While the media reports that Mary Burke apparently borrowed her ideas from several different sources …

… it turns out someone is swiping her ideas, wherever those ideas came from.

(By the way: I came up with the headline last week, though it showed up on Facebook Saturday by two of my Facebook Friends.)

Breitbart reports on South Dakota Democratic gubernatorial candidate Susan Wismer:

BuzzFeed reported Thursday that Susan Wismer, the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nominee in South Dakota, has been caught plagiarizing from the already plagiarized jobs plan of the party’s Wisconsin gubernatorial nominee, Mary Burke. Wismer also plagiarized from the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nominee in Texas, Wendy Davis.

Until this plagiarism of a plagiarized plan story broke on Thursday, Wismer liked to point out the similarities between herself and Burke of Wisconsin.

On her campaign website, for instance, the lead story in her news section cites an article published in the Washington Post last month, which reported that “Mary Burke made Wisconsin history Tuesday. She and South Dakota’s Susan Wismer — both of them Democrats — this year became the first women since 1970 and likely ever to secure a major-party nomination for governor in their respective states, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.” …

The instances of plagiarism first identified by BuzzFeed on Thursday (shown below) are numerous and blatant:

Mary Burke’s Jobs Plan:

She knows how to make responsible decisions that keep a balance sheet in the black while creating jobs because she’s spent her career doing it. Scott Walker has taken a different approach. Despite making historic cuts to education, he’s turned a projected budget surplus into a deficit, and state spending has shot up by $4.6 billion.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

As an accountant, Susan knows how to make responsible decisions that keep a balance sheet in the black while creating jobs because she’s spent her career doing it. This governor has taken a different approach. After making historic cuts, he took a $127 million dollar budget surplus and padded his reserves rather than giving back what was cut to areas desperate for funding.

Mary Burke’s Jobs Plan

Mary believes Wisconsin schools should be among the best in the nation—and she knows that making historic cuts isn’t the way to do it. She’ll work every day to strengthen our public education system, from K-12 to our technical colleges and university system.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

Susan believes South Dakota schools should be among the best in the nation and making historic cuts isn’t the way to do it. Susan will work every day to strengthen our public education system– from K-12 to our technical colleges and university system.

Wendy Davis’ Campaign Document:

Wendy Davis will build a well-trained workforce of teachers by engineering guaranteed pathways to careers in education and ensure ongoing support by raising teacher pay to be in line with the rest of the country.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

Susan will build a well-trained workforce of educators and ensure ongoing support for them by raising salaries to be on par with the rest of the country.

Wendy Davis’ Campaign Document:

When responsibly invested, economic development funds can help bring new businesses and jobs into the state, promote innovation, and encourage technological advancements. But under the wrong leadership and without accountability, too often they become giveaways to special interests and insiders that drain valuable resources from essential investments like our schools and increase taxes on working Texas families.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document

Susan knows that the best businesses for communities are usually local businesses. When responsibly invested, economic development funds can help create new businesses and jobs, promote innovation, and encourage technological advancements. However, under the wrong leadership and without accountability, too often they become giveaways to special interests, corporations, and insiders that drain valuable resources from essential investments.

Wendy Davis’ Campaign Document:

As Governor, Wendy Davis will:

Promote transparency, accountability, and responsible investment of economic development funds to ensure they actually create jobs, as well as encourage innovation and development that benefits all Texans.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

As governor, Susan will promote transparency, accountability, and responsible investment of economic development funds to ensure they actually create jobs and encourage innovation and development that benefits all South Dakotans. She will establish strong, independent oversight of our incentive funds. Susan will ensure transparency and accountability of tax exemptions.

Mary Burke’s Jobs Plan:

The Walker administration has taken a different approach. Rejecting hundreds of millions of our own federal tax dollars means our money goes to cover health care in other states, and leaves us paying more as a state to cover fewer hard working Wisconsinites. It’s an example of what happens when you put politics ahead of progress. And it’s just wrong.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document

The Daugaard administration has rejected hundreds of millions of our own federal tax dollars, money that is covering healthcare in other states, and leaves us paying more to cover fewer hard-working South Dakotans. It’s an example of what happens when you put politics ahead of progress.

Mary Burke’s Jobs Plan:

Mary will overturn the current administration’s refusal to accept the federal expansion of Medicaid, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer money back home to our state, where it belongs.

