By Chad Groening
March 1, 2001

(AgapePress) - The General Accounting Office is looking into circumstances surrounding a class-action lawsuit that has resulted in the giveaway of billions of taxpayer dollars by the Department of Agriculture.

A published report in American Renaissance has revealed that over the past three years, blacks have been the recipients of billions of dollars in cash as part of a consent decree with the Agriculture Department.

In the suit Pigford vs. Glickman, blacks accused the Clinton Agriculture Department with racial discrimination in its huge farm-lending programs.

The magazine’s publisher, Jared Taylor, contends that then Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman essentially refused to fight the case and agreed to pay $50,000 settlements to virtually anyone who claimed discrimination, unless actual USDA records refuted their claims.

“USDA does not keep records on unsuccessful loan applications for more than three years,” Taylor says. “So if somebody came in claiming to have suffered discrimination way back in 1981, all the way up until 1994, USDA had no documentary evidence of how it had handled the situation. This obvious ‘bonanza’ resulted in something like the Oklahoma Land Rush.”

Taylor says more than 20,000 people have claimed discrimination from the USDA, even though there are only 18,000 black farmers in the entire country.

So far, some 10,000 blacks have received $50,000 payoffs in this lawsuit. He hopes the GOA investigation will bring it to a halt.

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