USDA Is Called Lax on Bias

[flashl]

Source: Washington Post

GAO Accuses Agency of Inaction on Racial Discrimination

Nearly a decade after the Agriculture Department agreed to settle a discrimination suit brought by black farmers, one of the largest payouts in U.S. history at almost $1 billion so far, the department has yet to develop a system to adequately address hundreds of other bias complaints from farmers and its own employees, the Government Accountability Office said this week.

In blunt testimony before a House subcommittee this week, Lisa Shames, director of natural resources and environment for the GAO, said the department cannot prove that it has reduced its mountainous backlog of discrimination complaints and that its claims to the contrary cannot be trusted.

"At a basic level, the credibility of USDA's efforts has been and continues to be undermined by . . . faulty reporting of data on discrimination complaints and disparities in . . . data," Shames said. "Even such basic information as the number of complaints is subject to wide variation in . . . reports to the public and the Congress."

Shames said the GAO is preparing an audit of the USDA that will be released in fall. The report is expected to support her testimony that, in addition to failing to reduce the complaint backlog and adequately track cases, the agency has not diversified the field offices where discrimination is often reported. The agency does not have a uniform method of determining the race of farmers and other clients in order to study possible patterns of racial and ethnic bias.

Washington Post

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/17/AR2008051702319.html

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Congress just made a big deal about the recent Farm Bill that feed greed and not the American people.

There was no mention of the multi-generational Black farmers' battle with the USDA. It's interesting to hear claims and complaints about rising cost of food as the USDA continues to deny payments to farmers willing, ready, and able to produce food for America.

[midnight]

1. This is an area that is similiar in confussion for me like the IRS.

How to address the discrimination? Does anything work in this country. We have farmers ready and willing to produce food for the hungry. Let them do there job.

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2. It defies reason. Tens of billions a DAY goes into the vortex on Wallstreet, yet, wrongfully

withheld payments to food producers is seen as TOO MUCH and having no beneficial return.

[Trillo]

3. Single-Payer Agriculture?

The only way for a farmer to make money is by receiving it from the government in the form of a subsidy to either grow or not grow?

Sounds like Single-Payer Agriculture.

[flashl]

4. Farmers decide to grow or not to grow when forced to use Monsanto's terminator seeds?

[flashl]

5. Kick ...

Farm bill highlights rich-poor debate
Congress and Bush have routinely clashed over salary caps for federal aid programs.

Washington - At the heart of the standoff between the White House and Congress over a $307 billion farm bill is the question: Should taxpayers subsidize rich farmers – and who counts as rich?

What income levels qualify – or disqualify – Americans from federal aid programs has figured in several clashes between the Bush administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress.

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A cornucopia for rich farmers
Farm subsidies will cost each US household about $320, the price to please agribusiness.

What can $100 million buy you in Congress? If you're agribusiness, such money spent this past year on lobbying and campaign donations will harvest billions in farm subsidies and keep you in clover for another five years.

Congress plans to renew the US agriculture law this week with no apologies for that fact that most of the subsidies will go to the wealthiest 10 percent of recipients and that a majority of this largess will enrich commercial farmers with an average income of $200,000.

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All this for a "temporary" law born during the Dust Bowl of the Depression to help only the poorest family farmers. If anything, regular renewal of the federal government's largest corporate-welfare scheme has only squeezed out family farms by favoring big commercial ones, which carry the most clout on Capitol Hill.