BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ....: Farmers

Obama Signs Measure Funding Black Farmers Settlement: Pigford vs Glickman

President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed a $1.15 billion measure to fund a settlement initially reached between the Agriculture Department and minority farmers more than a decade ago.

The 1997 Pigford v. Glickman case against the U.S. Agriculture Department over claims of discrimination against black farmers was settled out of court 11 years ago. Under a federal judge's terms dating to 1999, qualified farmers could receive $50,000 each to settle claims of racial bias.

The legislation signed by Obama also funds a separate $3.4 billion settlement reached with the Department of Interior for mishandling Native American trust funds, along with four separate water rights lawsuits brought by Native American tribes.

"It's vindication and justice for black farmers," said John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, when the bill won congressional approval last month. "This is what I wanted. I wanted a final restitution from the government so the black farmers can move on."

Attorney General Eric Holder has called the settlements "historic" and said they "offer a new relationship between many deserving Americans and the federal agencies that play an important role in their lives," while Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said last month the measure would help his department "move beyond this sad chapter in our history."

Boyd acknowledged that the $50,000 compensation for eligible farmers will far exceed the amounts of individual loans many were denied under discrimination cited in the case. However, he said, no amount of money could properly compensate for the discrimination experienced by black farmers.

"I don't think this is about the money. I think this is about justice," Boyd said.

He rejected claims by Republican critics of the settlement that the claims process was fraudulent.

Vilsack's statement when the bill won congressional approval also rejected the fraud claim, saying, "the bill that passed the Senate and House includes strong protections against waste, fraud, and abuse to ensure integrity of the claims process."

Shirley Sherrod, The Pigford Settlement & Obama’s Andrew Breitbart Smokescreen

(Left Coast Ledger)

Back in July I was one of the first conservatives to criticize Andrew Breitbart for releasing the tape of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod making a seemingly racist comment at a NAACP dinner.

I was wrong.

Not only was Shirley Sherrod not innocent in telling a white farmer to seek “his own kind” for help, but she had a $13 million reason for doing so.

While I still feel Breitbart’s release of the now infamous tape was inappropriately framed, there is no question the NAACP audience in that room reveled in the “his own kind” comment. But, like thousands of other Americans, I still had a nagging question in the back of my head: “Why did they fire Sherrod so quickly and without a hearing?”

My concern wasn’t misplaced.

Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, of all people, provided part of the answer. “This woman has been a thorn in the side of the Agriculture Department for years. She was part of a class-action lawsuit against the department on behalf of black farmers in the South. For years, she has been operating a community activist organization not unlike ACORN.”

The class-action Brown was referring to has become known as the “Pigford Settlement,” and Shirley Sherrod used her “not unlike ACORN” organization to personally profit from that settlement. Shirley Sherrod and her husband received $13 million and she was hired by the USDA for her end of the settlement.

Pigford v. Glickman is one of those stories that reads dry, but at its core is a leviathan of corruption and race-baiting Democratic Party abuse.

Pigford v. Glickman was a class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), alleging racial discrimination in its allocation of farm loans and assistance between 1983 and 1997. The lawsuit ended with a settlement in which the U.S. government agreed to pay African American farmers $50,000 each if they had attempted to get USDA help but failed.

In essence Pigford, while originally a legitimate grievance by about 400 black Southern farmers against USDA, has become a reparations Ponzi scheme that will cost taxpayers billions when the Obama orchestrated “resettlement” is paid out. It is rife with fraud, corruption and even murder.

In the end, virtually any black person who ever grew a pansy on their windowsill could file a claim as a farmer. There are no more than 33,000 black farmers in the US; 94,000 have filed claims. And Pigford opened a floodgate of lawsuits by other minorities to settle claimed injustices by the USDA. This week Native Americans who jumped on the bandwagon were awarded $4.55 billion, as well.

This is Pigford II.

Says Breitbart: “It is a classic story of a legitimate grievance by a small group of individuals that has been exploited personal profit and political gain.”

Andrew Breitbart had no knowledge of any of this when he released the Sherrod “His own kind” tape in July, but he had one of the most shocking stories of taxpayer fraud by the horns.

