The untold story of the Obama Administration’s widely reported, $335 million discrimination settlement with Countrywide Financial Corporation is that, under a secret Justice Department program, a chunk of the money won’t go to the “victims” but rather leftist groups not connected to the lawsuit.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) will determine which “qualified organizations” get leftover settlement cash and Democrat-tied groups like the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the open-borders National Council of La Raza (NCLR) stand to get large sums based on the hastily arranged deal which got court approval in just a few days.

Judicial Watch has investigated this controversial arrangement and in 2010 sued the DOJ to obtain information about the policy directing big portions of cash settlements from its civil rights lawsuits to organizations not officially connected to the cases. In response to JW’s lawsuit, the DOJ was forced to acknowledge that it has no official guidelines regarding “qualified organizations” that get leftover settlement funds and that it doesn’t monitor how the money is used.

In the Countrywide case, details of the unscrupulous arrangement are buried deep (page 10 of the 17-page settlement) in the court document where Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial Corporation agrees to pay to resolve allegations that it discriminated against qualified black and Hispanic borrowers. The lender denies all of the charges, but wanted to end the case and caved into the government’s terms.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal judge has given final approval to a $1.2 billion government settlement with black farmers who claim they were unfairly denied loans and other assistance from the Agriculture Department over many years.

Federal judge Paul Friedman approved the settlement late Thursday. He said it will likely take about a year for neutral parties to review claims and then all of the settlements will be paid out at once.

This is the second round of settlements in the 1999 case known as the Pigford case, after the original plaintiff, North Carolina farmer Timothy Pigford. The settlement is directed at farmers who were denied payments in the first round because they missed deadlines for filing. (more…)

I know you need some Pigford to keep you going through the weekend, so here’s a couple of stray thoughts…

1) An Appeal By Any Other Name

This is from Paul Friedman’s decision on the Pigford settlement…

“…there is no right to appeal those decisions, except that the Monitor shall direct the arbitrator or adjudicator to reexamine the claim if he determines that a “clear and manifest error has occurred” that is “likely to result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice.”  Consent Decree at ¶¶ 9(a)(v), 9(b)(v), 10(i), 12(b)(iii)

Well, something must have changed because 10% of the decisions in Pigford were not only appealed but were actually overturned, according to the government’s own official numbers.  There’s a chart showing ‘reexamination results.’ Check it out — thousands of results changed. How is that not an ‘appeal’?

I want to make it clear that I’m not opposed to these appeals. Some of them actually were the only way that bona fide farmers actually got anything  from the settlement. But – something clearly happened and it’s different than Friedman’s decision.

What I think this does show is the whole process was screwed up and needs investigation. But you knew that already, right?

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I’m looking for some advice. It’s about money.

I don’t need to tell you that times are tough. It seems like half the experts think we are about to plunge into the second part of a double-dip recession and the other half think that we’re there already. Like a lot of people, the week to week struggle is tiring me out and it’s not just about me, either. I have a wife and kids to think about, too.

I won’t lie; the idea of getting $50,000 tax-free sounds pretty good to me.

I know exactly how I can get it, too. It wouldn’t take more than a few hours of work. All I need to do is fill out some forms and talk about the time that my sweet, dearly departed mother tried to get a farm loan from the USDA.

You may be thinking that it sounds too good to be true.

Trust me, it’s not. This is the real deal. I’ve been working on a documentary about the USDA’s “black farmers” settlement for months now. I’ve interviewed dozens of people and it’s very clear that you can collect a $50,000 check if you know how to fill out the paperwork correctly. And I know how to fill that paperwork out.

Basically, you tell the USDA that you or a relative attempted to farm during a certain period of time but that you or the relative were a victim of discrimination and the USDA didn’t even give out the loan paperwork. No proof one way or another. The claim is judged by an “adjudicator” who looks at your paperwork and if it seems specific, detailed and believable, they approve the claim and you collect a $50,000 check tax-free.

