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And you get fifty grand and a mule!
As you have probably seen, Andrew Breitbart's stable of websites has been very busy this week issuing information about the Pigford Settlements, I & II.
Today, Gary Hewson, writing at Big Government, outlined the case of a man from Mississippi who was convicted of two murders in connection with a scam perpetrated on Pigford I--one that seems to have involved a significant number of people.
The scam worked this way: someone with some kind of minimally plausible claim would be approached and encouraged to sign on to receive the standard $50,000 settlement; in exchange for putting her in touch with an attorney who would file the case, and possibly in exchange for backing up the claim, the ringleaders would give the Pigford claimant $16,000, and split was was left after the legal filing fees among themselves.
Naturally, some claimants decided that their cut of the deal was insufficient, and when they crossed the group, Joe Lewis Collins and his associates decided to mete out a little ad hoc justice by way of murder. Thus it was that Clovis Reed came to be murdered, and to have her head and hands cut off--in what order I'm unsure. A beekeeper found her remains in the woods. The body of another scam participant victim, Ebony Scott, was recovered nearby.
In hindsight, it was probably stupid of Reed to have gone to the police accusing her associates of embezzlement, even if she counted her murderer as a friend. And it was undoubtedly stupid of the scammers to knock people off after the cops had received notification of their activities.
It would certainly also be an act of extraordinary stupidity for anyone to believe Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack when he says that out of the 20,000 or so settlements in Pigford I, there have only been three cases of fraud: At the time of the original Pigford Settlement, there were estimated to be no more than 18,000 black farmers in the country. Assuming that each and every one of those people had a legitimate claim against the USDA, which is a considerable stretch, that would have left a couple thousand freeloaders.
Complaints on behalf of more former, would-be, or wannabe black farmers who hadn't gotten any boodle re-opened the "settlement" process, even though the window of opportunity, and any statute of limitations, had run out--and now the number of "settle-ees" numbers in the vicinity of 90,000, when you add in Pigford II.
In his piece, Gary Hewson mainly aggregates the writings of reporter Jimmie Gates, at the Jackson Clarion Ledger, dating from January of 2006--when a key witness cracked and spilled the story to the FBI--to December 2008 (when Joe Lewis Collins was sentenced to life in prison without parole). The mangled corpse of Clovis Reed was discovered in 2003. Here's one of the bits from those newspaper accounts that Hewson bolded for emphasis:
But Edmond said both she and her sister and Reed were part of a scam to defraud the federal government of the money from a settlement between black farmers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Edmond said for every person she brought into the scam, she was scheduled to receive $2,000. The person getting the check would get $16,000, and the rest of the money would be split among others. She brought Reed into the scam, she said.
We're not told anything about the total number of folks who were in on the scam, but it seems that it was easy enough to manage, considering the brainpower demonstrated throughout by the gang. The chances that other dishonest simpletons didn't hit upon similar arrangements seems vanishingly small.
As the Daily Caller notes, Breitbart backed into the story due to the dust-up with Sherrod. He posted the now-famous or -infamous video of Shirley Sherrod speaking to an NAACP gathering and talking about her attitude toward white farmers who'd been discriminated against by the Department of Agriculture. It turned out that the video was incomplete, omitting the part where she later said that she came to the realization that it was more about poor and rich than about black and white--and then helped the white man. What people saw initially was a woman saying that she didn't have compassion for a white guy who'd gone to her for help, and a black audience responding with appreciation.
And after that video came out, she got fired by Vilsack at the behest of the NAACP and the SPLC, tout suite, without even an opportunity to present her side of the case. Later, when the rest of the video came out, Sherrod first placed the blame on the NAACP and the White House, then, when Vilsack did an about-face, turned her ire toward Breitbart.
Breitbart expected to get raked over the coals by the Usual Suspects, who would claim that he acted in bad faith, that he'd seen the whole speech, and decided to edit it to make the NAACP look bad. Naturally, that was because he was raaaaacist. But among the allegations of racism is one that stood out: he was said by one television pundit to have been motivated by animus against the Pigford Settlements. That was news to Breitbart.
