Pigford’s Harvest

NRO ^ | February 17, 2011 | Daniel Foster

[Scanian]

One unhappy night in 1992, 40-year-old Timothy Pigford, a fourth-generation black farmer having a terrible time of it trying to grow soybeans in North Carolina, sat in the living room of the house he was barely holding on to and drew up the outline of a lawsuit against the federal government. It was a decision more than 15 years in coming, ever since the first of the many times he’d been denied a USDA loan because — he was convinced — of the color of his skin. Before all was said and done, he would spend 20 years of his life trying to convince government officials, members of Congress, judges, and even the president that the USDA had ruined him even as it had given similarly situated whites the credit and support they needed to thrive as farmers. He’d go bankrupt in the process — losing his farmland, his home, and the 1990 Toyota he would put 350,000 miles on traveling up I-95 to Washington to press his case — while his relationship with his wife and two teenage sons would be stressed to the breaking point.

But eventually, he’d win.

And in finally securing justice for himself and the few hundred farmers who first joined his class-action suit, he’d unwittingly set off an injustice greater than the one he sought to rectify: one that would involve the waste of billions of dollars, systemic fraud implicating top federal officials, the unseemly electioneering of two presidential campaigns — even murder.

[BobP]

Like so many Pigfords to the trough.

We don't owe America anything - America owes us.
     -- Al Sharpton at the State Of The Black World Conference
          (SOBWC) in Atlanta, Dec. 2001.

[Alice in Wonderland]

According to the article: “Two Pigford-style class-action suits — one for Hispanic farmers, another for women — with the potential to dwarf current settlements are working their way through the courts.”

[Lion Den Dan]

America; where I can claim a field with no cultivation is a soy bean field and also claim that it won’t gro beans because the government won’t lend me money. I have a small North Dakota ranch. Suppose I could get rid of all the cattle and then bitch because the government won’t loan me money on what I don’t have?

[Venturer]

There should a thousands of people being tried for fraud, but there won’t be.

[The Great RJ]

The most flagrant offenders, Shirley Sherrod and her husband, who got $13 million is made worse because she later was given a post in the USDA and was caught publicly admitting to racial discrimination against white farmers. There needs to be a serious investigation of these fraudulent claims, but of course that would be labeled racist and will not happen.