Jesse White – 1/10/12

This page was last updated on January 12, 2012.

Op-Ed: New Teen Driving Laws Now in Effect; State Rep. Jesse White (D-46); Beaver Countian; January 10, 2012.

Mr. White lost in Beaver County in both 2006 and 2010. On Facebook, Mr. White describes his “Political Views” as “Moderate.” Sure. “Moderate,” “centrist,” etc. are leftyspeak for “liberal,” “progressive,” and other leftisms. On his campaign website, Mr. White describes his “style” as “fiery and aggressive.” According to his biography on his official website, Mr. White “operates his own law practice, White & Associates.” Despite the name, White & Associates appears to be a “one-man band.” Mr. White’s biography also indicates “He worked … in the legal department for the United Steelworkers of America in Pittsburgh.” Mr. White was convicted of defamation and invasion of privacy in April 2011.

Previous White pieces I critiqued are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Mr. White sometimes spams his opinion so you may find his pieces on his campaign website, the Beaver Countian, and/or Canon-MacMillan Patch.

If you go to the PennDOT website and click on “New Teen Driver Law” under “News and Media,” you will find approximately two-thirds of Mr. White’s piece was cut-and-pasted from PennDOT’s “Act 81 of 2011 FACT SHEET.” That would be OK except the piece doesn’t indicate what was lifted (no quotation marks around the relevant passages) or even cite the PennDOT fact sheet as the word-for-word source for most of article. Since Mr. White and his publisher, John “citizen journalist” Paul, appeared to present the subject piece as original work, does that make Messrs. White and Paul guilty of plagiarism?

In a portion of his piece not lifted from PennDOT, Mr. White told us “Act 81 of 2011, [is] a law [he] helped to pass in October” but doesn’t tell us how he “helped.” Mr. White voted for House Bill 9 (Act 81), as did 229 other representatives and senators (out of 253), but how else did he allegedly help? Mr. White is not listed as one of the approximately 60 sponsors of Act 81. The only Google hit I got linking Mr. White with Act 81 was this piece which also appeared on Canon-MacMillan Patch. I suppose it’s possible Mr. White worked incognito to get the bill passed, but he doesn’t strike me as a politician who doesn’t toot his horn when he thinks he can.

If you think this “critique” is petty, you’re probably right. Here’s the back story. Back in August 2011, I published a critique of “Op-Ed: Who Exactly Are They Pledging Allegiance To?” and Messrs. White and Paul didn’t like it. Unwilling (or unable) to attack the critique on the issues, Mr. Paul accused me of “stealing content” and snottily (technical jargon <g>) wrote he was “beginning to sense a teaching opportunity.” There was “a teaching opportunity,” but it didn’t appear to go the way Mr. Paul hoped. You can see most of the comment trail on my Facebook wall. Whatever his reasons, Mr. Paul scrubbed all comments – which included at least one by Mr. White - from the Beaver Countian website and its Facebook wall. You can learn a little more in my critique of “Editorial: Time Spent With Tony Amadio and Joe Spanik.” Jump ahead to January 2012 and we have Messrs. Paul and White publishing a piece whose factual content was mostly cut-and-pasted from PennDOT without attribution/citation. At the tail end the piece eventually mentions the PennDOT website, but only as a place where “You can find more information on the new teen driver law and Pennsylvania’s requirements for teen drivers,” not the word-for-word source for most of the article. To be clear, I doubt Messrs. Paul and White’s actions were illegal. I just viewed this piece as “a teaching opportunity.” <g>

While I’m being petty, someone should tell Mr. Paul no part of Chapel Road is in the municipality of Monaca, and the portion “just before Todd Lane” in either direction isn’t even close. The vast majority of Chapel Road is in Center Township, with very small sections in Aliquippa and Hopewell Township. So much for fact-checking sources. In fairness, though, that portion of Center has a Monaca mailing address.