Breitbart’s breaking story, released today, on how this legitimate cause by 400 black farmers was hijacked by scoundrels like Sherrod, is a masterfully crafted exposé of Barack Obama’s blueprint to buy the Southern vote for his upcoming 2012 election bid.

The new GOP Congress should immediately open investigations and should not relent until every single person who participated in this fraud is brought to justice.

Breitbart & Mrs. Sherrod And The $1.25 Billion Pigford II Black Farmers' Settlement

I knew I was going to be whacked hard, but I didn’t know when.

On Thursday, July 15th, I warned NAACP president Ben Jealous to stop the race-baiting. I directed my ire at Jealous on the Scott Hennen radio show:

“I have tapes, a tape, of racism, and it’s an NAACP dinner. You want to play with fire? I have evidence of racism, and it’s coming from the NAACP.”

This was part of an ongoing defense of the Tea Party, and in particular, a volley back against the NAACP for creating a week-long mainstream media-enabled attack built upon the provably false premise that a “mob” of the Tea Partiers hurled racial epithets at Congressmen Andre Carson (D-In) and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga).

“You are manufacturing this in a summer in which the economy is the No. 1 issue affecting blacks and whites in this country,” I said on Hennen’s show. “This country can ill-afford the schism of race to be exploited the way you are, based upon the false premise of the Tea Party being racist… This is absolutely manufactured for political gain.”

My warning to Jealous was received with modest coverage in the conservative blogosphere.

I strongly believed, and still believe, that I had irrefutable evidence that showed the NAACP caught in an act of racism far worse than anything the media and the Democrat Party had attempted to manufacture in a year and a half of relentlessly trying to destroy the Tea Party.

On Monday, July 19th, all hell broke loose.

My 1400-word article featuring two separate video clips of Shirley Sherrod speaking before the NAACP hit the Internet on Big Government. Before the article and clips were analyzed in their entirety and put into its proper context, President Obama via the USDA chief Tom Vilsack, fired Shirley Sherrod.

The story and the videos perfectly hit their intended target — which was the NAACP, not Shirley Sherrod.

Ben Jealous apologized immediately for the NAACP crowd’s positive response to the moment when Sherrod describes one time when she treated a white farmer differently from how she would treat a black one.

My BigGovernment.com story made the target unambiguously clear: “Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.”

“The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing,” Ben Jealous said in an official NAACP statement. “We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action.”

At this stage, Sherrod, too, understood that this was not about her. Before aligning herself with the partisans at the NAACP and the Obama administration, Sherrod rightfully blamed the NAACP saying, “They got into a fight with the Tea Party, and all of this came out as a result of that.”

All of this was put into excruciatingly clear context in a Big Government post, which included the two video clips, both received from an anonymous source who also described in broad strokes that she later sent the farmer to a white lawyer for help.

“Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help,” I wrote. “But she decides that he should get help from ‘one of his own kind.’ She refers him to a white lawyer.”

Jealous and the NAACP had clearly gotten my intended message — those that live in glass houses should not throw stones. And I reveled in knowing that once again I had stopped the media-enabled, venomous, and artificial campaign by the left to destroy the Tea Party on the grounds of alleged racism.

That’s when I got whacked!

The media ignored my 1400-word piece that accompanied the videos and falsely reported over and over (and over and over again, as I recall) that I only “released an intentionally deceptively edited video on the Internet.”

That’s when the activist left and the mainstream media kicked into high gear, falsely framing the story as an intentional hack job meant to hurt Sherrod personally.

The roar of this narrative was almost unanimous although at one point, MSNBC host Chris Matthews came to my defense by pointing out more proof that the media was ignoring the context provided.

Matthews did a segment with guests Howard Dean and Salon editor Joan Walsh where he replayed the clip and focused on Sherrod’s words: “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.”

“That part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape,” Matthews told Dean, who admitted that he was pontificating on this serious subject without having bothered to have watched the short clip, let alone read the written piece that accompanied it.

