Think I’ll Go Down To Drucker’s Kate

Yeah, been itching to do some serious Biden Bashing.

Plagiarism charge hits Biden climate change plan
By ZACK COLMAN and NATASHA KORECKI, Politico
06/04/2019

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign came under fire on Tuesday for putting out a $1.7 trillion climate change plan that appeared to copy a handful of passages from previously published documents.

The incident recalled the plagiarism incident that helped drive Biden from the 1988 presidential race, though Biden’s campaign team called the latest episode an error that was corrected.

“Several citations, some from sources cited in other parts of the plan, were inadvertently left out of the final version of the 22 page document,” a Biden spokesperson said in an email. “As soon as we were made aware of it, we updated to include the proper citations.”

Josh Nelson, vice president at the progressive group CREDO, first flagged the similarities on Twitter. The text contained the same language about technology designed to capture and store power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions as documents previously released by the nongovernmental organization Center for Climate and Energy Solutions as well as the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of environmental and labor groups.
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Charges of plagiarism plagued Biden’s presidential campaign in 1987, eventually leading to his dropping out of the race. At least part of that scandal erupted when Biden appeared to lift lines of a speech from British Labor leader Neil Kinnock. Des Moines-Register political reporter David Yepsen, who was among the reporters to receive an opposition research video tape at the time showing Biden’s remarks laid out beside Kinnock, recalled the scandal then, which he described as explosive.

“Someone on the campaign really screwed this up and it’s the kind of sideshow story he doesn’t need. It raises all these bad things out of the past,” Yepsen said Tuesday. “Everybody who is working for Joe Biden should understand this bit of our history and be particularly mindful of not making that same mistake again.”

Biden rolled out his climate policy on Tuesday after facing weeks of criticism from the Democratic Party’s left flank for reportedly considering a plan to strike a “middle ground” on the issue. It won praise from environmental groups who welcomed its call to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and ban oil and gas drilling on public lands. Biden also said he would reject campaign contributions from fossil fuel executives and corporations.

While scientists, including the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, envision a massive build out of carbon capture technology to meet ambitious climate targets, many in the progressive wing are skeptical of the technology. They see carbon capture as a way to extend the lifeline of coal, oil and natural gas and delay a transition to less-polluting forms of energy that don’t rely on extracting fuel.

Nelson told POLITICO the carbon capture section of Biden’s plan looked familiar. He said he’s spent the past several years advocating against coal-fired power.

“As soon as I read it, it did not sound like language that would come from a presidential campaign and it sounded more like something that could come from a coal industry trade group or a coal company directly,” Nelson said in a phone interview.

More on why I hate Joe “Barely a Democrat” Biden and the Democrats who love him.

Cody’s Showdy

Oh… you want “electable” because actual Democratic ideas are too scary.