percent of the vote, could self-fund his campaign, making him a lucrative choice, say some analysts.

A third candidate from the June primary, former Montana Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger, has not decided if he’ll seek out support from delegates at Saturday’s convention.

In an interesting twist, an online petition to nominate actor Jeff Bridges — a Montana resident who in the past has made campaign donations to Governor Bullock and the state party 00 gained traction over the weekend.

About 1,000 people signed the petition on Change.org.

In an interview on Howard Stern’s radio show Monday, Bridges said he was flattered by the petition. The Oscar-winning actor said he mentioned the idea to his wife.

“She looks at me and goes, ‘Don’t even think about it,'” Bridges said.

4 Other Politicians Who Have Been Caught Plagiarizing

4 Other Politicians Who Have Been Caught Plagiarizing

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

By the time they reach grade school, most students understand that plagiarism is unacceptable. But politicians seem to have a hard time remembering not to do it.

On Wednesday, TheNew York Timesreported that Senator John Walsh (D-MT) lifted at least a quarter of his War College thesis from other sources, without crediting them. His final paper, on American Middle East policy, had sections that were identical to other policy journals and academic papers.

His entire conclusion, which listed six recommendations for “The Case for Democracy as a Long-Term Strategy,” was copied from a Carnegie Endowment for National Peace document.

“In all, Mr. Walsh’s recommendations section runs to more than 800 words, nearly all of it taken verbatim from the Carnegie paper, without any footnote to it,” the Times reports.

At first, Walsh denied that he had plagiarized anything, saying, “I didn’t do anything intentional here.”

But later, Walsh said that he was on medication for PTSD when he was writing his paper, and suggested that it may have been a factor in his poor decision making.

This news won’t help Walsh, whose military record and foreign policy acumen were chief selling points in his Senate race against Republican Rep. Steve Daines. Walsh is already trailing by 12.5 percent, according to the Real Clear Politicspoll average.

But Walsh isn’t the only prominent politician who’s been caught plagiarizing. Here are four other political leaders who have come under scrutiny for their less-than-original work.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Paul, a possible 2016 presidential candidate, has had his fair share of plagiarism scandals. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow first pointed out that a 2013 speech referencing the film Gattaca was lifted directly from the movie’s Wikipedia page.

Then BuzzFeed reported that Paul had done the exact same thing in another speech, this time discussing the movie Stand and Deliver.

BuzzFeed also reported that Paul’s book, Government Bullies, borrowed from the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and a Forbes article without any attribution.

The Washington Times later canceled his column after it came out that he hadn’t attributed one of his passages to The Week.

And Politico also revealed that the senator’s response to President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address used similar language to an Associated Press report without citing it.

At first Paul defended himself, saying, “This is really about information and attacks coming from haters.”

But he eventually admitted that “I’m the boss, and things go out under my name, so it is my fault.”

Vice President Joe Biden

Photo: Abaca Press/MCT/Olivier Douliery

Photo: Abaca Press/MCT/Olivier Douliery

Biden may have been the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988 if he hadn’t started regularly using a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock without attribution.

Biden didn’t just use similar phrasing; he took actual biographical details from Kinnock’s life and tried to pass them off as his own. As it turns out, Biden wasn’t the first person in his family to attend college, and his ancestors weren’t coal miners.

Once the media started looking into Biden, they found that some of his speeches had also plagiarized Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and John F. Kennedy. Biden subsequently admitted that he had actually been busted for plagiarizing five pages of a term paper in law school.

Former Senator Scott Brown (R-MA)

Photo: Talk Radio News Service via Flickr

Photo: Talk Radio News Service via Flickr

In 2011, Democratic group American Bridge 21st Century noticed that a section of Brown’s campaign website was taken directly from former North Carolina senator Elizabeth Dole.

His message to students was exactly the same as Dole’s campaign kickoff speech from 2002, except that it was missing the first line introducing her.

Brown’s campaign claimed that Dole’s speech was only supposed to have been the basis for the education section of his website.

“Senator Dole’s website served as one of the models for Senator Brown’s website when he first took office. During construction of the site, the content on this particular page was inadvertently transferred without being rewritten,” spokesperson John Donnelly told the Boston Globe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin

AFP Photo/Maxim Shipenkov

AFP Photo/Maxim Shipenkov

Plagiarism might not seem like a big deal compared to everything else Putin’s done, but in 2006, Brookings Institution researchers accused the former KBG agent of stealing his economics dissertation from work done by University of Pittsburgh professors 20 years prior.

The researchers say that 16 of 20 pages of the dissertation’s opening are taken from the paper, “Strategic Planning and Policy.”

“It all boils down to plagiarism,” Brookings Institution’s Clifford G. Gaddy said. “Whether you’re talking about a college-level term paper, not to mention a formal dissertation, there’s no question in my mind that this would be plagiarism.”

