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08/11/2010 Entry: "The Right Wing Is Still Filled With Haters."

So Robert W. Fortner wrote this article.

"Did Andrew Breitbart Lay A Trap For Sherrod's Fraud... Unbelievable!"

I found it on Brian Donavan's facebook page.

Here is a link to Brian Donavan's facebook note.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=429114467808&id=769569671&ref=mf

Robert W. Fortner like so many is not interested in truth or facts. However this little diatribe of his wasn't originally his idea. Alas we must look at his article.

Andrew Breitbart is a media genius.

Wow! Well this is already on the downhill slope. Andrew Breitbart however may actually be a media genius. He plays fox news and the conservative blogs like a fiddle. They eat out of the palm of his hand and bite what he tells them hook line and sinker.

He proved it originally with his brilliant handling of the ACORN ‘hooker’ scandal which he skillfully manipulated so that the corrupt media was forced, against its will, to broadcast corruption in one of Obama’s most powerful political support groups. But Breitbart’s handing of that affair is nothing compared to his brilliant manipulation of the Shirley Sherrod ‘white farmer’ scandal.

The acorn scandal that showed how Gilles and O' Keefe had done selective editing in order to trash the organization. The same organization that was exonerated in court after the scandal. O' Keefe same person who was later convicted of trying to tamper with Senator Landrieu's phone lines. Basically O' Keefe successfully trashed an innocent organization into bankruptcy and you are still hanging on to the misinformation that this was a good thing. Don't let the truth get in the way. Breitbart released an edited tape that was meant to make Sherrod look bad when the whole tape showed the truth. Breitbart took a shot to his credibility and will probably take another if and when Shirley sues him.

It all began last Monday, July 22, 2010. As the country watched in horror, Breitbart released a snippet of a tape on his “Big Government” site which showed an obscure black female official of the Dept. of Agriculture laughing to a roomful of NAACP members about how she’d discriminated against a destitute white farmer and refused to give him the financial aid he desperately needed. As she smirked to the room, she’d sent him instead to a white lawyer - ‘one of his own kind’ - for help. The black woman was Shirley Sherrod - and almost immediately she became the center of a firestorm of controversy which exploded throughout the country. Within a day of the release of that infamous tape, the head of the Dept. of Agriculture, spurred on by Obama, demanded " and received " Sherrod’s resignation. Breitbart had won.

So Breitbart participated in the release of video that was edited to make Sherrod look bad instead of telling the truth. This is shameful on the part of Breitbart and you for accepting it in any way. Obama has already admitted that they were wrong in how they handled the Sherrod incident. To bad you can't admit the same thing. Breibart won? Because he cause Sherrod to be fired? So when Sherrod was offered her job back what do you call that?

But then seemingly Breitbart’s actions began to explode in his face. As Sherrod screamed in protest, FOX News released the entire text of her speech last March to the NAACP. And there on tape Sherrod was shown supposedly repenting of her racism against a white farmer and instead championing his fight to win funds to keep his farm afloat. Within hours of that entire tape being revealed, the entire world turned against Andrew Breitbart. Conservatives throughout the country were enraged that he’d endangered their reputations by releasing a ‘doctored’ tape. Breitbart, they thundered, had dealt a fatal blow to the conservative media. I confess that I also was horrified at what I saw as the clumsiness and stupidity of Breitbart in ‘doctoring’ a tape to make a supposedly innocent woman look guilty. But now I discover I have been as guilty of haste to judgment of Breitbart as the Dept. of Agriculture was of Ms. Sherrod.

Then why are you writing this article?

Only now am I realizing the real purpose for Breitbart’s release of that tape snippet. It was to allow him to cunningly trick the media into exposing one of the most shocking examples of corruption in the federal government - a little known legal case called “Pigford v. Glickman”.

http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/07/27/pigford-v-glickman-86000-claims-from-39697-total-farmers/?singlepage=true

“In 1997, 400 African-American farmers sued the United States Department of Agriculture, alleging that they had been unfairly denied USDA loans due to racial discrimination during the period 1983 to 1997.” The case was entitled “Pigford v. Glickman” and in 1999, the black farmers won their case. The government agreed to pay each of them as much as $50,000 to settle their claims.

Oh yes, the conspiracy bit begins. Here is the thing this lawsuit and the statement following it are correct. Now we need to see how we can turn things into half truths and link them together to make something salacious.

But then on February 23 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. This was because the original number of plaintiffs - 400 black farmers - had now swollen in a class action suit to include a total of 86,000 black farmers throughout America.

Okay not quite all the information but not an inaccurate statement. Let's start to fill in the gaps.

After the lawsuit was filed, Pigford requested blanket mediation to cover what was thought to be about 2,000 farmers who may have been discriminated against, but the U.S. Department of Justice opposed the mediation, saying that each case had to be investigated separately. As the case moved toward trial, the presiding judge certified as a class all black farmers who filed discrimination complaints against the USDA between 1983 and 1997.

