THE PIGFORD TROUGH AND THE OBAMA CONNECTION

by: brian watt | published: 12 10, 2010

On December 8, 2010 President Barack Hussein Obama signed into law the second installment of what has come to be known as the Pigford Settlement. Pigford II authorizes the funding of and additional $1.15 billion dollars as recompense to black farmers who had been discriminated against by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as originally evidenced in the 1997 case Pigford v. Glickman.

Pigford v. Glickman (now referenced as Pigford I) was a class action lawsuit brought against USDA citing racial discrimination in the allocation of farm loans and assistance, or more to the point, lack thereof, to black farmers between the years 1983 and 1997. After Timothy Pigford, who had been joined by 400 additional black farmer plaintiffs, filed the lawsuit he requested blanket mediation to cover an additional 2,000 farmers whose civil rights may also have been violated. Estimates of the number of farmers affected by the discrimination therefore were estimated by current bureaucrats in the USDA to be approximately 2,400 claimants who would be entitled to an initial payout of $50,000 (in a Track A payout) and eligible to file for additional damages and payments based on the circumstances of their respective cases (in a Track B payout). Between 1983 and 1997 Census figures indicate that there were approximately 18,000 black farmers operating in America. At the present time the number of claimants joining the Pigford II settlement has risen to 94,000 and a good deal of them have already received money on the first Pigford payout.

What accounts for this phenomenal increase in the number of anticipated claimants for the Pigford II payout? Has there been an explosion of black farm ownership that the censuses of 1980 and 1990 did not reflect? Or in the seven years since the 1990 census, have the number of black farmers risen by a staggering 422% increase? Really? What would account for that increase? Especially if the USDA had been as discriminatory as claimed. Was there an agricultural boom happening in America at this time? Wouldn’t the number of white, Asian and Hispanic farmers also have risen? Or was this the same period that saw the loss of hundreds of family farms across the country? I seem to recall a number of Farm Aid concerts headlined by Willie Nelson during this period. Maybe Willie was so involved because he just wanted farmers to stay in business to grow a particular type of crop. Hmm. Or does this phenomenal increase indicate that the USDA has not only been discriminatory but incredibly bad at math? God forbid that there is rampant fraud of the federal government and the American taxpayer at work. Who would have done that?

As reported by Gary Hewson on Breitbart’s Big Government website, “Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack came out last week to say there have only been three cases of fraud out of 20,000 claims.” This would be 17,600 more claims for the Pigford payout than what Vilsack’s department originally estimated would come forward to file in the first place and according to available data 20,000 is still 2,000 more farmers than the total number of black farmers in America during the designated period. And again, there are now approximately 94,000 claimants for this money.

In an article in the High Plains/Midwest AG Journal numerous discrepancies and rumors about gaming the Pigford I settlement were looked into and compared against available farm ownership statistics that they had access to. The Journal was informed from an unnamed source that “a large number of late filers in the Pigford case had had similar zip codes in large Ohio cities, suggesting a door-to-door effort might have taken place to find likely candidates”. This prompted the publication to request the names and addresses of Pigford I payout recipients under the Freedom of Information Act. However, they were denied the records by the USDA on the grounds that it would be “an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”. The Journal further noted “in Illinois, 163 people received checks under the Pigford I settlement as of last year, even though Ag Census data from 2002 indicates there were only 78 black or African-American operators in the state”. Is this an indication of fraud in of all places, Illinois? Oh say it isn’t so.

One of the most vocal critics of the Pigford settlements has been Republican Congressman Steve King from Iowa. King, prior to his term in Congress operated King Construction, an earthmoving company that worked with many of the farmers in Iowa and during the farm crisis of the 1980’s, the…uh…period when the number of black farmers apparently skyrocketed. King’s firm was tasked with dismantling and burying farm structures turning them back into vacant farm land. After the first Pigford settlement, Congressman King was approached by one of the claimants who had received payment but indicated to him that approximately 75% of the other claims that he knew of were fraudulent.

One might ask where the Pigford II settlement came from, since Pigford I had been settled law and claimants, though many suspected of being fraudulent, were already receiving payouts.

On August 3, 2007, a young junior senator from Illinois introduced a new bill, without co-sponsors, to open up the Pigford case again because he claimed that over 70,000 additional black farmers had been shut out of that original Pigford payout process. Let’s consider for a moment, the background of this young senator. Prior to his ascendancy to the United States Senate he had been an Illinois State Senator and prior to that a community organizer practicing aggressive Alinsky tactics on the streets Chicago to get public funding for a number of Chicago citizens groups and causes. None of these groups were farm-related and it can be safely said that there is not a lot of farmland within the Chicago city limits. Yet, in the summer of 2007, this young senator is concerned about the plight of tens of thousands of black farmers who were allegedly discriminated against and for some reason either weren’t aware of the first Pigford I settlement and payout or were not allowed to participate in it.

This begs so many questions. How did this young senator become aware of this injustice? Was his phone ringing off the hook from irate black farmers? Did he have routine meetings with angry black farmers in his offices? Did he travel across America on his own fact-finding tour to speak directly with black farmers in Iowa, Nebraska, California, Oregon, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, or on the streets of Chicago? Or were there other reasons for this young idealistic knight-errant to take up this cause? Could it be perhaps that the young senator, one Barack Obama, was looking for a way to shore up support from the black community particularly in the South because in February of the same year he had declared his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States and was running against the wife of a very popular Democrat President who was once a governor from a Southern state and often hailed as the “first black President of the United States”? Wild speculation?

Since Obama spearheaded Pigford II, who was it who instructed attorneys to go out into the black community, to speak at churches and at universities to encourage their audiences to take advantage of the money that would be coming in Pigford II and told them not to worry about providing evidence of their farming? Why if they fertilized their lawns or had a potted plant in their house, then they were farmers. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Perhaps the man who spearheaded the legislation and eventually signed it may be able to shed some light on that. Perhaps someone on his staff could be compelled to testify in front of a House investigative committee on that say, in January.

Think these dots aren’t connecting? Think I’m going out on a limb here? Here’s what The Hill reported on April 23, 2009:

“Supporters of Obama’s presidential campaign argued the then-Illinois senator’s move to resolve late Pigford claims would endear him to Southern black voters during the tough Democratic primary race against former Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). At the time of the bill’s introduction in 2007, Obama was finding his footing as a candidate and polls suggested he was struggling to attract black voters. He later won almost unanimously among this group against Clinton and then in the general election against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).”

So, what’s to come of the Pigford Scandal? If you want the House to look into this, contact:

Darell Issa
2347 Rayburn Hob
Washington D.C., DC 20515-0915
(202) 225-3906

For more comprehensive overview on the Pigford Scandal, view the following one hour video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1cIN7LmQOI

comments

• Reply to this comment

  ProgressiveEd

  This is neither a scandal or "reparations". This is pure and simple "spreading the money around". Obama said as a candidate this was his plan and he's simple keeping to his word.

  
  

• Reply to this comment

  neal g.

  When I finished high school, I wanted to become a farmer. I had no land and knew nothing about farming, so, I enlisted in the military instead. After 4 years in the military I was still to poor to purchase land.

  Now, my question is this---- since I had such high hopes of being a farmer, would I be able to get a grant from the Farm Service Agency to go into farming? I look forward to your response..

  Thank you so very much mr. obama sir...

  
  

add a comment