Unintended Consequences of Sherrod Incident?

[Kathianne]

http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/07/27/pigford-v-glickman-86000-claims-from-39697-total-farmers/


Pigford v. Glickman: 86,000 claims from 39,697 total farmers?
July 27, 2010 - by Zombie

I’m confused.

If there are only 39,697 African-American farmers grand total in the entire country, then how can over 86,000 of them claim discrimination at the hands of the USDA? Where did the other 46,303 come from?

Now, if you’re confused over what the heck I’m even talking about, let’s go back to the beginning of the story:

Pigford v. Glickman

In 1997, 400 African-American farmers sued the United States Department of Agriculture, alleging that they had been unfairly denied USDA loans due to racial discrimination during the period 1983 to 1997. The farmers won the case, known as Pigford v. Glickman, and in 1999 the government agreed to pay $50,000 each to any farmer who had been wrongly denied an agricultural loan. By then it had grown into a class action case, and any black farmer who had filed a complaint between 1983 and 1997 would be given at least $50,000 — not limited to the original 400 plaintiffs. It was estimated at that time that there might be as many as 2,000 beneficiaries granted $50,000 each...

The U.S. Senate and Shirley Sherrod

Which brings us up to today, when two current events suddenly thrust this otherwise little-known case into the spotlight. First, the Senate stripped funding for the settlement out of an unrelated war appropriations bill, as they had done several times in the past. Second, it was revealed today that “A farm collective founded by Shirley Sherrod and her husband that was forced out of business by the discriminatory practices received a $13 million settlement as part of Pigford last year, just before she was hired by the USDA.”

Suddenly, everyone in America is talking about a class-action suit that until a few hours ago very few had ever heard of.

But I want to go back to the beginning.

Forget about Shirley Sherrod’s connection. Forget about the Senate not funding the settlement. There will be plenty of pundits commenting on those aspects over the upcoming days.

What I want to know is: How can there be 86,000 legitimate claimants?

...

Links and more questions at site.

[avatar4321]

Interesting. I don't know that this is enough information to go off of to make any conclusions. But if correct, it does raise an eyebrow on how there can be more claims then they are farmers.

[Kathianne]

Interesting. I don't know that this is enough information to go off of to make any conclusions. But if correct, it does raise an eyebrow on how there can be more claims then they are farmers.

Pretty much the same as voting in Democrat strongholds, higher than the number registered, but no fraud, right? :laugh2:

[PostmodernProphet]

If there are only 39,697 African-American farmers grand total in the entire country, then how can over 86,000 of them claim discrimination at the hands of the USDA? Where did the other 46,303 come from?


sorry to disappoint you, but there IS a logical explanation......there may be 39,697 African American farmers, but you see....you can't actually be an African American farmer if you don't either own some land or get someone to rent some to you.......so the primary description of the 86,000 people who were denied loans by the USDA would be African American who wanted to the the 39,698th African American farmer, but was denied the loan to buy the land.....

[Gaffer]

You say potential farmers were included. Since the loans were for working farms that makes sense how they would get around it. Sounds like a ACORN type operation.

[Kathianne]

You say potential farmers were included. Since the loans were for working farms that makes sense how they would get around it. Sounds like a ACORN type operation.

ACORN tactics aside, and it does bring to mind accidents of empty buses being rear ended and suddenly filled with injured passengers; I'm noticing a lot today and yesterday on the race baiting of her and her husband.

[PostmodernProphet]

You say potential farmers were included. Since the loans were for working farms that makes sense how they would get around it. Sounds like a ACORN type operation.

it certainly stands to reason. if a farmer can't stay in operation without a loan, that the people denied loans wouldn't be included in the number of farmers currently in operation......

[Kathianne]

Well it seems that the NYT perhaps changed the minds of editors:

2010:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/opinion/08mon3.html?_r=0


February 8, 2010
<nyt_kicker>Editorial</nyt_kicker>
<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" "> Pay Up </nyt_headline> <nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "> </nyt_byline> Claimants are still looking for their money, more than a decade after the federal Department of Agriculture reached a landmark settlement for having cheated generations of black farmers through “indifference and blatant discrimination.” The 1999 agreement on what is known as the Pigford class-action lawsuit was hailed as the biggest civil rights settlement in American history. The judge estimated a swift $2 billion payout — or $60,000 each — for victimized black farmers.
It has not worked out that way, as the White House’s new budget confirms with a request for $1.15 billion to pay still-pending claims from black farmers. The same amount was requested last year but did not survive the self-interested knives and elbows of the Congressional budget scrum.

...



2013:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/us/farm-loan-bias-claims-often-unsupported-cost-us-millions.html


April 25, 2013

<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">U.S. Opens Spigot After Farmers Claim Discrimination</nyt_headline> <nyt_byline> By SHARON LaFRANIERE (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/sharon_lafraniere/index.html) </nyt_byline> <nyt_correction_top> </nyt_correction_top> 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. Instead of an army of potential claimants, the government faced just 91 plaintiffs. Those cases, the government lawyers figured, could be dispatched at limited cost.


They were wrong.


On the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling, interviews and records show, the Obama administration’s political appointees at the Justice and Agriculture Departments engineered a stunning turnabout: they committed $1.33 billion to compensate not just the 91 plaintiffs but thousands of Hispanic and female farmers who had never claimed bias in court.


The deal, several current and former government officials said, was fashioned in White House meetings despite the vehement objections — until now undisclosed — of career lawyers and agency officials who had argued that there was no credible evidence of widespread discrimination. What is more, some protested, the template for the deal — the $50,000 payouts to black farmers — had proved a magnet for fraud.

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