Buzzing around the internet is the story of a couple of House Republicans who, perhaps emboldened by their new majority, have cast common sense to the wind in a united front against last weeks’ decision by the USDA to compensate farmers who were harmed through discrimination by that agency in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Joined by perennial space-cadet Michele Bachman (R-Minnesota), Steve King (R-Iowa) is equating the payments to compensation for slavery, saying that the U.S. will never pay such “slavery reparations.”  

Never mind the fact that even the worst student of American history would be unlikely to confuse discriminatory practices in the late twentieth century with the slave era, which ended more than a hundred years earlier…or that their remarks,  like this from Rep. King:

“We’ve got to stand up at some point and say, ‘We are not gonna pay slavery reparations in the United States Congress,'” he continued. “That war’s been fought. That was over a century ago. That debt was paid for in blood, and it was paid for in the blood of a lot of Yankees, especially. And there’s no reparations for the blood that paid for the sin of slavery. No one’s filing that claim.”

exhibit a level of ignorance and insensitivity most people would be embarrassed to admit to.  You have to wonder why it is becoming acceptable for political figures to openly parade their worst prejudices while serving in the name of the American people.

Look at what King had to say on March 8, 2008, as he announced his run for a fourth term, which coincided with the presidential race that was then in progress:

I’ll just say this: When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States — I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?”

if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror.”

Even after expressing such an unsavory view, the guy got re-elected; and he’s still going strong! So now I guess he feels invincible to broader public opinion.

Michelle Bachman goes so far as to allege fraud on the part of the farmers and ex-farmers whom the USDA proposes to compensate.  As is usual for Bachman, she makes this claim without offering any supporting evidence whatsoever, and despite the fact that the USDA has already conducted reviews of the 15,000 claims involved in the first phase of the Pigford discrimination claims process and found only 3 to be fraudulent! She proposes that Congress begin cutting the federal budget by eliminating the USDA’s discrimination settlements entirely!  Shades of the Acorn witchhunt?

I read these things in disbelief and alarm to think what the coming sessions of Congress may visit upon us.