The Obama administration has again been protected from a
troubling scandal by the mainstream media (MSM) using the tactic of omission to
simply ignore the scandal, its reality and the negative blowback attendant to a
disturbing story. As sunlight began to
illuminate the scandal’s inconvenient and troubling facts, charges of racism were
used to temporarily silence those sounding the alarm. Seemingly, the alarm-ringers’ only crime was
having the temerity to respond to the abuses of Pigford with a politically
incorrect point of view to those abuses.
The under-reported scandal referenced is generally identified
as Pigford. Pigford’s germination
occurred in 1997 as a lawsuit (Pigford vs. Glickman)
alleging that 91 African-American farmers were unfairly denied loans by the
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) due to racial discrimination
which prevented the complainants from farming.
In 1999, the black farmers won their case.
Pigford has the distinction of being an out of control waste
of taxpayer funds and/or a cynical attempt by the Obama administration to curry
favor with certain minority groups to
which neither President Obama nor Attorney General Eric Holder can plead ignorance
of involvement. Both have had knowledge
since the court ruled on the Pigford lawsuit; in 2008
then Senator Barack Obama supported and voted for the funding of the initial
settlement. Since then Eric Holder (and
Obama) have been involved in overseeing and managing the Pigford ‘judgment fund’.
Yet can Pigford be fairly described as a scandal?
Pigford began innocently enough as a lawsuit to redress a
perceived wrong negatively affecting a group of 91… But then the number climbed to 400…then
1,600…then…
The number of black farmers has metastasized, nay exploded,
and the aggrieved group now includes not only blacks, but Hispanics, Native Americans
and females. In fact over 90,000
people have filed claims seeking a payment under the terms of the original Pigford
court ruling. That decision, now referred
to as Pigford #1, was anticipated to cost approximately $120 million including
legal fees.
Pigford
#2 is the appellation used to identify an expanded payment regime that funds
more African-American payments, Native Americans, Hispanics and females. This regimen grew out of the fact that
thousands of claimants missed the original Pigford #1 filing deadline of
October 12, 1999. Interestingly
potential Native American claimants were estimated at 5,300 while ‘plaintiff’
lawyers pegged the exposure at an estimated 19,000 Native Americans. The ‘judgment fund’ announced by Agricultural
Secretary Thomas Vilsack
and Eric Holder in 2010 was expanded from just over $120 million to $1.25
billion given the expectation of many more filers.
However, the explosion
of claimants has caused payouts to reach $4.4 billion and has swelled legal
fees to over $130 million. More
importantly the claim’s process created a rush to get a share of the monies
allocated to the ‘judgment fund’ even if no real claim existed. Essentially the process encouraged people to
lie and spawned a cottage
industry. Claimants had only to file
applications for a $50,000 payment by stating that they had ‘thought’ about
applying for loans to become a farmer. Proof
of a claimant’s intent to farm also included a statement from that petitioner saying
he or she had attempted to farm by planting a batch of tomatoes in his or her
backyard and having that statement verified by a family member. In
essence the need to be a farmer at the time of the alleged discriminatory
actions by the USDA was not a requirement to share in the financial redress.
Fraud was endemic to the claims process -- for example every
apartment… in a New York City building
received a settlement of at least $50,000.
Further, some families received checks of $50,000 for each family member
(see
NYT’s fraud identification narrative of 4-26-13). These payments were dispensed by the judgment
fund’s monitor, whose management and control fell to the Executive Branch and
Justice Department. Due to the application
‘vetting process’ the payouts were criticized by both Representative Steve King (D-IA) and journalist
Andrew
Breitbart as payoffs to Obama’s/Democrats’ preferred groups to gain a
favored political position with those entities.
King and Breitbart had the courage
to indelicately point out that some of payouts were ridiculous, fraudulent
and highly politicized. Both Congressman
King and Breitbart were predictably charged with racism by many in the MSM; and
only because The New York Times printed
their recent investigatory story have some MSM members begrudgingly ceded the
veracity of King’s and Breitbart’s concerns.
The combination of the racial criticism, the MSM’s silence
regarding Pigford, and the quarantine on additional Pigford narratives
subsequent to the NY Times’ article have
emphasized the media’s concern for the damage an ongoing discussion of Pigford
could cause the president. Potential
stories may have included added evidence of rampant fraud and controversy:
- A review of the Shirley Sherrod incident/resignation that became an embarrassing chapter in the Obama administration and might have brought into question the fairness of the payout her family received from Pigford which was rumored to total in the millions. Time magazine also reported that the Sherrods’ received compensation of approximately $330,000 for mental suffering after it was determined that Ms. Sherrod did not use racist tactics in dealing with white farmers, a charge that led to her resignation from the USDA.
- The NY Times’ article disclosing that in 16 ZIP codes in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and North Carolina the number of successful Pigford claims exceeded the total number of farms that existed in 1997.
- The possible resurrection of a contentious conversation on the redistribution of wealth by whatever means to correct previous wrongs for certain minorities a la the Van Jones reparations argument.
- The blatantly racially charged comments similar to those of Mr. Al Pires, a lead attorney for African-American Pigford farmers, who asserted the USDA was “the biggest racist the world has ever seen.”
Thus, Pigford is another scandal that has received little
attention and even less discussion than many of the scandals currently
receiving attention. Nevertheless, this scandal
is another example of an administration out of control. This is perhaps because Americans elected a
leader without a modicum of real world management experience -- a person who
believes ideology trumps organizational discipline, who believes that political
cronies are automatically qualified as leaders/managers, and who uses lies/dissembling
as a tool to obscure factual information from the American people.
In sum, the damage generated by the Pigford scandal, and all
the others, continues to be muted by the MSM’s lack of interest in reporting
the facts integral to each issue and their lack of desire to dig for more
information. But given the daunting mass
of scandals existent, President Obama’s administration will be described in the
future by objective historians as the most scandalous in history.
