Remember the class-action suit black farmers filed against the federal government some years back? It's the suit the government settled in January 1999. The government admitted it had discriminated against black farmers by passing them over for federal loans. Under the terms of the settlement, the government would pay $50,000 to any black farmer.
As of 2001, about 40,000 people have applied for their share of the settlement. There is a bit of a problem here. You see, the Census Bureau says that there are only 18,000 black farmers in the country. So, where did these 40,000 farmers come from?
Tom Kalil is a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan official. He's also a member of ECHO--Executives Committed to an Honorable Organization. Kalil and his ECHO colleagues think they know where the extra 28,000 farmers came from. They came from the a grand Democrat Party vote buying scheme. They are your proof that the settlement was just a vote-buying scheme set up by the Clinton administration.
You see, to get your $50,000 you didn’t actually have to BE a black farmer. You had two criteria to meet: (a) You had to be black; and, (b) you had to have “tried” farming between 1981 and 1996.
So --- how do you prove to the government that you “tried” to farm between 1981 and 1996? Well, I guess you just sign a statement saying it’s so! You see, the USDA doesn’t have any records of loan applications during that period, so there’s no way to tell which black farmers actually applied for loans and were turned down … and which weren’t farmers at all!
Kalil says "somebody from here in the Washington area could have been passing through a rural community and decided that they would have liked to farm and put in an application."
Would Bill Clinton and his agriculture secretary have tried to buy votes like this? Hell, yes. Money is power. Your taxpayer money can be used to buy a lot of votes--including the votes of those who've never farmed a day in their lives.
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,29321,00.html
As of 2001, about 40,000 people have applied for their share of the settlement. There is a bit of a problem here. You see, the Census Bureau says that there are only 18,000 black farmers in the country. So, where did these 40,000 farmers come from?
Tom Kalil is a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan official. He's also a member of ECHO--Executives Committed to an Honorable Organization. Kalil and his ECHO colleagues think they know where the extra 28,000 farmers came from. They came from the a grand Democrat Party vote buying scheme. They are your proof that the settlement was just a vote-buying scheme set up by the Clinton administration.
You see, to get your $50,000 you didn’t actually have to BE a black farmer. You had two criteria to meet: (a) You had to be black; and, (b) you had to have “tried” farming between 1981 and 1996.
So --- how do you prove to the government that you “tried” to farm between 1981 and 1996? Well, I guess you just sign a statement saying it’s so! You see, the USDA doesn’t have any records of loan applications during that period, so there’s no way to tell which black farmers actually applied for loans and were turned down … and which weren’t farmers at all!
Kalil says "somebody from here in the Washington area could have been passing through a rural community and decided that they would have liked to farm and put in an application."
Would Bill Clinton and his agriculture secretary have tried to buy votes like this? Hell, yes. Money is power. Your taxpayer money can be used to buy a lot of votes--including the votes of those who've never farmed a day in their lives.
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,29321,00.html
