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In a 2001 debate on the issue of slavery reparations, Al Pires--one of the lead attorneys behind the Pigford black farmers settlement--referred to the settlement "mini-reparations" and described the reparations "'dream team' he was part of," which included one of President Barack Obama's most important law school mentors.

At the time of his premature death, the great provocateur Andrew Breitbart was more than a year into a grinding crusade to bring attention to a little-known class-action settlement called Pigford, which had begun with plausible accusations that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had discriminated against a small number of black farmers, but which had 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...

It's not often that I'll write approvingly of an article in The New York Times, but for Sharon LaFraniere's masterful deconstruction of the Pigford Scandal, I'll make an exception. Pigford, you may recall, was first exposed by Andrew Breitbart and because of it he was sued, dismissed and lampooned by the Democrat-Media Complex. The term vindication was invented for situations like this. Ever since the Clinton administration agreed in 1999 to make $50,000 payments to thousands of black farmers, the Hispanics and women had been clamoring in courtrooms and in Congress for the same deal. They argued, as the African-Americans...

the Obama administration’s political appointees at the Justice and Agriculture Departments engineered a stunning turnabout: they committed $1.33 billion to compensate... The deal... was fashioned in White House meetings... the $50,000 payouts to black farmers had proved a magnet for fraud. the claims process prompted allegations of widespread fraud and criticism that its very design encouraged people to lie... Agriculture Department reviewers found reams of suspicious claims, from nursery-school-age children and pockets of urban dwellers, sometimes in the same handwriting with nearly identical accounts of discrimination. As a senator, Barack Obama supported expanding compensation for black farmers, and then as...

The New York Times reported Friday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has likely enabled massive fraud in the Pigford series of legal settlements, in which black, Hispanic, female and Native American farmers have claimed to be victims of past discrimination. The cost of the settlements, which could exceed $4.4 billion, is the result of a process that "became a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees," the Times notes. Among those influential members of Congress was then-Senator Barack Obama, who...

Today, the New York Times ran a front page article that is the best, most in-depth coverage of the Pigford story by the mainstream media to date. Oh, how things have changed. Just three years ago, in February 2010, the New York Times published an editorial entitled "Pay Up" that towed the pro-Pigford line. The blunt headline summed up the aggressive position that the pro-Pigford advocates were taking. As the Times said then: After the settlement, some farmers got their money, but far too many ran into a new buzz saw. They were stalled and rejected through paperwork technicalities, tight...

It's rare to get this kind of vindication, so let's enjoy it in memory of Andrew Breitbart for as long as possible. For more than two years, Andrew and Lee Stranahan have investigated the Pigford settlement and the fraudulent claims that not only have cost taxpayers billions, but have left the original black farmers who sued the USDA over discrimination. Today the New York Times reports what Andrew and Lee have been saying all along — that the Pigford settlement was a political hack job by Tom Vilsack’s Department of Agriculture, and that it’s a magnet for fraud (via Twitchy):...

In the winter of 2010, after a decade of defending the government against bias claims by Hispanic and female farmers, Justice Department lawyers seemed to have victory within their grasp. Ever since the Clinton administration agreed in 1999 to make $50,000 payments to thousands of black farmers, the Hispanics and women had been clamoring in courtrooms and in Congress for the same deal. They argued, as the African-Americans had, that biased federal loan officers had systematically thwarted their attempts to borrow money to farm. But a succession of courts — and finally the Supreme Court — had rebuffed their pleas....

Circle March 25, 2013 on your calendar. That's the last day you can submit your claim form from this official U.S. government website to collect fifty thousand tax-free American dollars, courtesy of the Obama administration in its current multi-billion giveaway scheme. No, you don't need a potted plant and you don't even to be black or even Hispanic; as long as you are a woman (or related to one) and you fill out the forms correctly, you can collect the money because nobody will verify your information. Welcome to the Love settlement for women farmers, the close relative of the...

