IS SHIRLEY SHERROD A VICTIM OR A SCAM ARTIST?

To the “politically correct” crowd the name Shirley Sherrod has been elevated to “sainthood” over her so-called “vicious” treatment by the Obama White House, the NAACP, Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack, Fox News, and filmmaker Andrew Breitbart. She has been depicted as that “poor” insignificant Dep’t. Of Agriculture worker who was maligned by the above named people and organizations in a rush to judgment.

Well, not so fast. This “wrongly” accused black woman has a checkered past when it comes to race relations and her involvement in a scam against the U.S. government for supposed “racial exploitation” of black farm laborers and farmers in Georgia.

What started out as a small claim by 400 black farmers has escalated into a claim by over 80,000 “farmers” trying to get in on this massive con job? The original lawsuit claimed that the USDA unlawfully denied loans to the poor black farmers. The case was entitled Pigford v. Glickman. The farmers won their case and the government agreed to pay them as much as $50,000 each to settle their claims.

But, in February of this year, something shocking happened in relation to that original judgment. In total silence, the USDA agreed to release more funds to “Pigford”. The amount was a staggering $1.25 billion (that’s with a “b”). This was because the original number of plaintiffs- 400 black farmers- had now swollen in a class action law suit to include a total of 86,000 black farmers throughout America. There is only one problem – there isn’t 86,000 black farmers throughout America, no where near that figure.

Can you smell a scam in the works? Where did these people, who want to jump on the “gravy train”, come from? How did this happen? Well, a person by the name of Shirley Sherrod spearheaded this case because of her position at the “Rural Development Leadership Network” in 1997. Yes, that’s the same Shirley Sherrod who was summarily fired for supposedly making racist remarks at a NAACP Convention in Georgia in March of this year. Why was she so quick to get the ax from the Obama Administration? As it turns out, the original Pigford v. Glickman settlement only applied to 16,000 black farmers (the final total), but in 2008, a junior Senator got a law passed to reopen the case and allow more black farmers to sue for funds. That junior Senator was Barack Hussein Obama. Was this decision to introduce that proposed law based on fact or on race? Because this law was passed in dead silence and because the woman responsible (Shirley Sherrod) was an obscure USDA official, American taxpayers did not realize that they had just been forced, in the middle of a world-wide recession, to pay out more than $1.25 billion to settle a race claim that by now was dubious, to say the least. One reason for this is that the new settlement applied to other farmers and those who “attempted to farm” and did not receive assistance from the USDA. Getting the latest round of Pigford cases from the 2008 farm bill settled is said to be a high priority for the Obama Administration. Is this payback time (or could it be a backdoor way to give reparations to blacks)?

Shirley Sherrod and her husband wound up getting $150,000 each (total $300,000) from the original settlement when the maximum was supposed to be $50,000 for each person. How come they hit the jackpot? Something doesn’t smell kosher here, does it?

So what started out as a claim by 400 poor black farmers suing the DOA for past discrimination practices, has turned into a money grab by over “86,000 black farmers” from around the country, with the help of the DOA, Pres. Barack Hussein Obama and many members of the Congress, and don’t forget our “victim” Shirley Sherrod. Do you smell a rat here?

Here we have a classic case of corrupt people “playing the system” for unlawful financial gain using race as the motivating factor. So instead of being the poor victim of racism and a rush to judgment on the part of the Obama Administration and the NAACP, she has been exposed, or should be, as a corrupt player in a scam against the government, which includes you and me the taxpayers.

I wonder how many in the main stream media will jump on this story and find out the truth on this blatant raid against the U.S. treasury. I predict it will have to be the “evil racist” Republicans who will have to blow the whistle on this caper or it will die a very uneventful death and Shirley Sherrod will only be known as the poor victim of “racism” instead of the scam artist that she really was.

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann