title: A $50,000 FREE-FOR-ALL FOR MINORITIES In The Biggest Obama Scandal Yet
text: PIGFORD has to be the biggest scam and fraud EVER but I ll bet most Americans haven t even heard about it. IT S ALL ABOUT FREE MONEY! Yes, free money for everyone EXCEPT you have to be a minority to get the $50,000 and it s taxpayer dollars so it s NOT free at all. Our government has spent over $4 BILLION dollars on what was to be a small program to help minority farmers who felt they were discriminated against: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. Where s Congress on this big taxpayer giveaway? Oh, they re voting for billions more to go to this scam of major proportions 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 with a politically incorrect point of view to abuses.The underreported 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 against 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 payments to African-Americans, 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, Native American potential 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.Read more: American Thinker