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Jenny EriksonRacism is awful. The discrimination that blacks endured for centuries was deplorable. The slavery, the segregation, and the hate crimes: all bad, bad, bad. A small amount of racial discrimination even exists today, a fact that should sadden the heart of every freedom-loving American.
In 1996, a small group of black farmers filed claims that they had been discriminated against on the basis of race by the USDA. Then-Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman set in motion Civil Rights Action Teams to look into the matter. They found that 205 of the 116,261 loan and crop payments issued by the USDA’s Farm Service Agency had triggered complaints of racial discrimination.
A farmer named Timothy Pigford filed a claim against the government for reparations. Many more joined the suit, and eventually it became a class-action lawsuit simply referred to as "Pigford."
Due to lots of legalize and governmental restrictions, exemptions, and waivers, the settlement case for these farmers bounced back and forth for years. As publicity for the lawsuit grew, more and more people applied for a payout from the blanket settlement.
2004 finally saw the last of the reparation payments issued. We’ll never know the exact amount paid out to the thousands of farmers claiming racial discrimination because the judge sealed the documents, but estimates are in the billion-dollar range.
In 2007, then-Senator Obama decided to reopen the case. There had been a deadline for black farmers to file their claims in the original case, and the 70,000 or so people that had missed the cutoff should be allowed to receive a settlement too.
All said and done, over 94,000 black farmers filed a claim in the Pigford cases. Census data shows that there are only about 33,000 black farmers in the United States. Those numbers reek of fraudulent claims, but instead of investigating the claimants, President Obama announced a plan to “rectify the perceived injustice of excluding those late filers by doling out $1.25 billion to the over 70,000 late applicants who claimed discrimination on the part of the USDA.”
On Wednesday, Obama signed into law H.R. 4783, which provides $1.15 billion in compensation for the plaintiffs in the Pigford II case. Even if every single black farmer in America had been discriminated against (a highly unlikely story in itself), there should not be more than 33,000 claims, yet there were over 94,000. Math can be hard, but it’s not that hard.
The farmers that were actually discriminated against are unhappy at being taken advantage of by their black brothers and sisters. One of them has even blown the whistle that the FBI is aware that the vast majority of the claims filed were fraudulent.
After all this, the President accused Republicans of holding the middle-class taxpayers hostage by not agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy. Maybe we wouldn’t need additional income from taxpayers if our government didn’t approve scams like the Pigford settlement.
Just a thought.
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Comments (9)
So much wasted money by our government. It's sickening.
I found it ironic when the gov't 'lectured' us on how we have all been spending money we don't have, buying houses we couldn't afford, blah, blah blah - we are all part of the problem (NO we are not ALL part of the problem - but that's another topic). And yet that is exactly how our government spends. Spend money we don't have, budget beyond what we have, and oh, lets do this too! Then you add all the fraudelent stuff on top of it - it's disgusting.
Fraud? Please. Get a grip.
Wow Punditmom what an excellent rebuttle! Since you scoffed at the possiblity that it could be fraud then it most certainly can't be- good to know. You know what I would love? If you would actually provide your viewpoint why it ISN'T fraud. You seem so confident, so obviously it shouldn't be so hard to expand upon. And those who think that the OP makes a compelling argument may be interested in hearing the other side of things.
"A small amount of racial discrimination even exists today, a fact that should sadden the heart of every freedom-loving American." You lost all credibility in the first paragraph and it just went downhill from there. A small amount? Really? I find this comment extremely offensive and comparable to a man telling a group of working women that despite the documented wage gap, things are all good and peachy and they should stop complaining.
Letting non permanent tax cuts expire is not the same thing as RAISING taxes. And if said tax breaks really operated within our economy the way in which they were intended we wouldn't be in the midst of a recession AND be experiencing the largest income gap in our population since the 1920s. Trickle down economics have been shown time and time again to be a flawed economic concept. The fraud being described in this case is unacceptable but let's not try and paint it as some isolated incident. America has become a country obsessed with unnecessary litigation and greed and many many people of all races and ethnicity's have abandoned morality in favor of personal gain. Bank bailouts, and mortgage fraud, and a endless dollars for unnecessary wars, and increasing rates of hunger and homelessness, and earmarks, and political corruption and THIS is what you're focusing on?
PunditMom... let's examine an example of fraud so that you might be able to understand.
Let's say that CafeMom hired a new editor and they decided that there was an overwhelming display of leftist-viewpoints on The Stir and thought it best to limit the number of blogs posted from bloggers with that frame of mind. As with most blog-work, I would assume you're paid by the pieces you submit and that are posted. Not posted, no money for you.
Well, the bloggers realize what is going on and feel that it is unfair that their work is being denied solely based upon their political leanings... and they go up the chain of command to the new editor's boss to complain. The boss finds that, yes- they were being discriminated upon based upon their political mindset and that yes- it wasn't fair.
Cafemom decides to right these wrongs and tells the writers to re-submit the denied works and they will be compesated for them. Yay! However, when all is said and done... three bloggers had been unfairly treated. Three bloggers were not paid. BUT 7 bloggers submitted their works and were compesated for their work.
That means that 4 of those bloggers were NOT being discriminated against. Either their work was released that week (and thus paid for) or perhaps they didn't have anything to submit that week. Either way, THEY WERE NOT justified in reciving the compesation of loss. They were bad, they lied... they commited fraud.
If what Jenny is saying is correct... those people that WERE NOT discrimitated against because of their skin color and filed a claim- commited fraud. They lied. For whatever reason- they lied. That is a bad thing... Just like the pretend blogger did.
Sadly, sometimes we let our minds become clouded just because we disagree with another person's political mindset... it's sad- because we miss out on so many opportunities to fix what is wrong in our country.