All Articles Tagged "government subsidies"
Black Farmers Settlement Approved
(New York Times) — The House has given final Congressional approval to a bill that would provide more than $4.55 billion to settle tens of thousands of longstanding claims brought by African Americans farmers and American Indians. The bill provides $1.15 billion to African Americans left out of a 1999 settlement of a lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman; in that settlement the federal government agreed to compensate black farmers and would-be farmers who said Agriculture Department officials denied or cheated them out of federal aid. To be eligible for money now, claimants must have farmed or attempted to farm between 1981 and 1986, have filed a discrimination complaint before July 1, 1987, and have filed a claim after the deadline in the original settlement.
A $1.15 Billion Settlement Reached for Black Farmers
(Richmond Times Dispatch) — The U.S. Senate, after the 10th try, approved nearly $1.15 billion yesterday for the National Black Farmers Association to settle long-standing claims of discrimination in federal farm lending programs. ”It’s been a very, very long fight,” said John W. Boyd Jr., president of the association and a cattle and grain farmer from Mecklenburg County. The money has been held up in the Senate since February as Democrats and Republicans fought over how to pay for it.
Atlanta’s Public-Housing Revolution
(City Journal) — No one can doubt that the 1996 reform of public assistance really did “end welfare as we know it,” as President Clinton said—reducing the welfare rolls from more than 5 million to fewer than 2 million households. Its signature five-year time limit on assistance drew millions of the poor back into the world of work, making the reform of cash welfare the greatest social-policy success of a generation.