Susan Wismer’s Campaign Document:

Susan will overturn the current administration’s refusal to accept the federal expansion of Medicaid, bringing over $272 million of our taxpayer money back to South Dakota, while providing 48,000 South Dakotans with access to affordable, preventative health care.

Breitbart News requested a comment from the Wismer campaign but has not received a response.

There have been no reports yet that any other Democratic gubernatorial candidates have plagiarized Wismer’s plagiarization of Burke’s plagiarized plan. But with another 40 days still left until election day, it is still too early to discount the possibility of a third generation of campaign document plagiarization among Democrats this cycle.

It’s getting to the point that a diagram will be needed to connect who swiped which ideas from whom. One also wonders how many incorrect facts are in Wismer’s plan, such as the inaccurate claim about job growth in small business since the Recovery In Name Only began.

Of course, as I’ve pointed out ever since this hit the interwebs, the big issue here is much less about stolen ideas (though it speaks to Burke’s personal character) as it is the quality, or lack thereof, of those ideas. Advocating policies that will chop 120,000 jobs from the state doesn’t qualify under any sane person’s definition of “best practices.”

About those ideas, the Club for Growth observes:

On hearing Friday’s news that Mary Burke’s job-creation plan was plagiarized from other Democrats running for governor, in Delaware, Tennessee, and elsewhere we thought, well…there are think tanks whose business is to share such ideas.

But Burke reacted less calmly, firing the consultant responsible for the cut-and-paste job. Why? For duping her into thinking she had a jobs plan?

More intriguing than Burke snatching ideas that may be interchangeable among Democrats is her apparently scant familiarity with what she is proposing.  The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel quoted her saying “This is my plan on how to drive Wisconsin’s economy forward,” later adding that she had made it “the centerpiece” of her campaign—begging the question of why she wouldn’t recognize material that wasn’t her own. The lingering impression is that the content doesn’t matter, least of all to Burke.

So what does matter in this singularly odd campaign?

A jobs plan outsourced because there had to be one; a resume mixing employment by a company her family owns with periods of prolonged unemployment and activity Burke strains to define.  A privileged baby-boomer in a candidacy disconnected from achievement, based solely on Mary Burke not being Scott Walker.  That. Is. All.

As Jim Doyle’s Commerce Secretary, effectively his chief job-creation officer, didn’t Burke have ideas of her own?  Dare we ask how they worked out? Weekend stories detailed more plagiarism that couldn’t have involved the fired consultant. Has Burke no agenda she can safely reveal?

If anything about the Democrats’ handpicked nominee seems familiar, seems to resonate with current realities in America, it’s the apparent detachment from the necessities of governing. A vaporous, unfocused figure glimpsed occasionally through swirling mists, the anti-Walker, nothing more.

Indeed much of Burke’s plan was copied, but not just from other campaigns.  Burke also plagiarized copyrighted material.  Her jobs plan, “Invest for Success”, directly copied material from “Manufacturing’s Secret Shift”, a study copyrighted in 2011 by Accenture, one of the world’s largest consulting firms.

Take a look at these two passages, the first from Accenture, the second Burke’s.

“Companies are beginning to realize that having offshored much of their manufacturing and supply operations away from their demand locations, they hurt their ability to meet their customers’ expectations…” 

“But today, many companies are beginning to realize that moving their manufacturing and supply operations overseas has hurt their ability to serve their customers.”

This is sometimes referred to as mosaic plagiarism, the splicing of key phrases with only minor changes within the same sentence structure and meaning.  A Harvard grad like Burke might know this.  The rest of us can Google “Harvard mosaic plagiarism.” That Burke plagiarized copyrighted material is beyond doubt, but there is more.

Mary Burke might “take the time to read the whole” Accenture study she was plagiarizing. It might help her understand why her proposals for Wisconsin are so misguided.  Accenture asked manufacturers to identify the most important factors in selecting locations for their operations.  Respondents ranked as most important these factors: labor costs, proximity to the customer, skills of workforce, taxes, transportation costs, and government regulations.

Wisconsin must be more competitive in attracting and keeping manufacturing in our state. We need to improve the skills of our workers, reduce taxes and streamline regulations. Mary Burke’s mistake is much bigger than plagiarism. Burke is advocating failed liberal ideas that would move us in the wrong direction on labor costs, taxes and regulations.