A Pigford Sty of Corruption and Fraud, Part 3

The legacy media is deeply entrenched in Statism. As a result, they would never expose a Statist president for his or his administration's involvement in corruption. But this one isn't going to go away easily. It will have to be addressed. How will the anti-American, Statist legacy media ultimately spin this story?

The Pigford Case and Why the NY Times Doesn’t Want to Talk About It

This is pretty amazing in a number of ways:

This should be a case about public corruption, one that involves the President since he recently signed off on more money for this settlement. There are three reasons it’s not on the front page of the NY Times.

Reason 1: There were some real victims here, black victims. That’s shameful. No one likes to linger on their shame, especially not the government. And that goes for media outlets who, by and large, are on the current administration’s side.

Reason 2: If this was investigated it would undoubtedly uncover hundreds of people who took advantage of the system, all of them black. No one at the Times or the Post wants to portray blacks as victimizers of the public trust. Exposing something like this as reality would be a blow to the liberal narrative about government handouts and minorities. The Times won’t lend credence to what they see as a negative stereotype, i.e. “welfare queens.”

Reason 3: And this may be the biggest one of all. Andrew Breitbart broke the story. The liberal media is emotionally invested in Breitbart’s failure. You could see that in the grudging way they covered the ACORN story. You could see it in the gleeful way they covered the Shirley Sherrod story. They refuse to give him a win, especially one which would rehabilitate his image and make him more powerful going into 2012. They hate him. It’s obviously a factor in this situation.

There are only three courses left to the MSM. One, pretend it isn’t happening or, at best, frame the complaints as the product of far right troublemakers with no facts offered to back them up. That’s going to be increasingly difficult in light of this video tape, but it wouldn’t be the first time Times readers have gone without the facts.

Two, write a massive article full of pathos for the real victims and minimize or sidestep the fraud issue. In other words, let it be known that the Grey Lady has decided the good outweighs the bad so it’s okay to turn a blind eye on this one.

Three, investigate and let the chips fall where they may. Of all the options, this is the least likely. But you can just imagine how this would have been treated if Bush had signed off on it instead of Obama at a time of financial crisis and worries about deficits and government spending. It would have been front page news.

A Pigford Sty of Corruption and Fraud, Part 2

A Black Farmer Blows the Whistle on the Black Farmer Settlement

I have 200 acres in Arkansas and have raised hogs.
Pigford is the biggest rip-off this country has ever known, and there are lots of people in positions of power that know it. Politicians are using it to buy votes. Trial lawyers are using it to get rich.

I personally know of people who have no connection to farming at all who got Pigford checks. People with potted plants in their apartments claimed to be farmers and got paid. I saw an instance where eight Pigford checks went to one house. There are drug addicts and pushers who have received payments who have never farmed a day in their life.
[...]
Congress needs to investigate Pigford immediately. I believe that probably 80 to 90% of Pigford claims are fraudulent. I know that its at least 300 cases in Arkansas alone. By investigating this fraud we are opening up a can of worms. But it needs to be done. Justice demands it.

A Pigford Sty of Corruption and Fraud, Part 1

In addition to being a concise, but thorough, summary by Breitbart himself of his exposure of NAACP racism in response to their media-complicit false accusations of racism against the Tea Party, it also introduces a report initiated to understand why Sherrod was fired, but producing evidence of yet another scandal of government fraud and corruption.

Me & Mrs. Sherrod — And The $1.25 Billion Pigford II Black Farmers’ Settlement

Despite the firestorm, there was still an unanswered question — why on God’s green earth was Shirley Sherrod fired?
[...]
My first clue came, ironically, from the epicenter of Breitbart-hate — MSNBC. It was a week into the controversy. Nation editor Chris Hayes was filling in for Rachel Maddow and reported that I was responsible for black farmers not getting their settlement money.
“Conservative con artist, 1; black farmers, 0,” liberal Journolist Hayes said snarkily.
Black farmers? Settlement money? I had no idea what he was talking about. None.
[...]
I started to research Pigford and the more we looked into it, the more I realized that this was not a story that could be researched and told quickly. In fact, it was still unfolding. And even now, it still is.
This coming Wednesday, President Obama is slated to sign the Pigford II settlement.
But that will not be the end of the story. The American people deserve a full investigation and accounting.
Today, we’re releasing a report called “The Pigford Shakedown: How the Black Farmers’ Cause Was Hijacked by Politicians, Trial Lawyers & Community Organizers — Leaving Us With a Billion Dollar Tab.”
What have we discovered about Pigford so far?
Treasure troves of information from Lexis and Google. USDA whistleblowers. A former FBI agent who was on the verge of indictments. One of the originally discriminated-against black farmers with the goods. All these people paint a very clear picture of widespread fraud, and can testify to a complex web of bad players, including politicians, trial attorneys and community organizers.
I stumbled on the Pigford story in my defense of the Tea Party, so it’s a sweet irony that the Pigford story is exactly the kind of mess that makes the Tea Party so necessary. Politicians and trial attorneys bonded together to rip off the taxpayer, and even those farmers that were discriminated against were royally screwed.
Let me be clear, our investigation convincingly leads us to believe the USDA practiced discrimination against black farmers. Those wrongs must be rectified. But Pigford is wrought with a grotesque amount of fraud, while the truly aggrieved were mostly left high and dry.
The Pigford tale is about government run amok. It is also an indictment of the American media that is so blinded by ideology that it missed the big story yet again because taking out a political enemy was far more expedient. And furthermore it is why the American people need the Tea Party and new media as a checks and balances on corrupt politicians and their corrupt journalist counterparts.
Today will be the first of many days that BigGoverment.com will release information, testimony and documents to make the case that, at the very least, the American taxpayer (and ESPECIALLY those legitimately discriminated-against black farmers) need a full accounting of the Pigford I and II settlements.