In the Pigford black farmers settlement, over 15,000 people collected these checks and I’ve been told by a number of people that over 80% of them collected on this “attempted to farm” standard. If you’re still skeptical, here’s the official government accounting. The U.S. government paid out over billion dollars in claims and most of it didn’t go to farmers.

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Congressman Issa,

Back on January 3rd of this year, you said the following in a video interview about the Pigford II settlement.

I have to use every asset I can get including all the other committees to do what they can. So, Pigford, we’ll participate but we’ll make sure other committees do their work.

Now we’re well into the heat of the summer with several major deadlines for Pigford II looming and the American people have yet to see an investigation into the scandal.

Congressman Issa, I’ll be direct — the issue that is most troubling to many people is that you recently voted to keep Pigford funding. I have no idea why you would cast a vote against representative Steve King (R-IA) and his efforts to stop both the fraudulent nature of the settlement and the legislative chicanery that created it. I have seen no explanation forthcoming and frankly I’m not imaginative enough to be able to come up with one that makes sense.

The burden of proof is now on you to show that you will actually ‘use every asset’ to get an investigation into Pigford II started in all due haste, despite casting a vote to continue its funding. In other words, Congressman Issa — you now own responsibility for the billion dollar plus political payback Pigford II settlement.

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Rep. King’s amendment failed – here’s the roll call vote. Every Democrat voted against it – but it lost because 78 Republicans also went against stopping over a billion dollars in money being paid out for fraud. Two votes jumped out at me.

Tea Party favorite Allen West (R-FL) voted with the Congressional Black Caucus to keep Pigford funding flowing to fraudsters.

But worse, Darrell Issa (R-CA), who would be the one to get investigations going.

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Here’s a chance to stop the Pigford fraud in its tracks – Rep. Steve King (R – IA) has introduced an amendment to halt Pigford Funding. This is about the multi-billion dollar “Black Farmers Settlement” that we’ve been exposing as a fraud for over six months at BigGovernment.com

The last time that King tried to introduce a bill to stop Pigford II funding last year, he was blocked by the Democrat controlled congress and it wasn’t allowed to come up for a vote. Now we have a chance to do the right thing and end the fraud.

You can make a difference, right now – this is a vote we can win.

You just need to make 4 quick calls, visit one site and then send and email or a Tweet.

1. Call your Congressman and tell them you support Rep. Steve King’s amendment to stop Pigford II funding. This is especially important if you have a GOP Congressman.

Not sure who your Congressperson is or how to teach them? Use this website.

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For some people, it seems hard to believe that the government would actually give $50,000 checks in what is supposed to be a “farmers settlement” to people who never farmed a day in their life. It sounds outrageous to believe that the government would give billions of dollars away to people who have no proof that they even filled out an application with the USDA.

Don’t take my word for it – just ask Obama administration. They are actively advertising the fact that any woman can be eligible to receive up to $50,000 for claiming – without proof — that the USDA refused to give her a loan application.

This is from the FAQ on the official government website FarmerClaims.gov

Who is Covered?

I went into the USDA office and they wouldn’t provide me an application, so I don’t have a denial letter or anything from USDA. Am I eligible for a claim and if so what do I need to provide?

You may be eligible to submit a claim depending on your specific circumstances. You may request a claims package and review the eligibility criteria contained in the claims package. If you have questions, you may consult with counsel or another legal service provider.

Click the link and look for yourself. You need the same information in Spanish? After all, there’s also a “Hispanic farmers” settlement . No problema – aqui!

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When looking at the possibility of fraud in the Pigford settlement, one of the big red flags that goes up for many people is a disparity between the number of claims and the number of black farmers.

Between the first and second Pigford settlements, there had been over 90,000 claims filed but as agricultural news source Agri-Pulse points out…

…confronted with the skyrocketing federal deficit, more officials are taking a critical  look at the billion dollars spent thus far and wondering when these discrimination cases will ever end. Already, the number of people who have been paid and are still seeking payment will likely exceed the 26,785 black farmers who were considered to even be operating back you in 1997, according to USDA.

