One unhappy night in 1992, 40-year-old Timothy Pigford, a fourth-generation black farmer having a terrible time of it trying to grow soybeans in North Carolina, sat in the living room of the house he was barely holding on to and drew up the outline of a lawsuit against the federal government. It was a decision more than 15 years in coming, ever since the first of the many times he’d been denied a USDA loan because — he was convinced — of the color of his skin. Before all was said and done, he would spend 20 years of his life trying to convince government officials, members of Congress, judges, and even the president that the USDA had ruined him even as it had given similarly situated whites the credit and support they needed to thrive as farmers. He’d go bankrupt in the process — losing his farmland, his home, and the 1990 Toyota he would put 350,000 miles on traveling up I-95 to Washington to press his case — while his relationship with his wife and two teenage sons would be stressed to the breaking point.
But eventually, he’d win.
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And in finally securing justice for himself and the few hundred farmers who first joined his class-action suit, he’d unwittingly set off an injustice greater than the one he sought to rectify: one that would involve the waste of billions of dollars, systemic fraud implicating top federal officials, the unseemly electioneering of two presidential campaigns — even murder.
Timothy Pigford’s discrimination case looks plausible. In an extensive 1998 profile in Business North Carolina magazine, Pigford spoke at length about his upbringing in the segregated South, where goodly white farmers sometimes let his father bundle his tobacco crop with theirs so the white auctioneers would give him a fair price. A college dropout, Pigford rented and farmed a small tract of land, and paid for a John Deere by working the night shift at a chemical plant. In 1976, after three years of putting in 100-hour weeks to bolster his operations, he submitted an application for a $110,000 loan through the county representative of the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), a descendant of the New Deal that gave credit and grants to rural farmers for homes, capital investments, irrigation, and disaster relief. Pigford wanted to own the land he worked.
His loan was denied.
He got other loans from the USDA, including $21,500 to buy a home later that same year, short-term loans he repaid when he sold his crops, and disaster relief when Hurricane Diana struck in 1984. But he was convinced he wasn’t getting a fair shot at success, even as white farmers who worked nearby land were getting loans to expand their operations.
In 1984, a fed-up and indebted Pigford testified before a House committee investigating USDA loan practices, a move he says made him even more of a target for the USDA reps back home. Denials of debt-restructuring and operating loans followed. By 1992, $55,000 behind on $200,000 in loans, Pigford drew up his suit and began lobbying his congressman to take up his cause — and that of other black farmers in the district, who Pigford believed were subject to the same discrimination.
On its own, Pigford’s case was probably a coin flip. On one hand, a 1986 USDA inspector general’s report shows that two white farmers named by Pigford received better treatment from FmHA officials, getting large loans quickly despite problems with their applications. On the other hand, the local FmHA officials who handled Pigford’s loan applications were cleared of wrongdoing by a separate internal probe: They said they had denied the loan because financing costs, on top of the fact that Pigford’s tract was already losing money, made his plan uneconomic.
An amazing, embarrassing, unfortunate American story. One hero who wanted a wrong righted, one that deserved to be righted, spawns what should have been an incredible justice for those who had been discriminated against. Instead, the lawyers and the crooks and thieves get together and rip off the American taxpayer. Then, our president continues the ripping off. Crooks, thieves, lawyers and politicians...would make an excellent movie. Then, of course, the victims -- like Willie Head. A sad, sad commentary on America's ruling class.
I'm furious that shams like this can take place today. And it's not even a secret that this is a con job on the American taxpayer. Why don't we stomp this out? What is wrong with this country? Ugh!
Like so many of our other current troubles, this one would have been avoided if we had stuck to the Founders' idea of strictly enumerated federal power. Nothing in the Constitution authorized the government to go into the lending business. Not for farmers, businesses, home owners, college students, or any other person or group. Government should not be in the finance business.
I suggest the problem is not with Pigford, or Pigford's case. Agricultural loans are wrong on principle, as Leef pointed out, but that's not really the issue here, either.