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VoteVets Chair Jon Soltz: Critics Demanding Shinseki Resignation Are ‘Hypocrites’

VoteVets Chair Jon Soltz: Critics Demanding Shinseki Resignation Are ‘Hypocrites’

Jon Soltz is a co-founder and chairman of VoteVets, a political advocacy group with over 200,000 supporters that is the largest progressive organization of veterans in the United States – and has produced some of the most effective advertising in the last several election cycles. Soltz became a commissioned U.S. Army officer in 1999 after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh with a graduate degree in international affairs. For four years after graduation he was stationed in Germany, and was deployed as a tank platoon leader in Kosovo from June to December 2000. In the spring of 2003, Soltz deployed to Iraq, where he served as a captain commanding logistics convoys for the First Armored Division. He took a leave from Vote Vets in 2011 for another tour in Iraq, where he was among the last American soldiers to leave that country. He was recently promoted from major to lieutenant colonel. For a special Memorial Day interview, Joe Conason spoke with him about the troubles in the Veterans Administration and America’s commitment to those who serve.

Joe Conason: How bad are the problems at the VA?

Jon Soltz: The problems at the VA have always been there. At times they’ve been worse than others. I think part of the reason we’re seeing the backlog right now is that President Obama has opened up the claims process [in the VA health care system] to a lot of people. So he made it easier for a lot of people to make claims. Under previous administrations, you used to have to fight to make a claim if you were a Vietnam veteran affected by Agent Orange, or a Gulf War veteran with Gulf War syndrome. When you have a lot of veterans coming into the system and making claims, and you [already] had a million veterans who were uninsured looking to the VA to get health insurance now, I think there’s a lot of reasons for the backlog. The question is, did anybody die of it? And we don’t know yet – we have to wait and see how the investigation unfolds.

Conason: Have you known Iraq and Afghanistan vets who ended up on long waiting lists for VA care?

Soltz: Most of the people on the waiting lists are what we call secondary claims. They’re already in the system for care. What they’re waiting on is a disability claim. They may already be 50 percent for PTSD or 30 percent for a broken arm. They’re in the system and they can get their care. What they’re waiting on is an additional disability rating to get them more care. So most of the people who are on the waiting lists aren’t necessarily not being seen – they’re just waiting to see whether they will get more disability money from the government. I don’t know anybody personally who was on a wait list and not getting care.

Conason: Do you believe that General Eric Shinseki, the VA Secretary, should resign — as some veterans groups have demanded?

Soltz: The only veterans organization making that demand is the American Legion. Nobody else has, other than the American Legion. I find that hypocritical because they supported a bill that was in the Senate – the $21 billion veterans package sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) – and it was stopped by [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell (R-KY), yet they haven’t called for Mitch McConnell to resign. So there’s obviously a lot of partisan politics here. The issue with General Shinseki is [that] he was right about the Iraq War. It’s sort of unconscionable to fire somebody who is now trying to clean up the mess that was left by a prior administration: All of these new Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were not created by Barack Obama and his administration. When you look at the claims on the system and the role that has been played by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, I think it’s rather ironic that they’re calling for the head of General Shinseki, who has been a reformer at the VA, and has opened up the claims process to so many more veterans – I find that completely hypocritical.

Conason: What should the president and Congress do now to ensure that veterans are getting adequate health care?

Soltz: I think progressives need to look at the veterans health care system and say: “If we’re going to have public health care, it has to be the best health care system in the world.” If not, when it gets attacked, it’s bad for Medicare, it’s bad for Medicaid, it’s bad for all these other [public] systems. So the president has to look at the VA and say, “Is this the best medical care in the world? Is it underfunded? If not, what would it take to make this the shining light of health care in America? Because that’s what our veterans deserve….I think what you’ll see with General Shinseki is that he was holding people to a certain standard, to reduce the backlog — and there’s an argument that certain people cooked the books. If that happened, those people should be held accountable.…There’s a lot of people who want to shortchange the VA so they can prove that public health care doesn’t work and force these veterans to go to private insurers. For a lot of hardline conservatives, that’s the real agenda here.

Conason: What is the most important accomplishment of the Obama administration for veterans?

Soltz: That they’ve actually allowed people to make claims! That’s the point. There might be a backlog, but that’s because they’ve allowed people to make claims. How many veterans are now service-connected disabled because they’ve had the ability to make claims? That’s what’s created part of this backlog. A Vietnam veteran who has Type II diabetes or cancer [because of] exposure to Agent Orange now gets benefits because of this. A Gulf War Syndrome veteran who was exposed to all kinds of chemicals in burning oil fields now gets benefits because of this. They’ve made it easier to get a PTSD diagnosis. There’s all these benefits — opening up the system is a huge success.

Conason: What are your priorities in this congressional session and the midterm election?

Soltz:  Obviously getting veterans into office remains a big priority for us. John Walsh (D-MT) is in the Senate — the first time for an Iraq veteran who has served. Trying to get that $21 billion [VA and veterans assistance] package through the Senate would be the big goal between now and November, and we have to hold people accountable. The Senate is important: Number one is knocking out Mitch McConnell. As long as Mitch McConnell is going to prevent the passage of a comprehensive bill that is supported by 33 veterans’ organizations, I think he’s target number one. It starts with him. And then there’s a lot of battleground Senate races that are really important. A Republican-controlled Senate at this point means that veterans don’t get that [Sanders] bill. And there are interesting opportunities for veterans to run and win in districts where they could serve for a long time. In Arizona 7, there’s Ruben Gallegos; in California 33 Ted Lieu. Getting advocates in there and holding politicians accountable who have been blocking meaningful legislation are the two largest priorities for November.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons