Qualified owner for 50,000 dollars
In 1999, President Bill Clinton agreed to pay black farmers, who claimed they were discriminated against, a tax free payment of $50,000 apiece to settle all claims. Then the case made it’s way through courtroom after courtroom until it reached the Supreme Court, where SCOTUS decided there were 91 victims. That means the government would pay out 45.5 million. Not a small sum but manageable.
Then came Obama. He and his political appointees decided to disregard the ruling of the Supreme Court and to commit 1.33 billion to compensate not only the 91 farmers but thousands of Hispanic, black, female and native Americans who never claimed discrimination. The new payout scheme was developed solely in meetings held in the White House. Many lifetime employees tried in vain to scuttle the program by noting that no discrimination was ever proven.
The liberal New York Times even called it a disgrace. They claimed that it was racial politics in play and not real discrimination. They also pointed out that Resident Obama had taken away all the necessary paperwork and proof farmers had to supply to qualify fore the tax free settlement checks. This has led to massive fraud and the total payouts could now reach over 4.4 billion dollars. This is an Obama scandal that needs to be investigated and addressed.
The settlement was urged on by powerful politicians and law firms looking to collect 130 million in legal fees and without restrictions on who can apply, it’s become a runaway train. As of now, there are more applications from minorities than there were farms owned by whites, blacks, Hispanics, women, Native Americans and Himalaya Sherpa combined.
According to the Times:
“Two government reports that year found no evidence of ongoing, systemic discrimination. The Government Accountability Office reported that 16 percent of minority farmers were denied loans, compared with 10 percent of white farmers, but traced the difference to objective factors like bad credit. An Agriculture Department study also found “no consistent picture of disparity” over the previous two years.”
Also cited in the Times:
“Delton Wright, a Pine Bluff justice of the peace, recalled what happened after word of the settlement reached his impoverished region: “It just went wild. Some people took the money who didn’t even have a garden in the ground.” He added, “They didn’t make it hard at all, and that’s why people jumped on it.”
“On two floors of the Cotton Annex building in Washington, a 300-member team from the Farm Service Agency reviewed claims before adjudicators rendered their final decisions. In recent interviews, 15 current and former Agriculture Department employees who reviewed or responded to claims said the loose conditions for payment had opened the floodgates to fraud. ”
“It was the craziest thing I have ever seen,” one former high-ranking department official said. “We had applications for kids who were 4 or 5 years old. We had cases where every single member of the family applied.” The official added, “You couldn’t have designed it worse if you had tried.”
Fraud was obvious:
{In 16 ZIP codes in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and North Carolina, the number of successful claimants exceeded the total number of farms operated by people of any race in 1997, the year the lawsuit was filed. Those applicants received nearly $100 million.
In Maple Hill, a struggling town in southeastern North Carolina, the number of people paid was nearly four times the total number of farms. More than one in nine African-American adults there received checks. In Little Rock, Ark., a confidential list of payments shows, 10 members of one extended family collected a total of $500,000, and dozens of other successful claimants shared addresses, phone numbers or close family connections.
Thirty percent of all payments, totaling $290 million, went to predominantly urban counties — a phenomenon that supporters of the settlement say reflects black farmers’ migration during the 15 years covered by the lawsuit. Only 11 percent, or $107 million, went to what the Agriculture Department classifies as “completely rural” counties.}
{Some 66,000 claims poured in after the 1999 deadline. Noting that the government had given “extensive” notice, Judge Friedman ruled the door closed to late filers. “That is simply how class actions work,” he wrote.
But it was not how politics worked. The next nine years brought a concerted effort to allow the late filers to seek awards. Career Agriculture Department officials warned that they might be even more problematic than initial claimants: in one ZIP code in Columbus, Ohio, nearly everyone in two adjoining apartment buildings had filed, according to the former high-ranking agency official.}
Not one case of fraud has ever been prosecuted because democrats set the bar so low, it was impossible to prove criminality. And once again the taxpayers have been sacrificed on the altar of democratic fundraising.