Big Government Turns Up Heat On Pigford Scam
Tomorrow, President Obama will sign a bill providing $1.15 billion in funding for the Pigford II settlement, which would provide $50,000 payments for tens of thousands of claimants in a discrimination case involving the U.S. Department of Agriculture and black farmers. The settlement funding has all the hallmarks of a massive fraud perpetrated on the American taxpayer, given that the current tally of 94,000 claimants is five times the size of the estimated 18,000 total black farmers existing at the time of the alleged discrimination.
To date, the Pigford case has not become a major national scandal despite its having come near the surface during the Shirley Sherrod kerfuffle. But the originator of the controversy surrounding Sherrod and her firing, Andrew Breitbart, has seized upon Pigford and is ramping up a series of exposes on what seems destined to provoke an outrage.
Breitbart has a substantial piece up at BigGovernment.com today, detailing his involvement in the Shirley Sherrod case and pointing out that the introduction of the video containing her story of initially refusing to help a white farmer for racial reasons wasn’t meant to provoke her firing or brand her a racist. Instead, Breitbart’s point was to show that the NAACP audience’s reaction to the story, which could be described as gleeful when she discussed her inclinations to refuse the white farmer, paint that organization as every bit as racist as it accuses the Tea Party of being.
But more than that, Breitbart notes that it wasn’t the NAACP tape which lay underneath Sherrod’s firing. Rather, it was Pigford. And the more BigGovernment.com investigated that case, the more it became obvious what an enormous scam is being perpetrated.
I started to research Pigford and the more we looked into it, the more I realized that this was not a story that could be researched and told quickly. In fact, it was still unfolding. And even now, it still is.
This coming Wednesday, President Obama is slated to sign the Pigford II settlement.
But that will not be the end of the story. The American people deserve a full investigation and accounting.
Today, we’re releasing a report called “The Pigford Shakedown: How the Black Farmers’ Cause Was Hijacked by Politicians, Trial Lawyers & Community Organizers — Leaving Us With a Billion Dollar Tab.”
What have we discovered about Pigford so far?
Treasure troves of information from Lexis and Google. USDA whistleblowers. A former FBI agent who was on the verge of indictments. One of the originally discriminated-against black farmers with the goods. All these people paint a very clear picture of widespread fraud, and can testify to a complex web of bad players, including politicians, trial attorneys and community organizers.
I stumbled on the Pigford story in my defense of the Tea Party, so it’s a sweet irony that the Pigford story is exactly the kind of mess that makes the Tea Party so necessary. Politicians and trial attorneys bonded together to rip off the taxpayer, and even those farmers that were discriminated against were royally screwed.
Let me be clear, our investigation convincingly leads us to believe the USDA practiced discrimination against black farmers. Those wrongs must be rectified. But Pigford is wrought with a grotesque amount of fraud, while the truly aggrieved were mostly left high and dry.
The Pigford tale is about government run amok. It is also an indictment of the American media that is so blinded by ideology that it missed the big story yet again because taking out a political enemy was far more expedient. And furthermore it is why the American people need the Tea Party and new media as a checks and balances on corrupt politicians and their corrupt journalist counterparts.
Today will be the first of many days that BigGoverment.com will release information, testimony and documents to make the case that, at the very least, the American taxpayer (and ESPECIALLY those legitimately discriminated-against black farmers) need a full accounting of the Pigford I and II settlements.
I don’t know how your “investigation” led you to believe that USDA discriminated against black farmers. I worked there for over 26 years and never saw one instance of it. I did see a lot of dishonest people collect $50,000 just because they were black. USDA “discriminated” against blacks so bad that if we had a farm in inventory the “socially disadvantaged” (blacks) had first option at buying the property.
The investigative piece Big Government did on Pigford concluded that there was indeed discrimination. But the actual number of black farmers affected in the case was 1,000 to 4,000. We are far beyond that number and have been for well over a decade. This is, as Rep. King said, a back-door slavery reparations program.
Why should anyone be surprised?
[...] While I still feel Breitbart’s release of the now infamous tape was inappropriately framed, there is no question the NAACP audience in that room reveled in the “his own kind” comment. But, like thousands of other Americans, I still had a nagging question in the back of my head: “Why did they fire Sherrod so quickly and without a hearing?” [...]
~}> thehayride.com >> Big Government.com >> Pigford $$$ ‘ SCAM ‘ #NAACP #civil rights GOP Investigate #p2 #tcot
[...] 10. Hayride: Pigford Reason Behind Sherrod firing, Not NAACP tape [...]
why am i not surprised?
Electing Barack Obama = THE WORST MISTAKE AMERICA EVER MADE.
December 8, 2010
Dear President Obama,
You are bordering on delusional with this tax compromise. I need you to start practicing the following words “I will not seek and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President . . .” Because if you do this with a teleprompter you are going to look extremely foolish – even by todays diminished standards.
On the one hand you have said that class warfare is a fixture of your political character. A philosophy, I remind you, that reduces the citizens of this country to nothing more than subjects; who think that they can provide nothing for themselves without the help of the government. Then they grow dependent on government, then they demand more, and more from government until their souls have been so destroyed as to be reduced to a state of social Darwinism in the form of the economic and moral suicide we face today – again all of your creation. You made the bed now we Conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers are going to make you lie in it. We are going to make you feel the unease of pulling a blanket over yourself that is knitted out of a tapestry of lies and theft.
On the other hand those who have put you where you are impatient, they have been trained all too well, to think that the federal government exists solely to extract wealth from others and give it to them in the form of welfare. What ever name you put to it, it really does not matter. Though, I have to laugh at the name “unemployment insurance.” How exactly does one insure high unemployment? Sell them on the idea that insurance is going to provide them, not a job, but the very competition that creates the condition that a job will not even be created in the first place! That’s impressive. It’s no secret what people who own small to the largest firms are doing. They are paying next years income this year. Then they are suspending payroll to avoid the hit and then they are going to hold their breath and hope the Conservative Republicans get this straitened out, right and proper.
As for you. I have to wonder what will you do? Will you continue to advocate for a compromise that isn’t a compromise? Will you stand up once again and call people who voted for you morons? Will you decide to resign at some point because this is the first high pressure job you have ever had, where you actually had to command and make life and death decisions? That one I’ll hazard a guess. No. You are too narcissistic for that. Because to resign would be to admit the truth.
That is.
You are a failure.
Respectfully,
Joe Doakes
[...] an honest academic is alive in this country—it will be a story of the greatest, most sudden transfer of wealth since Darius the Mede razed [...]