Mary Burke made news last week, and not news of the good kind for a political candidate.

If Burke’s jobs plan seems familiar, there’s a good reason, M.D. Kittle reports:

Buzzfeed, which has had its own PR black eyes with plagiarism, reported late Thursday that Burke’s plan, “Invest for Success” pilfers entire passages from the jobs plans laid out by Delaware Democratic Gov. Jack Markell in 2008, and Democratic gubernatorial candidates Ward Cammack of Tennessee in 2009 and John Gregg of Indiana in 2012.

A spokesman for the Burke campaign told BuzzFeed News an “expert” named Eric Schnurer, “who also worked on the other campaigns(,) as responsible for the similar text, a case of self-plagiarism.” Schnurer is founder and president of Philadelphia-based consulting firm Public Works.

Burke campaign spokesman Joe Zepecki told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Schnurer was let go as soon the camp was made aware of the BuzzFeed report.

Zepecki defended the swiping, telling the newspaper the sections represented “fewer than 10 paragraphs of a 49-page plan.” …

BuzzFeed cited several passages in Burke’s plan pulled nearly verbatim from the work of others, including:

Ward Cammack’s plan:

Expanding intern programs to provide help to small farmers and also give students direct agricultural education and experience.

And here’s Burke:

Expanding intern programs to provide help to small farmers and also give students direct agricultural education and experience.

Here’s Gregg:

At the same time, small-and medium-sized businesses have been hiring new employees at a faster rate than large companies since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2009.

And here’s Burke:

And in the short-term, small-and medium-sized businesses have been hiring new employees at a faster rate than large companies since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2009.

You can read all of Cammack’s plan here … if you have nothing better to do.

This is one of the things that as someone with a degree in political science (for what that’s worth) and in journalism (for what that’s worth), I just shake my head. It is just lazy for Schnurer to copy and paste his own work instead of rewriting it, particularly in an era in which your own previous work is probably somewhere on the World Wide Web. This certainly doesn’t reflect well on the Burke campaign either, because someone working for the campaign evidently didn’t vet Schnurer enough, as demonstrated by Schnurer’s firing for the offense of publicly embarrassing his employer.

The next thing that comes to mind is that only one of the three Democrats got elected with this plan, whoever belonged to it first, and him in a generally Democratic state. Since the first goal of politics is to get elected, this document is one for three on that test, which is good in baseball and volleyball hitting and nowhere else.

This is more a case of intellectual laziness on the part of Burke (who, remember, derided Scott Walker’s 2010 economic plan as appearing to have been written by an eighth-grader) than plagiarism, even though if you put your name on it, it’s your work whether or not you actually did the work. (Which I suppose makes Burke an accessory to self-plagiarism, or something.) Wisconsin is neither Indiana nor Tennessee nor Delaware. Apparently Burke, or Burke’s campaign, could not be bothered to create a Wisconsin-centric document, which makes you question how serious Burke is about being governor. (Which is, of course, different from getting elected governor.)

BuzzFeed reports that that’s not the only instance of Burke’s borrowed work:

In Mary Burke’s Invest in our Rural Communities  plan:

Here’s a Council Of State Governments report from 2003:

At a time when U.S. manufacturing employment is generally on the decline, the production of wind equipment is one of the few potentially large sources of new manufacturing jobs on the horizon.

And here’s Burke:

While manufacturing employment in general has been declining for years, the production of wind equipment is one of the few potentially large sources of new manufacturing jobs.

In Mary Burke’s recent Plan for Wisconsin Veterans:

Here’s a 2013 Dunn County News column:

The opposition argued that the bill would impose additional burdens on those that were injured — and in some cases plaintiffs could die before their cases made it through the lengthened court process.

And here’s Burke:

This places additional burdens on those who were injured and in some cases plaintiffs could die before their cases make it through the lengthened court process.

Here’s the Wisconsin Food Cooperative’s website:

The WFHC helps local farmers by providing them with the opportunity, through marketing, sales, aggregation, and logistics, to access wholesale markets they could not access easily before.

And here’s Burke:

Promoting the replication of Food Hubs for helping small farmers get their produce to retail markets, profitably. The Food Hub model, exemplified by the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative (WFHC), helps local farmers – through marketing, sales, aggregation, and logistics – to access wholesale markets.

Here’s the National Rural Health Institute:

Although only one-third of all motor vehicle accidents occur in rural areas, two-thirds of the deaths attributed to these accidents occur on rural roads.

And here’s Burke:

And although only one-third of motor vehicle accidents occur in rural areas, two-thirds of automobile fatalities occur on rural roads.

Here’s the Journal of Extension on incubator farms:

An incubator farm is typically a place where people are given temporary, exclusive, and affordable access to small parcels of land and infrastructure, and often training, for the purpose of honing skills and launching farm businesses.

And here’s Burke:

An incubator farm, like other entrepreneurial incubators, is a place where aspiring farmers can have temporary affordable access to small parcels of land and infrastructure, training, practice, and mentorship for the purpose of honing skills and launching farm businesses.

The plagiarism, if that’s what you want to call it, is actually the least of the issues here. No one is concerned when good ideas are borrowed from someone else. Did Bill Clinton plagiarize from Tommy Thompson when Clinton came up with federal welfare reform? Who cares? Welfare reform was something whose time was long overdue. When Ronald Reagan proposed income tax cuts when he was running for president, I doubt Arthur Laffer cared whether or not Reagan gave him credit. Are all of the Democrats running on increasing the minimum wage guilty of plagiarism from whoever thought of it first?

Wisconsin lefties have been complaining for years about the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Gaia forbid if one of their ideas ever ends up in a bill in the Legislature. A good idea — for instance, fiscal responsibility, a big ALEC issue — stands up regardless of whether it’s an original idea or not. (More on that later.)

Since perception is reality in politics, Jerry Bader notes how this hurts Burke:

In my formative years in talk radio someone once taught me: “don’t answer questions people aren’t asking.” That’s a radio consultant’s clever way of saying be relevant with your topics. In politics the strategy of answering questions people aren’t asking is often employed to avoid answering the questions people are asking. It’s the politician’s equivalent of the magician’s sleight of hand; get the audience to watch one hand so they won’t notice what the other hand is doing. With the media playing the role of her lovely assistant, gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke is attempting to pull off such a trick. …

All of this is decidedly answering a question no one is asking. Burke isn’t under fire because Schnurer “plagiarized himself.” She’s under fire for passing off his ideas as her own. With Governor Scott Walker falling short on his pledge of 250,000 jobs created in his first term, Burke unveiled the plan in an effort to establish her economic gravitas. And as noted above, there was little uncertainty at the time that this was being presented as Mary Burke’s plan, created by her based on her Ivy League education and personal business experience. We now know that’s not true. Yet Burke isn’t speaking to that point and the media isn’t pressing her to answer a question people are indeed asking. …

Yet, in this case, Burke is the hapless victim of an unscrupulous consultant. When they called the plan “thoughtful and substantial” back in March, was there any doubt the JS was lauding what it believed to be Burke’s thoughts and substance? This is a case of plagiarism, but not on Eric Schnurer’s part. Burke passed off his ideas as her own when she unveiled this plan. Of course, given that most of the ideas are well established liberal pabulum (full disclosure: The Weekly Standard called them that before I did) we should have known they weren’t Burke’s original thought. That might be her most honest possible defense of all.

Beyond its lack of originality, Burke’s, or Schnurer’s, plan needed an editor and a proofreader because, Tom Blumer reports:

The real problem with Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke’s “jobs plan” … isn’t its plagiarized material. It’s the content. The presence of certain obviously wrong facts and patently pathetic assertions indicates that Ms. Burke, a successful entrepreneur who one would think should have known better, hardly scrutinized her plan at all before allowing its publication. …

Burke’s plan claims that “small-and medium-sized businesses have been hiring new employees at a faster rate than large companies since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2009.”

Bloomberg reported in January 2013 that “Payrolls at firms with fewer than 500 employees accounted for less than 50 percent of the total workforce for the first time in 2008 during the recession and have barely recovered.”

In March of 2013, Joel Kotkin at Forbes wrote:

… small business is still in recession. The number of startup jobs per 1,000 Americans over the past four years fell a full 30% below the levels of the Bush and Clinton eras…. a recent Brookings study reveals … (that) larger businesses came out of the recovery stronger, not their beleaguered smaller counterparts.

Burke’s material here in this regard isn’t just plagiarized; it’s dated boilerplate. The statement about small business was predominantly true for decades before the most recent recession; since then, it has not been. This tells me that Burke and her team didn’t really vet the material they were presented, not only for originality but for simple accuracy.

Another claim copied verbatim was made in plagiarized materials about other states in previous years:

Our university and college systems have made great progress in aligning requirements for course work to make transferring credits easier.

Given the plagiarism, it would seem fair to assert that even if this statement is true, it’s only by accident, and not the result of any specific research into Badger State higher education practices.

Going to the detailed jobs plan, even the most basic claims Burke makes don’t hold up, like this one:

When I served as Wisconsin’s Commerce Secretary, Wisconsin had 72,000 more jobs than it does now, based on the latest data.

The plan specifically refers to the following table at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and is as of roughly February of this year:

There is no point in time during Burke’s 2005-2007 tenure when Wisconsin’s statewide employment was 72,000 jobs higher than at the right end of the graph. The largest difference is roughly 55,000.

