Breitbart Was Right About Pigford

Andrew Klavan explains the background, and why Andrew Breitbart became interested in the case.

Barack Obama and his administration facilitated a multi-billion dollar fraud to funnel taxpayer money to any African-American willing to rip off the public till. The complex scandal known as Pigford began with a reasonable claim by a few black farmers that they’d been treated wrongly by a racist government — but exploded, with Obama’s help, into a shameless dole out to any minority huckster who happened along. It took them a while to get there, but kudos to the Times for doing the job.

The reason the Pigford scandal touched Andrew so deeply was that he believed it was behind the Shirley Sherrod firing — for which he was wrongly blamed.....

Andrew showed that a company formed by Sherrod and her husband received a huge Pigford pay-off of some $13-million. He believed that that’s why she was fired so fast — and why he was vilified so cruelly: to keep journalists from asking too many questions and uncovering the Pigford scandal, the iceberg beneath the Sherrod tip.

Well, he's been vindicated. Breitbart.com is doing a victory lap about the New York Times reporting on A1 what Breitbart.com's been reporting for two years.*

The cost of the settlements, which could exceed $4.4 billion, is the result of a process that "became a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees," the Times notes.

Among those influential members of Congress was then-Senator Barack Obama, who made Pigford payouts a priority in exchange for political support for his 2008 presidential campaign among a coveted group of black voters in the rural South, the Times reports.

As president, Obama continued to support payouts for new groups of claimants while abandoning a review process that had been used to fight fraud. The aim was "buying the support" of minorities, according to the Times, while middlemen created a "cottage industry" in defrauding the government.

* I put off reporting this because I didn't know how to write it-- Andrew's vindicated because the New York Times confesses the story is true? Why should I give the NYT that power to arbitrate what is true or not?

It was just as true yesterday, before the NYT finally reported it.

So I don't want to feed this lunatic idea that the NYT decides what the truth is.

But in this case, it's a leftist outlet making an admission against its interest, as they'd say in court, and therefore having an indicator of credibility.

posted by Ace at 03:34 PM

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