It is likely that most Americans have never heard of the Pigford class-action settlement case. Until recently neither had I.
Here is a short introduction lifted from Wikipedia: "Pigford v. Glickman
(1999) was a class action lawsuit against the United State Department
of Agriculture (USDA), alleging racial discrimination in its allocation
of farm loans and assistance between 1983 and 1997. The lawsuit ended
with a settlement on April 14, 1999, by Judge Paul L. Friedman of the
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. To date, almost US$1
billion has been paid or credited to more than 13,300 farmers under the
settlement's, under what is reportedly the largest civil rights
settlement to date. As another 70,000 farmers had filed late and not had
their claims heard, the 2008 Farm Bill provided for additional claims
to be heard; and in December 2010, Congress appropriated $1.2 billion
for what is called Pigford II, the second part of the case."
According to the linked articles Andrew Breitbart (before his death) was investigating this little-known case, and as reported in the New York Times (see link), it started
"...with plausible accusations that the U.S. Department of Agriculture
had discriminated against a small number of black farmers,
but...spiraled into a billion-dollar, open-ended government kickback
machine for untold thousands that showed no signs of letting up. The Pigford case
represented everything Breitbart raged against in the American
political order - large-scale cronyism, corrosive and cynical identity
politics, unrepentant
hypocrisy, and the predictable indifference of the mainstream media."
So, what is the issue?
Substantial evidence exists of massive fraud in the continuing handouts
to claimants having little or no justification. Efforts to turn off the
spigot have failed. Indeed, "as the Times reports in great depth, instead of closing the spigot, in 2010 the Obama administration did not just acquiesce to, it spearheaded the expansion of, the Pigford con
on the taxpayer’s dime, and saw to it that not just black Americans,
but any woman, Hispanic, or Native American who could so much as gesture
at discrimination had access to a billion-dollar pool of easy money."
This whole matter stinks to the high heavens. "Pigford and
its spawn...resembles in organization and aim a criminal conspiracy of
breathtaking proportions, and one in which the federal government was
first complicit and then ultimately responsible."
Now you know about the case.
Check out the evidence for yourselves and tell me this is not government
criminality. Oh, by the way have you heard this reported on any of the
major TV news networks? Koudos to the New York Times.
How long are we going to put up with the government handing out
taxpayer resources to undeserving claimants and making unethical lawyers
rich???
George Burns
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