Forbes - In 2007, Senator Obama sponsored a bill, later co-sponsored by Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, giving applicants who missed the year and a half filing window under Pigford more time. It appears Obama was courting Southern blacks who until then had remained loyal to Hillary Clinton.
In 1999, the Black Farmers Agricultural Association had prodded Vice President Gore to shift the USDA’s focus from evaluating the merit of Pigford claims into processing disbursements more quickly. Gore complied. The BFAA delivered money and votes. Obama’s support likely meant to secure their backing too.
Pigford II retained pathetically low prerequisites, establishing two tracks for compensation. Track B relied on a “preponderance of the evidence” standard common to civil litigation, but where independent arbiters found wrongdoing there was no cap to what plaintiffs might recover.
Track A proves farcical. Claimants don’t even need to prove they sought USDA assistance or that they had ever farmed. A notarized statement from a non-family member that someone had “attempted to farm” but USDA thwarted their ambitions sufficed to pocket $50,000, tax-free. A lack of documentary evidence supplied proof. Simply have someone swear, “He wanted to farm, but those racist USDA folks wouldn’t even provide an application” and taxpayers pony up.
When Pigford settled, both sides supposed about 2,000 claimants would materialize. By November 2010, recipients totaled 22,551 and Pigford payouts exceeded $1 billion. The easy money prompted copycat cases by American Indians (Keepseagle v. Vilsack), Hispanics (Garcia v. Vilsack) and women (Love v. Vilsack). Investors Business Daily observed, “This is what happens when the government rings the dinner bell.”
Seedy lawyers and activists canvassed black churches across the South. Some 70,000 claimants emerged under Pigford II. Yet, there were never more than 33,000 black farmers during the period. Nor had all sought government loans. Of those who applied, many were approved and certainly not all declinations reflected discrimination.
It’s estimated well over ninety percent of Pigford recipients fell into the “attempted to farm” category. Black hog farmer Jimmy Dismuke admitted, “Pigford is the biggest rip-off this country has ever known, and there are lots of people in positions of power that know it. Politicians are using it to buy votes. Trial lawyers are using it to get rich.” Federal investigators won’t fight fraud, fearful of racial undertones. Why risk the race card, it’s not their money being wasted.
Farm Service Agency loans are usually administered by local farmers, elected by their peers. The program provides a “lender of last resort” for farmers whose credit requests were denied by financial institutions; and to offer disaster relief. In Jefferson County, Arkansas, every supervisor of this federally funded largesse was black, yet this county teemed with discrimination claims – and taxpayer funded payouts.
Applications poured in reporting discrimination in places like Chicago, where there is no USDA office. Nonetheless, taxpayers paid. Exhibiting the moral license arming modern liberalism, Gary Grant, President of the BFAA, explained, “If you are an African American, you deserve $50,000, because your roots are in farming, and your folk have already been cheated.”
Obama’s USDA now specifically targets “beginning and socially disadvantaged” farmers (read minorities), who represent over half of the $14.6 billion in loans issued between 2009 and 2011. Politically correct racial bias reigns anew. Will white farmers get their turn at the trough since similarly situated minorities are now being officially favored?
Obama’s political correctness on steroids highlights the risks of overarching government. The Constitution authorizes what promotes the “general welfare” as opposed to forcing taxpayers to supplement the specific welfare of politically correct constituencies in vote-buying patronage schemes. James Madison stressed in Federalist 10 that government’s appropriate endeavors must be well defined, because, “The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.” Big government ensures favoritism, waste and corruption.
Without the discipline of profits and loss, government largesse succumbs to human nature. Bias is inevitable, whether racial, based on party affiliation or other factors. As politics overruns society prejudice can be practiced with the ample clout of government authority if in keeping with wherever racial winds then flutter.
Rather than double down on Pigford with Hispanics and women, Washington ought to settle legitimate grievances equitably and disband programs which will always be rife for abuse.