Sherrod's husband, it turns out, had mentioned that they'd acquired a princely (though unspecified) sum as a result of a lawsuit they brought regarding discrimination leading to the failure of their communal farm. The history of that farm, in and of itself, makes for some stimulating reading, because of allegations that people were paid less than the legal minimum, and that the civil rights-preening Sherrods had resisted collectivization at their collective, at least in the form of unions.
One of the critics maintains that employment there, wrapped in the mantle of social justice, was in fact a kind of indentured servitude, though there is no mention of the company store. As it turns out, the Sherrods received a settlement of about $13 million dollars, and Mrs. Sherrod was rewarded as well with a lucrative government position in the Department of Agriculture. The speculation was, and still for many is, that the USDA was looking for a way to boot her out, because she had a history of thorniness toward their side.
The original story chronicled in back issues of the Clarion Ledger is interesting enough that, were non-local reporters interested in such tales, there would have been a ready audience for the sordid story of Joe Lewis Collins and his companions down in Mississippi. But as it was, it seemed (at least as far as the murders went) not racially motivated. And Southern murder stories that don't feature racial motivation don't really resonate with the MSM. So it was that the story didn't gain any traction then, and is hardly gaining any yet--even with the right-leaning blogosphere starting to dish the dirty details.
I'm taking an intuitive leap, because, to tell you the truth, I can't descry the motives of left-leaning editors any better than they can fathom mine. I think another reason that the story failed to grow legs then, and is sort of stumping about now, is that a lot of people feel that this is a justified form of redistribution, that it's a kind of reparations, even if piecemeal and haphazard.
I'm happy for the people who really did suffer discrimination from the USDA, that they have received some token of compensation, even if it doesn't make them whole as a matter of equal access at that time. However, the obvious prevalence of fraud in these settlements displays all of the fundamental contempt for honest dealing that we've learned to associate with the Obama Administration, whether the issue is health care reform, auto company bailouts, global warm-mongering, or anything else, really, dating back to the promise to campaign with public funds.
There are actual people who were maltreated, and who have been, or have not been, compensated. There are others with no plausible, much less real claim, who have been rewarded for their fraudulence, at the expense of what was once called the common wealth. And that's a problem, when you consider recent reporting that a family earning $60k per year probably has less disposable income than those that are on benefits. The incentives of Obamaism appeal to the perverse, because they are themselves perverse. I would rather see the deserving minority get the entire thing, and any lawyers who knowingly pushed fraudulent claims for their fees thrown in jail. And, yes, it would be worth the money to investigate and try them.
One more bit that Hewson did set in boldface grabs my attention, and another one that he didn't:
When Wingate asked about the mutilation of Reed’s body, Edmond said Walker held Reed’s head while Collins cut it off.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Harold Brittain said there is no plan to seek an indictment in the scam of the federal settlement because likely the statute of limitation has run out.
Gee, likely, huh? Might be worth checking out, don't you think? Might be worth making an example of, if possible, for its admonitory effect, I would think. Here's the other, mostly not-bolded one:
Joe Lewis Collins of Magee is accused of chopping off the head and hands of a federal government witness, but he won’t face the death penalty when he goes to trial March 31 in federal court in Jackson.
The U.S. Department of Justice didn’t certify it as a death-penalty case, Collins’ attorney, Rob McDuff, said Tuesday.
To sum up: Here's a guy who is the ringleader of a gang of people defrauding the Federal government. He murders two individuals to shut them up, and cuts off the head and hands of one for good measure. He threatens people and solicits perjury. After all of that, the Department of Justice decides that they're not going to pursue it as a capital case?
I'm personally against the death penalty, but my gob is smacked.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the DOJ didn't want to make it a death penalty case, because they didn't want to attract any unwanted attention to Pigford.
The date on that Clarion Ledger piece is January 30, 2008. I don't know whether or not this was the decision of Holder's immediate colleagues, but somebody sure as hell ought to find out who made the call--because it reminds me a little bit of a case regarding the NBPP in Philadelphia, and a polling location, and a dude with a nightstick.
Just sayin'.