The problem is with the concept of class-action lawsuits, as presently instituted in federal courts. Had each of the fraudsters been requried to actually appear in court, even if only briefly, to make their claim to their portion of the settlement, I believe there would have been a lot less fraud.
Thank God this level of fraud and abuse couldn't possibly occur again with our ever vigilant gov't watchdogs.
Katrina relief, anyone? Gulf relief? Welfare? Shall I go on?
Of course, this speaks to a much larger problem than a bloated, jaded, and otherwise antipathetic federal bureaucracy; it reveals a momentary glimmer of the rampant legions of the entitled; those who want to stick it to "the man" simply because.
What these degenerates fail to realize is that we are all of us, together, "the man."
"In an extensive 1998 profile in Business North Carolina magazine, Pigford spoke at length about his upbringing in the segregated South, where goodly white farmers sometimes let his father bundle his tobacco crop with theirs so the white auctioneers would give him a fair price."
So, in the segregated South, the goodly white farmers treated Pigford's father better than his own government. When it comes to America's history of racism, nothing is ever as it seems.
Blacks are still treated like invalids. Nowadays we call it "civil rights" and veiled attempts at passing reparations legislation is a move to "close a long and sad chapter in our history". It'll only continue as long as Blacks let it continue.
One. Our current class action system works pretty well, it is the standards for the class that are set by the judge that must be tightened up. There has to be a way for a large group of people to get relief in one swoop, or else the courts will lock up.
Two. Obama committed fraud himself, at the least he was grossly negligent. He knowingly faciliated a misrepresentation that was intended to induce another into paying up. He is an accomplice to massive fraud.
At least he should have known that his actions in passing the extension had a liklihood of enabling massive fraud. This isn't a case where some fraud is always expected from a government issued benefit. This is a case where the vast majority of applicants are fraudulent!
Impeach! The act of signing the bill was completed during the presidency, he is not immune from the suit.
Racism in this country is on life support, it's time to pull the plug. Most Americans are done with it, tired of even thinking about it. It is shameful that there are those who insist on perpetuating it. Doing so by declaring differences among black culture and American culture (or improperly phrased "white" culture). One complains about an injustice that is brought about by his complaining of the injustice.
You correctly identify a flaw in the class-action claims process in general -- that claimants are not necessarily required to testify in court, particularly where there is a settlement. A written claim, even if signed under penalty of perjury, is more likely to be fraudulent, as many (if not most) apparently were here.
Fraud is undoubtedly more likely to be discovered in cases between true adversaries in which the defendant does not have unlimited deep pockets. In Pigford, however, Daniel Foster describes an adversarial process which was completely corrupted and broken down, against a defendant with no incentive to limit its liability.
Perhaps it's not too late to change the rules to be applied to the other pending PIgford-type actions. And it's certainly not to late to begin considering legislation which will give the taxpayers immunity in future cases.
This absolute travesty of justice - most severe to Mr. Pigford, Mr. Head, and the plethora of original class-action members who never got the bulk of relief they deserved, was caused by several factors:
1) Class-action lawsuits.
These lawsuits are cordial invitations for fraud, especially at the preliminary stage of certifying the class. The entire class-action process is designed to maximize the legal fees for the lawyers, by maximizing the size of the class, and to minimize the compensation that each individual class member receives (because the class ends up so large with so many claimants). Worse still, the original complainant - the one who initiated the entire process before the notion of a "class action" was ever floated - gets the least amount of compensation, because usually, that individual is uniquely situated in the amount of damages that person actually suffered. Hence, that person's motivation to seek to utilize significant resources to prosecute the matter in Court.
Class actions are, academically, suited only to those circumstances in which each individual claimant suffered damages that, individually, could be rectified in small claims courts. The trial lawyers have hijacked them, to turn them into windfall rain-making opportunities.
2) See comments from George C. Leef, posted at 10:29 AM.
The more our governments' actions - at all levels, not just federal - become untethered to the inherent limitations of the scope of their power contained in the charter documents that give those governments any power in the first place, the more likely it is that fraud and abuse will arise in how those resources are allocated. And, in addition, it opens up 10-fold the avenues for bribery and quid-pro-quo among all the various pressure groups who "want their slice".
