The blogosphere is aflame tonight over Rep. Steve King’s recent comments on the House floor. Earlier today, the House passed the Claims Resolution Act of 2010, which authorizes the Department of Agriculture to pay $1.15 billion in settlements for the class-action lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman.
Between 1983 and 1997, the department discriminated against black farmers in its distribution of grants, prompting four hundred of them to sue in 1997. They won the case, forcing the government to offer $50,000 to every black farmer who filed a complaint against the department during the time period in question. In 2008, however, then-senator Barack Obama and Sen. Chuck Grassley shepherded a law through Congress that reopened the case, allowing thousands more farmers to apply for restitution.
Rep. King has raised concerns that many of the claims are fraudulent. For evidence, he points to the fact that almost 94,000 claims have been filed, even though Census data estimates there to be only around 33,000 black farmers in the country.
Today on the floor, King voiced skepticism that the bill truly represented an attempt at justice. “Figure this out, Madame Speaker,” he said. “We have a very, very urban senator, Barack Obama, who has decided he’s going to run for president, and what does he do? He introduces legislation to create a whole new Pigford claim.” Some bloggers see a tinge of racism in King’s remarks. “We all know what he means by ‘urban,’” Mediaite’s Hillary Busis wrote earlier today.
For his part, King is flabbergasted. “I had hard time figuring out what they meant,” he tells National Review Online. “If you’re determined to be offended, I can guess you are determined to find offense in anything.”
What did he really mean? “If Barack Obama had been a rural senator, within a state that had a significant amount of black farmers, he would have introduced this bill,” King explains. “But it’s pretty obvious to me that he didn’t have a legislative interest in this that could have been rooted in his Illinois constituency. Therefore, was it an action on his part designed to help his campaign for the presidency? I think it was.”
“It didn’t make sense for Obama to introduce this legislation, being from Chicago,” King concludes. “He doesn’t understand agricultural issues. He’s very, very urban.”
On the substance of the issue, King’s opponents dispute his claim that there is widespread fraud. The disjunction between the number of claims and the number of black farmers is in fact a legacy of the department’s discrimination, they contend. More black farmers would be in business had they received the department’s help. And the government maintains that in 1999, the FBI found only three instances of fraud among 15,000 claims.
“I have conceded that there were black farmers that were discriminated against,” King admits. But he thinks estimating how many farmers would be in business had discrimination not occurred is impossible.
He also points out that many white farmers went out of business in the 80s and 90s. “Many of them believed they were discriminated against by the USDA, the bank, their neighbors,” King says. “There were all sorts of rationalizations going on. All of this suffering that went on wasn’t exclusively black farmers. You cannot apply the metric of ‘there would be more black farmers if . . .’ I don’t know how you adjust for that.” Many farmers, black and white alike, suffered what King calls the 80s’ “farm crisis.”
As for the FBI’s investigations, King calls for more of them: “If you don’t do investigations, you don’t find fraud.”
“I have sat down with a number of USDA employees,” he warns, “and I have not sat down with one who administered these claims and who believed they were predominantly legitimate.” With the strong showing of Republican opposition to the settlement on the House floor today, King predicts there will be support for further investigation into the Pigford settlement in 112th Congress.
So the suit is now about black farmers created or saved.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe department treated people unfairly? Then how does it follow that the taxpayer owes compensation? The taxpayer didn't do anything wrong -- make the bureaucrats pony up for their wrongdoing. We never wanted the USDA making loans anyway.
There's fraud here, and not just in the claims process.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOf course, Obama represented the *whole* state of Illinois. Ever driven through there? I have. Pretty agricultural state. It's possible that Obama - being a politician and all - even knew that.
So maybe Steve King's not racist. I'll accept that. But it would appear the alternative is that he's somewhat ignorant.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExcuse me, racism? Wasn't it Harry Reid who said them Senator Obama had a chance at being elected because he didn't have a "negro dialect", whatever the hell that is. No one (on the left) called him a racist, at least not to my knowledge. Where was the outrage then? Spoiler alert, there wasn't any because there are no enemies on the left.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think in this case, you have to view Barack Obama as a community organizer and the logic all falls into place. To call the legislation racist, is too much. However to call the legislation benefitting black farmers is not since we don't also characterize a lot of community organizing in the black community as 'racist'.
Rep. King may not be as artful in his language, but his beef isn't with the black farmers who originally qualified as much as he is with the process that might have been a vehicle for fraud.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDid you bother to ask King whether he knows that Illinois produces just about as much corn as Iowa (and is he aware that the Senator is a statewide position)? Or whether he knows that there are, in fact, legitimate Pigford claimants in Illinois, as per Roland Burris' remarks on the Senate floor: "Today, Johnson's farm in Alton, IL, is one of just 59 run by African Americans across the State, down from 123 in 1997, according to revised figures from a 2002 census. As farming has become a big business, it has become one of the least diverse businesses around. It was not always. In 1920, Illinois had 892 Black farmers, and African Americans owned 14 percent of the Nation's farmland. Now they hold less than 1 percent."
And how do you address the relevance of King's remarks on the floor to race and not ask him about saying this during the same appearance: ""We've got to stand up at some point and say, 'We are not gonna pay slavery reparations in the United States Congress,'"
Is the National Review a news organization or an outlet for face-saving Congressional PR?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWay to go Rep King! There is indeed fraud in this claim and you are right on the money with why Obama re-opened it - now having the US taxpayer shell out billions instead of the original $100 million. The original farmers were likely to be the only ones discriminated against. This is just another Cloward-Piven way to overwhelm the system and drain the money out of the perceived rich (gee mostly WHITE) and give to poor (how many Black farmers???). We should look for Farmer Van Jones on that farmer list... gee I wonder..
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI find it interesting that this coverage omits Mr. King's remarks from the speech in question likening this settlement resulting from acknowledged systemic bias to "reparations."
The entire speech was replete with racial overtones. Shame on you, NRO.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn the NYC nightclub business urban isn't a code word for black clientele; it means black clientele. So what? What would overly sensitive folks prefer a black crowd to be referred as? When I go to Chinatown I see a lot of Chinese people. What do sensitive folks see? I suppose they'll say they just see people but I see a whole lot of Chinese people in Chinatown. How does that make me racist? It doesn't.
Anyway, in this context, exactly what would sensitive types prefer Rep. King call urbanites? Cityfolk? Cosmopolitans? Uh huh.
Weirdos.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Between 1983 and 1997, the department discriminated against black farmers in its distribution of grants, prompting four hundred of them to sue in 1997. They won the case, forcing the government to offer $50,000 to every black farmer who filed a complaint against the department during the time period in question."
Untrue. The Clinton USDA refused to defend the actions of the Reagan USDA, and settled instead. They weren't "forced" to do anything. They were delighted to hand out huge amounts of money to their political supporters. The USDA under Vilsack is simply a patronage trough for the Democratic Gang.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI suppose King's never woken up in Chicago to the farm reports on the radio. And perhaps being the site of the Mercantile Exchange doesn't mean much in his view either. Not to mention that little connection to the meat industry.
Defining Illinois by some Bob Newhart-stereotype of Chicago and implying it knows nothing about agriculture is like defining California by Beverly Hills and claiming the same.
It's obvious what King is doing here and only the dim and the willfully-dim are fooled by it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe're all black farmers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAll of the claimants that receive a settlement should be required to invest it in their own farms. If they had to do this, and not be able to just make the claim and keep the money for themselves, I believe you would actually sort out those who were truly discriminated against.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHad the legislation been introduced by Carl Levin, I suspect that most of you who are now saying that Obama was representing the interests of Illinois farmers would be asking, "what's a senator from the Motor City doing messing with agriculture?"
Illinois isn't the only state with significant agriculture that people tend to characterize according to the major urban centers in those states. When I say Michigan, most of you defending Obama and attacking King would think "cars" and not "sugar beets", "apples" or "cherries".
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"There might have been more black farmers if not for racism of the Department of Agriculture"
And there might have been more unicorns in Canada if St. George hadn't a reputation of animosity towards Dragons. If ifs and buts...are irrelevant.
That's not what the case or the settlement were about. They were about real (or potential) instances of racism against real (but not potential) people during a specific period of time who had real (not imaginary) dealings with the Department of Agriculture.
I don't know of one farmer who has had dealings with the Department of Agriculture, though I've met a few who receive subsidy checks, though that's the total extent of their dealings.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@mantic
"I think in this case, you have to view Barack Obama as a community organizer and the logic all falls into place. To call the legislation racist, is too much. However to call the legislation benefitting black farmers is not since we don't also characterize a lot of community organizing in the black community as 'racist'."
Can you even define "community organizer?" Given that the whole point of the Pigford suit is that there's no longer much of a community of black farmers because of racism at USDA, what community's being organized here?
And, if Pigford settlements are all about Obama's "community organizing," why did George W Bush sign the law that allowed new claimants in 2008? There was no veto-proof majority in either house of Congress, and if it's such an obviously racist settlement why would he have consented to it?
It might be helpful to do a thought experiment: what if the USDA had a program of giving loans only to African American farmers to save their businesses while ignoring white farmers forced into foreclosure, after which their African American neighbors bought up their land on the cheap? If this practice were discovered and put to an end, everyone would be cool with just letting bygones by bygones, right?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMozart has been described as a most urban musician... ah, there's the rub.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen I read message boards such as this, I often leave very disturbed by how clueless so many people in this country are.
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