Matthews, to his credit, then asked Dean, “Why do you think if this was a complete slime job, why do you think Breitbart kept that in there, Governor? Why did he keep in that part… Why did he put the redemptive part in here at all?”

When that segment aired, news spread and clearly the politically guided producers at MSNBC took notice. Usually “Hardball” airs a repeat of the taped show. In this extraordinary instance, “Hardball” re-taped that one segment with clueless Howard Dean gone. It was an Orwellian moment that affirmed everything I had come to loathe about the Democrat Media Complex. My whacking, facts be damned, was politically and media-wise officially ordained.

Despite the firestorm, there was still an unanswered question — why on God’s green earth was Shirley Sherrod fired?

My 1400-word piece said Sherrod helped the white farmer. The controversial video clip featured the basis for her defense, The President and Tom Vilsack were doubly informed of the whole story by both me and Sherrod herself.

My first clue came, ironically, from the epicenter of Breitbart-hate — MSNBC. It was a week into the controversy. Nation editor Chris Hayes was filling in for Rachel Maddow and reported that I was responsible for black farmers not getting their settlement money.

“Conservative con artist, 1; black farmers, 0,” liberal Journolist Hayes said snarkily.

Black farmers? Settlement money? I had no idea what he was talking about. None.

Later I became aware that on a CNN discussion on “the Sherrod fallout,” April Ryan of Urban Radio Network mentioned the Pigford settlement. Ryan described Pigford as a “litmus test” of the Obama Administration’s relationship with black Americans.

A quick Google search revealed that Ryan and Hayes had been alluding to the incredibly conspicuous news that days after Sherrod was fired by the Obama administration, funding for the $1.15 billion Pigford II settlement was pulled out from a supplementary war funding bill.

The Google search also revealed that Senators Obama and Biden had been two of four Pigford legislative sponsors in the Senate.

Even more interesting, Rep. Steve King (R-Ia), who is on the House Agriculture committee, was on AM radio drawing attention to what was previously not known to me, and it was a blockbuster: Shirley Sherrod, and her husband, Charles, along with their decades-long defunct communal farm, New Communities Inc., were set to receive over a whopping $13 million in the Pigford settlement, the largest amount of money allocated in the history of the Pigford settlement.

California political legend and African American former mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown, of all people, started to connect the dots for me in the San Francisco Chronicle:

As an old pro, though, I know that you don’t fire someone without at least hearing their side of the story unless you want them gone in the first place. This woman has been a thorn in the side of the Agriculture Department for years. She was part of a class-action lawsuit against the department on behalf of black farmers in the South. For years, she has been operating a community activist organization not unlike ACORN. I think there were those in the Agriculture Department who objected to her being hired in the first place.

All of this led to me to wanting to know more about Pigford. My gut instinct to fight back hard and immediately against the charges that I was a racist who had heavily edited videos to do a hit job on Shirley Sherrod. None of that was true, but now I was seeing there was something larger going on behind the scenes and that it somehow related to Pigford.

I started to research Pigford and the more we looked into it, the more I realized that this was not a story that could be researched and told quickly. In fact, it was still unfolding. And even now, it still is.

This coming Wednesday, President Obama is slated to sign the Pigford II settlement.

But that will not be the end of the story. The American people deserve a full investigation and accounting.

Today, we’re releasing a report called “The Pigford Shakedown: How the Black Farmers’ Cause Was Hijacked by Politicians, Trial Lawyers & Community Organizers — Leaving Us With a Billion Dollar Tab.”

What have we discovered about Pigford so far?

Treasure troves of information from Lexis and Google. USDA whistleblowers. A former FBI agent who was on the verge of indictments. One of the originally discriminated-against black farmers with the goods. All these people paint a very clear picture of widespread fraud, and can testify to a complex web of bad players, including politicians, trial attorneys and community organizers.

I stumbled on the Pigford story in my defense of the Tea Party, so it’s a sweet irony that the Pigford story is exactly the kind of mess that makes the Tea Party so necessary. Politicians and trial attorneys bonded together to rip off the taxpayer, and even those farmers that were discriminated against were royally screwed.