3) Barack Obama's lack of self-identity.
From everything I've read and heard -- autobiographical and otherwise, our current President strikes me as a man who has been deeply conflicted in adulthood between his upbringing and that of those people who share his ethnicity. So his whole career seems to have transpired in a manner to maximize his "street cred" with those pressure groups he knew he'd need to support him to have any credibility as a mainstream black politician.
From sitting in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years, to his attendance and active participation in socialist organizational meetings, to his work with Bill Ayres at the Annenberg Challenge, every move he made seems to have been calculated to maximize his "me too" status among his "own".
4) Reparations!
The belief that, somehow, taking money from people alive today whose families either were not even here during the time of institutionalized racism, or if they were, had literally nothing to do with it, will set right hundreds of years of history caused by people long dead, seems to justify to some the utter waste, fraud and abuse with the citizenry's hard-earned money.
My paternal grandfather's father was born here in the 1860's, in Oneida, NY. They were a family of Jewish cattle farmers. Taking money from our family now supposedly rectifies racism? Rather conclude, it perpetuates it, and his "me too" lack of self esteem precipitates Obama to become involved in this sham notion of "justice".
Sorry to be so long when ONE WORD suffices: PROGRESSIVISM!
Does this mean the whole "40 acres and a mule" business is concluded? Now that reparations have been paid via Pigford, that means no more grievance mongering from the good Revs. Jackson and Sharpton, right? It's such a relief that those matters are all resolved and we can put them behind us now.
Bamo displays the emotions and insecurity of a child. No one who voted for him contemplated his leadership ability then or now. It's always a shame when we answer in the negative - Whether free people are capable of governing themselves while maintaining their freedom? - and remind ourselves of Hamilton's words, "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm."
At first glance, "Pigford's Harvest" appears to be a phenomenal piece of journalism. But it plays fast and loose with the numbers.
I was so shocked by the numbers--94,000 claimants compared to a census of 18500 farmers--that I had to do some research to check the claims. According to the Congressional Research Service, there were 33,250 farms operated by African-Americans in 1982, 22,954 in 1987, 18,816 in 1992, and 18,451 in 1997. At the time of those census records, however, only the farm owners were counted as farm operators, with no allowance made for farmers who rented their land rather than owning it outright. In 2002, revisions in census definitions to reflect the reality of tenant farmers yielded a count of 29,090 African-American farmers. Meanwhile, the overall number of farms from 1997-2002 declined by 4.1%.
By my numbers, that means that the census data cited by Mr. Foster underestimated the number of black farmers by about 20-25%. A reasonably conservative estimate of the number of black farmers in the time in question would range from 23,000 to 39,000. Many of those who "attempted to farm" in that period would have been among the 16,000 farmers who exited the business; few neophytes indeed are eager to jump into an industry like farming where the small operators are being systematically wiped out.
Per the official data, while many claims have been made in Pigford I and II, only about 15,645 Track A claims have been approved and only 170 individuals have been accepted as being eligible for Track B claims. These numbers are reasonably in line with the true numbers of black farmers 1983-1997 and the apparently pervasive discrimination by the USDA.
It's obvious that many claimants--especially the late claimants--are fraudsters. But it also seems that due diligence has been performed to prevent payments to most ineligible claimants. Undoubtedly, a goodly amount of fraud, waste, and abuse has occurred in Pigford. Nevertheless, all things considered, my impression is that a respectable (albeit imperfect) effort has been made to compensate true victims of discrimination and to exclude the much more numerous vultures circling the kill.
Sources:
Congressional Research Service report 20430: External Link
how is Pigford any different from what the Community Reinvestment Act became? A very large percentage of the home loans that were defaulted on were originally granted based on fraudulent applications. Who has gone to jail for fraud? No One. The reason is racial at it's core. Nobody wants to be the one that prosecutes blacks for fraud and gets labeled a racist. That is why Pigford fraud (and similar frauds) have flourished!
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