http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/forty_acres_a_mule_sherrod_sty.html
I second his conclusion that the media and bloggers shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Shirley Sherrod. Let me start by adding another question to the list. In her position at not for profit, Rural Development Leadership Network, a network of activists and community builder, was Sherrod involved in any way in encouraging people to submit fraudulent claims under Pigford? Did she put black people who owned rural land in touch with lawyers who would file the paperwork claiming attempts to farm had been prevented by the non cooperation of the local USDA?
I ask because there are a multitude of small parcels of non productive rural land all across the south, land unsuitable for mechanized agriculture that was once owned by subsistence farmers, black and white alike. Many of these parcels continue to be owned by family members who moved elsewhere out of sentimental reasons. The property taxes and other carrying costs are cheap and often ancestors are buried there in family plots. A drive on any country road in the South may turn up several carefully maintained postage stamp sized family cemeteries. As I read Blumer, I wondered how many of the owners claimed they had attempted to farm just such acreage to score a fast $50,000 from Uncle Sam?
http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/1/637728.html
Posted by: MBAMichael Jul 21, 07:12 AM
Billions of dollars are being paid out. Many of those filing PIGFORD claims had farm loans that defaulted - apparently, the farmers were bad farmers and/or bad debtors and now want to claim they did not get equal treatment from the government. Many of the claims are from people that participated in the farm loan program 40 years ago. The Pigford matter consumes huge resources from the USDA long past the time the case was settled. USDA employees are not managing agriculture assistance so much as they are now managing a welfare sytem to settle decade-old claims of discrimination from Hispanic, Native American, Female, and Black people.
That link deserves a thread of it’s own. I am glad that some bloggers and news people are starting to question this stuff. Some of us on FReepers have been pointing this way since the night this stuff broke.