Burke also claimed, as if we’re supposed to be impressed, that:

The state’s annual average unemployment rate was never higher than 4.8% when I was Commerce Secretary – but unemployment has never been below 6.1% under the current Administration.

At the time it was written, the state’s February seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was 0.6 points below the national average. Its August rate of 5.6 percent was a half-point lower. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate of 4.8 percent in February of 2005 was 0.6 points below the nation’s 5.4 percent. In October 2007, the last full month of Burke’s tenure as the State’s Secretary of Commerce, the state’s unemployment rate of 4.7 percent was the same as the rest of the nation. Compared to the U.S. as a whole, Wisconsin squandered its lead under Burke, but has stayed ahead under Governor Scott Walker. Wisconsin’s current unadjusted unemployment rate is only 5.1 percent, which under the left’s “new normal” definition, is actually below, i.e., better than, full employment, which they now define as 5.5 percent unemployment.

I could go on, but I don’t need to. Readers can see that plagiarism is the least of the problems with Mary Burke’s jobs plan. Basic accuracy is its primary shortcoming.

The better question is whether or not Burke’s plan (or whoever wants to take ownership of the plan) would actually create jobs. Collin Roth gives four reasons the exact opposite would happen:

1.) The Minimum Wage – Mary Burke supports the nationwide initiative to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. Burke has said, “I think increasing the minimum wage leads to people being able to support themselves and their families, and we can do it in a way that’s not going to hurt job creation.”

But according to a study by Dr. David MacPherson of Trinity University commissioned by the Wisconsin Restaurant Association (WRA), hiking the minimum wage to $10.10 could cost as many as 16,500 jobs in Wisconsin. The WRA study finds that “increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 would eliminate 16,500 jobs—over half of which are jobs held by women. The bulk of the job losses would be concentrated among individuals with a high school degree or less, and among people who work in the retail or leisure & hospitality industries.”

2.) The Northern Wisconsin Mine – Mary Burke was made it very clear that she opposes the GTac mine and if elected would work to put a stop to it. “I’m against that mine,” Burke told a Madison radio show in 2013.

The GTac mine is a $1.5 billion investment in Northern Wisconsin and is anticipated to support 3,175 jobs during the two year construction phase. Once constructed, the mine would create around 700 jobs at the mine while supporting 2,834 jobs in the 12 county region surrounding the mine.

3.) Obamacare – Mary Burke has made expanding Obamacare in Wisconsin a centerpiece of her campaign. In 2008, Burke campaigned for President Obama and touted his healthcare reform. An MSNBC interview said “Burke is an unequivocal supporter of the Affordable Care Act.”

But once again, studies have revealed that the Affordable Care Act is, and will, take a toll on the Wisconsin economy. A recent study from the American Action Fund found that Obamacare has already cost 4,239 jobs at small businesses in Wisconsin. And when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected the ACA could result in 2.5 million job losses by 2024, Americans for Tax Reform broke that down into each state. ATR projects that Wisconsin could lose 51,633 jobs.

4.) EPA Regulations – In an interview with Politico, Mary Burke was given the opportunity to explain any policy or position that she might disagree with President Obama. After a 12 second pause, Burke took the life preserver from her aide and said trade issues.

President Obama’s new EPA regulations are anticipated to be nothing short of a bomb dropped on the Wisconsin economy. A study from the Heritage Foundation found that Wisconsin could lose 11,702 jobs by 2023 due to the EPA regulations on carbon emissions. In addition, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) found that new ozone standards being pushed by the EPA could be the costliest regulation in history. In Wisconsin, the new ozone standards would result in 52,031 lost jobs or job equivalents.

Burke’s positions on these four issues prove that Burke really knows nothing about Wisconsin business beyond her family’s own business. Whether or not someone gets a business degree, someone in business at some point learns that things that increase expenses (wage increases not based on improving the business, ObamaCare) are bad for business, which mean they’re bad for employees.

Someone probably should tell Burke that the three biggest business sectors in Wisconsin are manufacturing, agriculture and tourism. If Burke knew that, she might realize, or someone might be able to get her to understand, that the EPA’s dumping 52,000 Wisconsin manufacturing jobs would be bad for Wisconsin. And then maybe someone could get Burke to understand that a higher minimum wage’s dumping 16,500 jobs in one part of tourism would also be bad for Wisconsin. And then maybe someone could get Burke to understand that ObamaCare’s trashing 51,000 jobs across every sector of Wisconsin business would also be bad for Wisconsin.

You need not use Invest for Success in Delaware/Indiana/Tennessee/Wisconsin as evidence that Burke is not serious about being governor. Burke’s positions on her supposed strength, business, prove that she’s not a serious candidate for governor. Mitch Henck wrote in the Wisconsin State Journal Sunday that Burke “has to convince voters she’s a pro-business Democrat …” when the only correct word in that phrase is “Democrat.”