Posted on 08/10/2010 8:48:58 AM PDT by Windflier
Did you know that Shirley Sherrods’, the newly minted "unbigot", family sued the Feds and got $13 million--for being "black” farmers? "Well, folks, you’ll just have to ask the woman who not only spearheaded this case because of her position in 1997 at the Rural Development Leadership Network but whose family received the highest single payout (approximately $13 million) from that action Shirley Sherrod. Oops again"
Did you know the person responsible for the payment of over $1.3 billion to 86,000 black farmers was.....Senator Barack Obama?
"Yes, folks. It appears that Ms. Sherrod had just unwittingly exposed herself as the perpetrator of one of the biggest fraud claims in the United States a fraud enabled solely because she screamed racism at the government and cowed them into submission. And it gets even more interesting. Ms. Sherrod has also exposed the person who aided and abetted her in this race fraud. As it turns out, the original judgment of Pigford v. Glickman in 1999 only applied to a total of 16,000 black farmers. But in 2008, a junior Senator got a law passed to reopen the case and allow more black farmers to sue for funds.
The Senator was Barack Obama."
Oh, did you know that while this applied to 86,000 black farmers, there are only 39,000 black farmers?
"In 1997, 400 African-American farmers sued the United States Department of Agriculture, alleging that they had been unfairly denied USDA loans due to racial discrimination during the period 1983 to 1997. The case was entitled Pigford v. Glickman and in 1999, the black farmers won their case. The government agreed to pay each of them as much as $50,000 to settle their claims. But then on February 23 of this year, something shocking happened in relation to that original judgment. In total silence, the USDA agreed to release more funds to Pigford. The amount was a staggering $1.25 billion.
This was because the original number of plaintiffs 400 black farmers had now swollen in a class action suit to include a total of 86,000 black farmers throughout America.
There was only one teensy problem. The United States of America doesn’t have 86,000 black farmers. According to accurate and totally verified census data, the total number of black farmers throughout America is only 39,697. Oops."
Can you spell MORE corruption from the Obama Administration and Democrats--even more than Rangel, Murtha, Jefferson and Waters combined!
I understand what you’re stating and you’re right.
The heck with Hillary. Sarah Palin will go after him if she’s gets ahold of the facts, but I am thinking this is a serious criminal matter.
There was probably census data used for a ball-park count of rural residents, with an arbitrary figure per acreage.
In some counties, acreage is often zoned as *farm land* for lower property tax purposes. The Federal bureaucrats are not above calling six tomato plants, a row of corn and 6 egg laying Rhode Island whites as a farm;) LOL!!
I might qualify even.
See post 39.
The chicanery and embedded corruption in these crooks.
Now we know why Sherrod was thrown under the bus so
quickly .. and then, she threw HIM under the bus. It’s
like a circus freak show.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As a senator, Barack Obama led the charge last year to pass a bill allowing black farmers to seek new discrimination claims against the Agriculture Department. Now he is president, and his administration so far is acting like it wants the potentially budget-busting lawsuits to go away.
The change isn’t sitting well with black farmers who thought they’d get a friendlier reception from Obama after years of resistance from President George W. Bush.
“You can’t blame it on the Bush administration anymore,” said John Boyd, *snip*
“I can’t figure out for the life of me why the president wouldn’t want to implement a bill that he fought for as a U.S. senator.”
~~~
And the dog ate my homework excuse:
“....activists like Boyd have worked for years to reopen the case because thousands of farmers missed the deadlines for participating”
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17641.cfm
__________________________
Of course, it was a Kennedy pursuit as well ..
“The Pigford case is a complicated story, but represents how enduring discrimination is, and how long the fight has been—even in this decade—and how tireless Senator Kennedy was.
Boyd was among the farmers who actually did receive compensation from the 1999 Pigford settlement but when he realized how many other black farmers had been locked out—and were going bankrupt and losing their lands, and being denied the kind of support the USDA routinely gives white farmers—he swung into action, and has become a regular presence on the Hill, with literally thousands of meetings with Senators and members of Congress—always with the help of Senator Kennedy.
And Boyd didn’t stop at the Hill; he’s well connected in Southern black communities, and he joined the Obama campaign very early, under promises that then-candidate Obama would work rapidly to re-open Pigford if elected
—if Boyd would help get out the Southern black vote, which was considered a critical segment of the voting population—but not a slam dunk for Senator Obama.
((nice quid pro quo))
Boyd left his Virginia farm and spent weeks riding around the Deep South, in a van, campaigning with Michelle Obama—just a short while after Sen. Kennedy introduced the 2007 legislation, which, sadly, never became law.”
http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2009/08/senator-edward-m-kennedy-was-leader-in.html
~~~~~~
Appears the solicitations for black farmer claims is still active:
~ ~ ~
Black Farmer Claims
If you or a family member is an African-American farmer who tried to participate in the ”Black Farmer Settlement”, but had the claim denied due to its being “late” please contact our offices immediately. Proposed new legislation may give the opportunity to have ”late Pigford” or ”late Black Farmer Settlement” claims heard.
