Your tax dollars at work.

Back a year or so ago, I wrote about the U.S. Department of Agriculture settlement with black farmers who claimed they'd suffered discrimination in receiving USDA loans. This suit was originally settled in 1999, but a bunch of these farmers didn't file the necessary paperwork by the deadline, so they sued to get paid anyway. And they won. They should have been told, "Sorry, you knew the terms." But that would take someone with a backbone, and there aren't very many of those sitting on our judicial benches.

Anyway, these procrastinators will now be rewarded with $1.25 billion. Obama says, "These long-ignored claims of African American farmers" will finally be brought to a rightful conclusion. What ignoring? The government would have had to have been aware of their claims to ignore them, and it couldn't have been aware of them because the farmers didn't file the claims! Duh! Your tax dollars hard at work!

"$1.25 billion settlement with black farmers announced." The Dallas Morning News; February 19, 2010; p. 11A.