An official government report released Friday admits that the Pigford “Black Farmers” Settlement was designed with no mechanism for objectively determining fraud but hid that shocking conclusion under pages of bureaucratic doublespeak. “Burying the lede” is a journalistic term used to describe the act of hiding essential information by putting non-essentials in front of it. On December 7, 2012, the United States Government Accountability Office released report number GAO-13-69R, also known as "Civil Rights: Additional Actions in Pigford II Claims Process Could Reduce Risk of Improper Determinations." Just based on the title, you can already tell the report is needlessly...

Federal functionaries serving radical agendas rather than taxpayers riddle Washington. Last week came further evidence that cultural Marxism imbues the Department of Agriculture. Orthodox Marxism fixates on the economic, revolving around class struggles. Cultural Marxism, otherwise called political correctness, incorporates social dynamics. The “privileged” class extends beyond capitalists and bourgeois to whites, men, Christians and heterosexuals. While workers are still afforded victimhood those “alienated” by American culture also include minorities, women and even people behaving ways historically considered immoral. President Obama perceives society through this politically correct prism. His raison d’être rests on a post-modern variant of Marxism popular in...

More than 92,000 “black farmers” signed up for reparations from the Obama USDA after the Pigford case was extended in 2010. That’s five times the number of blacks who were actually farming during the time period in question and would possibly qualify for the reparations. ... To date, almost $1 billion has been paid or credited to the farmers under the settlement’s consent decree. Democrats want to add another $1.2 billion to the money pot and continue with the reparations. Now the Obama Administration is offering Hispanic and women farmers over $1.3 billion in discrimination payouts. ... Obama’s plan has...

WATCH ON YOUTUBE AND BE ANGRY

Here's a rough cut of the documentary "Pigford Blues" (intro) Join the Facebook club http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pigford-Blues/107686005984000?sk=wall&ref=nf

“This settlement allows the Department of Agriculture and African-American farmers to focus on the future, and brings us one step closer to giving these farmers a chance to have their claims heard,” said Attorney General Holder. “Accomplishing this settlement has been a top priority of this Administration and I am pleased that the court has approved it.”

As much as the media have tried shielding the Obama administration from responsibility for corruption and malfeasance, the combined weight of the fallout from the Solyndra fiasco and the Operation Fast and Furious scandal have begun taking a serious toll on the administration. I will address Solyndra, the so called green energy company that received federal loans of more than a half a billion dollars, and then went bankrupt, in an upcoming report. That is starting to look like the tip of an iceberg of a political payoff scandal. But with subpoenas having been issued on October 13th in the...

Oversight: As the hearing to give approval to the final settlement for the Pigford farmers approaches, it's time to investigate this classic case of waste, fraud and abuse. Somewhere Van Jones is smiling. Seventy-nine Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted last week against an amendment to H.R. 2112 — the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2012 — that would have blocked the government from paying out additional billions for the Pigford II settlement. One of them was Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, who had promised...

After touring flood plains along the Missouri river, Michele Bachmann and Republican Steve King of Iowa sprung the issue of multi-billion dollar settlements to black farmers, during a news conference on Monday. These black farmers who have received billions of dollars claim they were discriminated against for decades in loans and other aid. In response to a question regarding farmers affected by the flooding, who could possibly lose funding from the Department of Agriculture: The two responded by criticizing a 1999 settlement in what is known as the Pigford case, after the original plaintiff, North Carolina farmer Timothy Pigford. Late...

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann pointed to one program in particular Monday when talking about wasteful government spending: a multibillion dollar settlement paid to black farmers, who claim the federal government discriminated against them for decades in awarding loans and other aid. The issue came up after Bachmann and Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa toured flooded areas along the Missouri River. During a news conference, they fielded a question about whether farmers affected by the flooding also should be worried by proposed U.S. Department of Agriculture cuts. The two responded by criticizing a 1999 settlement in what is known...

Allen West says that he didn’t do enough due diligence on the Pigford amendment and says he may have to take this one ‘in the shorts’: [audio interview at link]