If you are a “black farmer” who:
Farmed, or attempted to farm, between January 1, 1981 and December 31, 1996;
Applied to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) during that time period for participation in a federal farm credit or benefit program and believe that you were discriminated against on the basis of race in USDA’s response to that application;
Filed a discrimination complaint on or before July 1, 1997, regarding USDA’s treatment of such farm credit or benefit application; and
Previously submitted a late-filing request under the Pigford settlement.
Then, you may benefit from legislation pending in Washington, D.C. Please use the contact form below to see how we may be able to help you.
http://www.blackfarmerclaims.com/black-farmers-settlement/
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeeze .. ‘attempted to farm????’
How do you attempt to farm and incur a claim???
I truly have a hard time believing there were that many
black farmers ...86,000 ...that were left out of the loop.
__________________
I don’t understand this Pigford index/summary site .. maybe someone can decipher.
These figures are a far piece from 86,000:
~~~
National Statistics Regarding Pigford v. Vilsack Track A Implementation as of July 22, 2010
Prepared by the Office of the Monitor
using figures provided by the Facilitator.
Class National
%
Eligible Class Members 22,721 100%
Track A 22,551 99%
Track B 170 1% “
http://www.pigfordmonitor.org/stats/
Contining with the Boyd chapter above:
“After President Obama entered office, Boyd was asked by senior White House Advisers to wait for two years for the Administration to take up Pigford again, because it was deemed a low priority in light of all the other critical issues President Obama had inherited.
Boyd was appalled, as he told Ob Fo in this interview, because many of the black farmers locked out of Pigford are now in their seventies and eighties—and they would die before they saw the issue settled.
Many had already lost their farms, or were in bankruptcy—or their children (or grandchildren!) were suffering the same fate.
Boyd held an emotional rally in front of USDA headquarters on the National Mall on President Obama’s 100th day in office (above), and within a few days, after meetings with Senior White House officials, including Valerie Jarrett, the Obama Administration announced that it would work rapidly to try to resolve the issue financially, as well as correct the decades of USDA discriminatory practices. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack made the same pledge, and has since amped up USDA’s civil rights office, so USDA will at last stop being known as “the last plantation.”
http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2009/08/senator-edward-m-kennedy-was-leader-in.html
Nonetheless, consider that a majority of legislators in both houses voted to expand the original settlement to a totally unsupportable 86,000 recipients and spend over a BILLION dollars -- of our money.
Obama may have sponsored the bill, but he had to have about 300 accomplices to actually make it happen.
And, probably, a lot of them were Republicans...
I suspect the $13M went to the Sherrods. The first class action suit cost USDA about $2B and was settled in 1999. Since then they have found many more “farmers” impacted and that is why Obama needed the extra $1.25B. I am sure if this is allowed to stand, there will be many more “farmers” found in the wood pile.
Me too, but I’m not holding my breath. I think the republicans on capitol hill think this is a trap and that’s why they are not fighting the payout bill with much gusto. It came up for several votes last week and it didn’t pass because the republicans wanted it paid for or something to that effect. Not one of them is bringing up the rampant fraud and abuse and say on the floor that they support the payout. I think it’s a ‘fete de complete’ now that the lawsuit has been won though, it’s just up to the congress to fund the payout.
Between this and the Rangel/Waters stuff, it is very possible that the WH and dems are hoping to cause some kind of ‘racial’ stink to get the black vote out in November. The republicans aren’t falling for the bait though.
Just my two cents.
I thought the same thing when I read that Obama had gotten the number of black farmers inflated by 50,000.
If I'm tracking the facts of this story correctly, the initial complaint only involved 400 farmers, which was then somehow inflated to 86,000 farmers.
That comes to 1,720 black farmers for every state in the union. Riiiiiiiight......
Sheeesh. I must be some kind of slack-jawed idiot. I'm black, and I live in a rural area on two acres. I've got a dead vegetable garden that Mom and the kids planted a while back.
My "farm" has obviously been destroyed by the suppression of "the man". I'm due some sort of reparations, don't you think?
I know that the money was also supposed to go to Native American farmers. Any idea how many Indian farmers in the US?
Some of those Illinois farmers be ploughing sod on Chicago golf courses.’)
Check the list...check the list....check the list.....!!!!
You are probably eligible for $560,000 per acre. Start harvesting - slackjaw!!!!!
Placemark
If you or a family member is an African-American farmer who tried to participate in the ”Black Farmer Settlement”, but had the claim denied due to its being “late” please contact our offices immediately. Proposed new legislation may give the opportunity to have ”late Pigford” or ”late Black Farmer Settlement” claims heard.
If you are a “black farmer” who:
Farmed, or attempted to farm, between January 1, 1981 and December 31, 1996;
That's me! That's me!
My tomato plants died in November 1996, just before my son was born! My wife and I were a little busy attending to the birth of our firstborn, but I'm convinced that "Whitey" was really to blame for my "crop" failure!
Gimme that form!
THe article has already scrolled off the page at the link. It would be nice to have a derect link to it.
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