Despite that obvious disparity, the defenders of Pigford have any number of explanations to justify nearly four times the number of claims as there were farmers. Last night while doing research on Pigford I found an even more jarring statistical difference that I’ve never heard anyone point out.

According to this 2007 Census report on black farmers, the overwhelming majority of black farmers are men – 86%. In case you’re wondering, the number is exactly the same for white farmers; in other words, most farmers are men.

But the majority of successful Pigford claimants are women.

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Obviously, the team here at the The Bigs has spent a lot of time covering the Pigford scandal and we plan to give you a lot more coverage in the coming weeks. But I’ve noticed something that’s come up a number of times in comments and I’d like to take the chance to address it; the idea that the Pigford case is an unwinnable fight that’s over and done with.

This just isn’t true. Pigford is a battle we can win and the consequences are potentially huge.

First, let’s address the issue of money. Between the first and second Pigford settlement about $2.5 billion dollars has been allocated. About half of that money has been sent out as payments for Pigford I and it’s highly unlikely that any of that money is recoverable.  That’s the bad news.

On the other hand, the billion and a half dollars that has been misallocated by President Obama for the Pigford II settlement has not been sent out yet. In fact no checks are expected to be written until 2012 at the earliest. That means that there’s still time to get an investigation going that will stop those checks – most of which we believe our investigation will show are scheduled to go to people who never farmed a day in their life —  from ever being cut.

One thing that the advocates of Pigford absolutely do not want is an investigation. In fact as Georgia Democratic Congressman Sanford Bishop told a group of farmers, “If they investigate Pigford, they’ll shut this thing down.” You can also see this same attitude coming from the panicked responses of the “professional Pigford class”; those people like Thomas Burrell and Dr. John Boyd who run organizations that profit from the continuation of Pigford fraud.

Just as important, I still believe that there’s a chance to get justice for the actual farmers who face discrimination. However I think that this will only happen by first shutting down Pigford fraud and getting an investigation going.

So, how do we help get investigation started in Congress?

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John Stossel did a special on Freeloaders that included a six minute segment on the Pigford case that I’ve been working on the past few months. It’s worth watching and sharing with people who don’t understand Pigford.

I think there was one major omission, however — the plight of the real black farmers who did suffer discrimination and who were totally abused by this settlement.

Obviously, the fraud of people getting $50,000 checks is a central part of the story. Because of the nature of this settlement, most of them happened to be black although there were some white people who found ways to cash in, too. The part about people getting $50,000 checks they don’t deserve is juicy, easy to understand and Stossel’s piece did a good job of summing it up.

The bigger fraud, however, has been perpetrated on the legitimate black farmers whose cases and stories were hijacked; people like Arkansas farmer Jimmy Dismuke, who was shown in the story. The ‘$50,000 check’ fraud was done on the back of hard working farmers who actually did suffer discrimination at the hands of a huge government organization with no real accountability. In fact, part of the reason the USDA has played along with writing those $50,000 checks to people is to keep the status quo at the USDA.

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John Boyd is the president of the National Black Farmers Association and has been the main media face of the Pigford settlement for over a decade. He’s been featured on numerous TV shows and in print. He’s been lauded by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and often appears beside them in public appearences. He’s been recognized by President Obama and was present at the private signing ceremony when the Pigford II settlement was signed.

Here’s a question that should be simple to answer — does he actually have a doctorate that allows him to refer to himself in professional situations as Dr. John Boyd?

Hours of research show many contradictions in the way Boyd refers to himself but so far, I’ve found no evidence whatsoever that Boyd ever received any degree, either earned or honorary, much less any doctorate.

In testimony before the House of Representatives in 2008, he refers to himself as Dr. John Boyd .

But Boyd’s bio from Gale Contemporary Black Biography says the hollowing.

Education: Attended Southside Community College, 1983, and Clemson Univ., 1984-85.

Boyd’s Wikipedia entry makes no mention at all of any kind of doctorate nor does his biography on The Huffington Post.

