A Friend of Unfair Park last night begged us -- well, gently nudged, anyway -- to link to Dave Levinthal's kinda-like-wow revelation yesterday that mayoral candidate Darrell Jordan is a plagiarist. We just figured something that astounding would make the pages of Dallas' Only Daily this a.m.; yeah, not so much. Dunno why all the interesting City Hall pieces end up on the Metro blog, but this is a good one: Levinthal reveals that Jordan's so-called "Accountability Pledge & Plan of Action to Reduce Crime" bears a striking resemblance to a pledge proffered in 2006 by former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, a Colorado Republican who ran for that state's governorship and lost.
Wait, stealing from a loser? Yeah. That's not so promising.
And when Jordan isn't swiping from the Colorado pledge, he's lifting whole passages from a report from Kansas City's Commission on Violent Crime, presented in June 2006 to the Kansas City City Council. Levinthal notes Jordan's "Crime Reduction Plan" looks awfully familiar.
Anyway, Levinthal lays out there similarities and...well, we were going to say differences, but damned if we could find any. In some instances, the lifts are word for freakin' word. Hey, Jordan's plan to dome the Cotton Bowl was nutty to most, but at least it was original. As for the lifts, Jack Klaus, Mr. Jordan's campaign manager, tells Levinthal, hey, ya know, "If there are similarities, there are similarities... Just because you like a good idea that's out there doesn't make it plagiarism."
That's in-fucking-sane. --Robert Wilonsky
Update: WFAA-Channel 8's Chris Heinbaugh last night pointed out a third source from which Jordan lifted some of his ideas: "a 2003 Heritage Foundation article analyzing community oriented policing (COPS)."
