The hits just keep on coming from Buzzfeed!
A section of Rand Paul’s 2012 book Government Bullies appears to be plagiarized from a Forbes article from earlier in that year. BuzzFeed had previously reported that more than three pages plagiarized from The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute were the only instances of copying in the book.
As was the case with cut-and-pasted sections from The Heritage Foundation and a Cato scholar, Paul included a link to the Forbes article in the book’s footnotes, but made no effort to indicate that not just the source, but the words themselves, had been taken from Forbes.
It appears that Senator not-Ayn Rand Paul thinks that "Government Bullying" extends to those bothersome copyright and intellectual property laws, which keep True Patriots from selling Liberty Books full of other people's thoughts.
Steve Singer, the Forbes author, like Cato and Heritage, had no idea that his words had been borrowed without proper attribution.
Bill Singer, the author of the Forbes article, said “no, absolutely not,” when asked if he knew the Senator used his work. He also noted that he relied heavily on a press release from the Justice Department. “It would appear whoever wrote the senator’s book copied my language not the press release. Plagiarism is a very sincere form of flattery,” he said.
"Whoever wrote the senator's book ...". Ouch. I guess Rand Paul needs to hire more honest ghostwriters to aid his efforts to appear to be a pseudo-intellectual lightweight.
It appears to me that Rand Paul is another entitled son of a rich successful man who thinks actual hard work is beneath him. He is no more one of Ayn Rand's "makers" than he is an avatar of Aqua Buddha. And yet, thousands of middle-class people think he speaks for them and stands for American Values, and buy the books he purports to author.
Nice avoidance of work if you can get it.
10:43 AM PT: Oh, and Senator Paul does not credit his ghostwriter: http://www.amazon.com/...
Worth noting: in this case, the stolen material is interleaved with Paul's (i.e., his ghostwriter's) words, so it CANNOT just be forgotten quotation marks; this is deliberate theft.