Boyd’s own personal page refers to him as Dr. but there’s no mention of a doctorate of any kind on his biography page on the same site, despite a long list of his accomplishments. One of those listed accomplishments is that he was”vetted by President Obama’s transition team as a candidate for Secretary of Agriculture“.

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The mainstream media has treated accusations of large-scale fraud in the Pigford settlement with overt skepticism and a distinct lack of journalistic curiosity. The press has blindly repeated the Obama Administration’s claim that there are only a handful of fraud cases among the twenty thousand or so paid Pigford claims.  Worse, the media has helped promote the narrative that those raising concerns about fraud in Pigford are racist.

You’re about to watch a video clip where Othello Cross, an attorney for Pigford claimants with about fifteen years of experience on the case, admits that he is personally aware of hundreds of cases of fraud in the state of Arkansas alone. Furthermore, he explains how easy it was to commit that fraud and receive a $50,000 check from the government; it’s appropriate to deduce from Cross’s revealing statement that the actual number of fraudulent claims is likely much higher than the hundreds he knows about.

You’re about to watch this clip for the first time, but the USDA watched it over a week ago — I sent it to them for comment about 10 days ago.

After a number of phone calls to the USDA, I was given the response that Secretary Vilsack now acknowledges around ten cases of fraud, up from his original statement that there are only three known cases. If I were inclined to spin the government’s response, I’d praise the USDA for finding 300% more instances of fraud in just a few days, but the reality is that the USDA can watch a video where a pro-Pigford claimant lawyer says in no uncertain terms that he knows about hundreds of cases of fraud — over ten million dollars worth at bare minimum — and still will only acknowledge ten cases.

As Andrew Breitbart points out, the media simply doesn’t want to cover Pigford. I also sent this video to a few major media outlets that stated they wanted to “research” this. I haven’t heard back from any of them. (more…)

From the Huffington Post:

One thing that’s emerged from every conversation I’ve had is that America’s black farmers are this country’s unsung heroes. Farming is hard enough work on its own, but when you add the additional weight of fighting the government’s “good old boy” network that existed in many places, the resilience of the black farmers is amazing.

The dignity of the black farmers makes the mainstream media’s blanket of silence about Pigford especially offensive. A black reporter I spoke with attributed some of that to the subtle systemic racism that exists in the mainstream media, with a bias towards covering stories that affect or are about white folks. Too often, the press is able to pat itself on the back by dealing with stories about race in a surface way. They pretend that by calling the Tea Party or a Republican politician a racist, they’ve done their job and scored a victory for minorities. In fact, though, all those reports end up doing is casting heat but not light. They stir up racial tensions and let the press give themselves a pass for not actually digging into a story like Pigford.

Another thing that everyone seems to agree on about Pigford is that it’s a very complex story. It’s not something that can be explained easily between two commercial breaks or in a couple of soundbites. That being said, it’s fascinating — a long, winding trail of outright corruption and wholesale fraud weaving itself between complicated, passionate people on all sides who have struggled to do the right thing to remedy the plight of black farmers.

The story the press wants you to hear about Pigford is an overly simple one; it’s a settlement to remedy black farmers, and last week (over the racially tinged objections of a tiny group of House Republicans) the president signed the Pigford 2 extension that provides more than a billion dollars in funding for late filing farmers.

The problem with that explanation of Pigford is that it’s false on nearly every level.

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From American Thinker:

Here’s one example of how state law enforcement officials have leveraged and possibly violated the law to help ACORN in return for ACORN’s political help.

In December 2004, Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch sued Capital One for failing to state in its advertisements that it could increase interest rates on credit cards. As part of a 2006 settlement, Capital One paid $749,999, of which $249,999 went to ACORN, $250,000 went to the nonprofit Legal Aid, and $250,000 to the State of Minnesota.

ACORN’s political action committee had endorsed Mike Hatch for attorney general in 1998 and 2002, and in 2006 for governor.

Read the whole article here. Of course, this could be an isolated incident, but we think it is likely this skit has played out countless times around the country.