"It Doesn't Look Good"
by digby
Dr James Boyd of the Black Farmers Association, who is out there working desperately to get the government off the dime to finally pay out their overdue settlement could show other liberals a thing or two. I noted before that the web site was really good, but this fellow is a breath of fresh air on television.
Here he is on CNN today:
Don Lemon: Do you think this is an outrage?
Boyd: I think this is an outrage and a disgrace for the Senate not to pass this bill that black farmers have been waiting for. This is the 7th time, Don, that the bill has come before the floor and we got basically a no vote. We've been attached to the tax extenders bill, the war bill, this bill, that bill. We call on the Senate leadership and President Obama to see what can be done so that the black farmers can receive our money. The Senate now has gone home for a recess until September the 13th. Pretty much a month and some change with no avail for black farmers... This is starting to look like a black thing Don...
Lemon: Do you think they are playing partisan politics here when it comes to black farmers? Is this a Republican vs Democrat thing when it comes to black farmers or is this Washington bureaucratic thing a political thing where everything gets mushed and mashed into other things?
Boyd: This is partisan politics at its absolute worst. Anytime you can get seven tries at a bill and it fails seven times all for different excuses. First they told us that we had to find offsets, we found the offsets. This bill wasn't the right fit, that bill wasn't the right fit. But not one Republican has voted to secure the funds for black farmers.
We're going to be out in the month of August, Don, raising some cane in these Senatorial election where we can make a difference. It's time for this partisan politics to stop and for the Senate to start working for the American people. We've sat back and been nice about this thing long enough and we're sick and tired of being sick and tired of waiting.
Lemon: it really has been for years that black farmers have been trying to get some restitution from Washington when it came to what they believe was discrimination and what have you against black farmers and this was before and even after the civil rights movement... [Shirley Sherrod, haves and have nots etc].. There are white farmers who are suffering. But do you think white farmers have gotten their due at least more than African American farmers have?
Boyd: I would say the white farmers are receiving all of the benefits they have coming to them. We're shut out of the US farm subsidy program. Just this week there was a deal with Senator Blanche Lincoln by the White House to get 1.5 billion in disaster aid within in two weeks out to large scale corporate farmers and white farmers.
And I've been pleading with the administration to meet and see what the next steps are for the black farmers so we can secure our funding. How does it look when we're out here doing everything we can in the Senate to secure the funds for black farmers who've been mistreated by the government while we have white farmers who get loans on time. It takes 387 days to get loans for black farmers and we're shut out of all of the lending programs.
It just doesn't look good for the administration to put a deal out for large scale white farmers and tell the black farmers they have to continue to wait. It just doesn't look good.
This settlement is from a case that was decided in 1999. It's not like anyone's rushing into anything:
In a written statement Thursday, President Obama said his administration "is dedicated to ensuring that federal agencies treat all our citizens fairly, and the settlement in the Pigford case reflects that commitment."
The Pigford case was decided in favor of black farmers by a federal judge's ruling in 1999.
The head of the farmers group, John Boyd, said: "It's really the Department of Agriculture agreeing to pay, the Justice Department agreeing to pay and our lawyers agreeing to the process."
In a conference telephone call with reporters, Vilsack said racial bias unquestionably took place in his agency over many years.
He gave an example of two farmers, one white, one black, applying for a farm loan with an office of the USDA.
The white farmer's application "was processed rapidly, it was approved, and resources were quickly available to enable him to put a crop in," Vilsack said. The application from the black farmer "was denied without due diligence on whether he had the capacity to repay, or else he or she was strung out over such a long period of time that they couldn't put in a crop," Vilsack said.
The result, Vilsack said, was that "in some cases they lost the farm."
This month Boyd's group organized demonstrations throughout historically black agricultural areas of the South, including areas in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia.
The rallies wrapped up Monday as a small group of activists gathered outside the Agriculture Department in Washington. Boyd and other demonstrators expressed frustration that Congress has yet to approve a budget that would pay for the 1999 class action settlement in the case.
Of course, the longer they wait the greater chance that many of the elderly farmers will be dead.
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