5/12/08
Please e-mail Congress asking them to strip the Pigford Claims Act out of the farm bill currently under consideration in the House and Senate. As the text of my sample e-mail below explains, this act would mean forking out free money to any black person who testifies that the US Department of Agriculture discriminated against him. For more information, see Farmer Reparations and Who Wants to be a Black Millionaire?
Instructions for sending: Edit the message below as you like and send it by e-mail to your US Representative and Senators. Contact information about is available on the House of Representatives and Senate websites. Thanks for doing your part!
I urge you to strip the Pigford Claims Act out of the farm bill (HR 3073) currently under consideration by Congress. This boondoggle would require the government to pay out enormous amounts of money to black farmers on the bare claim that they were discriminated against in the past.
The act stems from the 1999 Pigford v. Glickman class action lawsuit, which alleged that the US Department of Agriculture had racially discriminated against black farmers in granting loans. Despite a total absence of evidence that discrimination had occurred, the Clinton administration settled the lawsuit by agreeing to pay $50,000 to black farmers who claimed racial discrimination. Not only was no documentation of discrimination required, but claimants didn’t even have to prove that they had ever been farmers. Essentially, all that a black person had to do to cash in was sign an affidavit stating that he had applied for a loan or that he had attempted to own or lease farm land.
Naturally, this settlement was abused on a massive scale. Despite the fact that there were only 18,500 black farmers in the US in 1999, no fewer than 22,440 claims of racial discrimination in farm lending were filed. Employees of the USDA considered the vast majority of successful claims fraudulent.
The original deadline for making claims was October 1999. However, the current farm bill would allow 75,000 additional blacks who missed the original deadline to get their free money. Moreover, the language of the bill is vague enough to allow new claimants to step forward.
The estimated cost of the Pigford Claims Act would be $3 billion. I urge you to stand up to the black lobby and vote against a continuation of this fraud.
For more information, see “Farmer Reparations” at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26319&s=rcme
Sincerely,