Source: http://file.wikileaks.org/file/crs/RS20430.pdf
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigford_v._Glickman

What they then ended up with was over 23,000 claims most the claims were track A style which meant the farmers accepted a settlement payment of $50,000 of which only 15,638 were approved in the track A program. The track B which was for amounts over the $50,000 had fewer then 200 farmers. Beyond that there were 70,000 applications that were either filed late or not allowed to proceed.

So the total amount paid out on just track A was $1,006,404,262. So setting aside 1.25 billion was not a bad idea.

There are also still Track B claimants of which the largest so far was $13 million dollars.

There was only one teensy problem. The United States of America doesn’t have 86,000 black farmers. According to accurate and totally verified census data, the total number of black farmers throughout America is only 39,697. Oops.

Now this part is basically correct. However just because you have a claim doesn't mean you get paid. However in an effort to be smart the money has been set aside for those that do have a legitimate claim. So the people who do rightly have a claim get their due compensation.

Well, gosh - how on earth did 39,697 explode into 86,000 claims? And how did $50,000 explode into $1.25 billion? Well, folks, you’ll just have to ask the woman who not only spearheaded this case because of her position in 1997 at the “Rural Development Leadership Network” but whose family received the highest single payout (approximately $13 million) from that action - Shirley Sherrod. Oops again.

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/110/024/Is_There_More_to_Sherrods_Dismissal.html

Yes, folks. It appears that Ms. Sherrod had just unwittingly exposed herself as the perpetrator of one of the biggest fraud claims in the United States - a fraud enabled solely because she screamed racism at the government and cowed them into submission. And it gets even more interesting. Ms. Sherrod has also exposed the person who aided and abetted her in this race fraud. As it turns out, the original judgment of “Pigford v. Glickman” in 1999 only applied to a total of 16,000 black farmers. But in 2008, a junior Senator got a law passed to reopen the case and allow more black farmers to sue for funds. The Senator was Barack Obama.

Now let me state something clearly at this point. Your a bigot. You are also an idiot. Claims of race fraud as you wrote show your inability to think and your pensive terms show your bias. Facts however are far more truthful. The reason Shirley Sherrod was part of the case was because the farm group she and her husband worked with got screwed by the USDA. New Communities farms was one of the largest African American owned farms in the United States. So yes they went for a track B process in the case and won. They won because they had the evidence. Evidence that they were discriminated against back as far as 1981. Long before Obama was much of anything in politics.

From an arbitration hearing:
"Chief arbitrator Michael Lewis's opinion said that the example of the USDA's demand for New Communities' timber proceeds "smack[ed] of nothing more than a feudal baron demanding additional crops from his serfs.""

Do you get it now? They were wronged and they did what they had to in order to receive justice. They sued. Calling it a fraud shows how reprehensible you are. You should be ashamed.

Also giving Obama sole credit for the passing of H.R. 899; S. 515 does an injustice to what was also worked on by Grassley and Kennedy. You know Grassley the republican Senator from Iowa. A bill that was passed with bi partisan support.

Because this law was passed in dead silence and because the woman responsible for spearheading it was an obscure USDA official, American taxpayers did not realize that they had just been forced in the midst of a worldwide depression to pay out more than $1.25 billion to settle a race claim.

Hardly, this bill was passed as part of the 2008 farm bill. And it was signed by President Bush.

Your calling it a race claim shows your reprehensible character. It was a case of discrimination and it was a blatant case by the USDA. Which is fine I guess as long as you are white.

As for Ms. Sherrod? Well, she’s discovered too late that her cry of ‘racism’ to the media which was intended to throw the spotlight on Breitbart has instead thrown that spotlight on herself - and her corruption. Sherrod has vanished from public view. Her ‘pigs’, it seems, have come home to roost. Oink!

And she was chosen by the USDA in 1999 to head up Office of Rural Development in Georgia. Maybe because the USDA needs to work on improving it's image and treating all people fairly.

Also a note to Brian Danovan. I feel you are as reprehensible as Mr. Fortner for posting this. You claim to be a christian. Must be nice to cover your cesspool of a soul with the pages of the bible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN_2009_undercover_videos_controversy
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2006058,00.html?xid=rss-fullnation-yahoo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Communities
http://file.wikileaks.org/file/crs/RS20430.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigford_v._Glickman
http://www.aolnews.com/article/usda-to-pay-black-farmers-1-25-billion-in-discrimination-case/19369678
http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/June2007/062107boyd.pdf
http://washingtonwatch.com/bills/history/110_HR_899.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.899:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Grassley
http://www.can-you-hear-us-now.com/2010/08/andrew-breitbart-is-media-genius.html