Articles and information on current political happenings in Washington DC and beyond, complete with my comments, thoughts, analysis, and opinion.
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Media Miss Black Farmer Fraud The news media have recently discovered a big story that has been around since January 1999, when the Washington Post reported that the government had agreed to a consent decree in a class-action lawsuit filed against the Department of Agriculture by black farmers seeking compensation for discrimination they allegedly suffered when they applied for government farm loans. When the government signed the consent decree to allow the case to go forward, it was expected that about 2,500 plaintiffs would join in the suit. By the closing date of October 1999, over 20,000 had joined, and to date 21,325 cases have been adjudicated. The plaintiffs had won12,849 of them and lost 8,476. The winners were awarded $50,000 tax free and forgiveness of any debt they owed the Department of Agriculture. The cost to the government was $659 million, counting $17 million of debts that were forgiven but not the heavy expenses that had been incurred. Accuracy in Media investigated and wrote about this scandal 18 months ago, pointing out that the government had needlessly agreed to conditions that were guaranteed to generate a large number of fraudulent claims that would have to be paid. The black applicant had to claim he or she was a farmer who had applied for a government farm loan on a date between January 1, 1981 and December 31, 1996 at such and such an office—and assert that because of race they had been turned down or given a loan on less favorable terms than those given a comparably situated white applicant. Since the Department of Agriculture had destroyed its records of rejected loan applications prior to 1995, it had no evidence that it could use to prove the falsity of claims of rejections from 1981 through December 1994. If the applicants could find one person,...
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