Let me be clear, our investigation convincingly leads us to believe the USDA practiced discrimination against black farmers. Those wrongs must be rectified. But Pigford is wrought with a grotesque amount of fraud, while the truly aggrieved were mostly left high and dry.

The Pigford tale is about government run amok. It is also an indictment of the American media that is so blinded by ideology that it missed the big story yet again because taking out a political enemy was far more expedient. And furthermore it is why the American people need the Tea Party and new media as a checks and balances on corrupt politicians and their corrupt journalist counterparts.

Today will be the first of many days that BigGoverment.com will release information, testimony and documents to make the case that, at the very least, the American taxpayer (and ESPECIALLY those legitimately discriminated-against black farmers) need a full accounting of the Pigford I and II settlements.

Shirley Sherrod's Disappearing Act: Not So Fast!

My oh my, that happened quickly. Perhaps too quickly.

Until yesterday, Shirley Sherrod was Georgia Director of Rural Development for the USDA. Earlier in the day at Big Government, Andrew Breitbart put up a video that exposed Ms. Sherrod as someone all too willing to discriminate based on race.

Within hours of the video's release, USDA Director Tom Vilsack announced Sherrod's resignation, and in the process issued an exceptionally strong condemnation ("We are appalled by her actions ... Her actions were shameful ... she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man").

The NAACP, at whose Freedom Fund Banquet Sherrod spoke of her discriminatory posture, and at which the audience seemed to indicate approval of her outlook, followed a short time later, virtually echoing Vilsack.

So I guess we're supposed to forget about Shirley Sherrod from this point forward.

Not just yet. Luckily, she's not going away quietly, and is complaining about Fox News and the Tea Party causing her dismissal. Keep it up, ma’am, because you and the USDA both deserve further scrutiny.

Ms. Sherrod's previous background, the circumstances surrounding her hiring, and the USDA's agenda may all play a part in explaining her sudden departure from the agency. These matters have not received much scrutiny to this point.

An announcement of Ms. Sherrod's July 2009 appointment to her USDA position at ruraldevelopment.org gives off quite a few clues:

RDLN Graduate and Board Vice Chair Shirley Sherrod was appointed Georgia Director for Rural Development by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on July 25. Only days earlier, she learned that New Communities, a group she founded with her husband and other families (see below) has won a thirteen million dollar settlement in the minority farmers law suit Pigford vs Vilsack.

What?

The news that follows at the link, which appears to pre-date the announcement of Ms. Sherrod's appointment, provides further details:

Minority Farm Settlement

Justice Achieved - Congratulations to Shirley and Charles Sherrod!

We have wonderful news regarding the case of New Communities, Inc., the land trust that Shirley and Charles Sherrod established, with other black farm families in the 1960's. At the time, with holdings of almost 6,000 acres, this was the largest tract of black-owned land in the country.

... Over the years, USDA refused to provide loans for farming or irrigation and would not allow New Communities to restructure its loans. Gradually, the group had to fight just to hold on to the land and finally had to wind down operations.

... The cash (settlement) award acknowledges racial discrimination on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the years 1981-85. ... New Communities is due to receive approximately $13 million ($8,247,560 for loss of land and $4,241,602 for loss of income; plus $150,000 each to Shirley and Charles for pain and suffering). There may also be an unspecified amount in forgiveness of debt. This is the largest award so far in the minority farmers law suit (Pigford vs Vilsack).

The Pigford matter goes back a long way, and to say the least has a checkered history, as this May 27, 2010 item at Agri-Pulse demonstrates (bolds are mine):

As part of a April 14, 1999 class action case settlement, commonly known as the Pigford case, U.S. taxpayers have already provided over $1 billion in cash, non-credit awards and debt relief to almost 16,000 black farmers who claimed that they were discriminated against by USDA officials as they “farmed or attempted to farm.” In addition, USDA’s Farm Service Agency spent over $166 million on salaries and expenses on this case from 1999-2009, according to agency records.

Members of Congress may approve another $1.15 billion this week to settle cases from what some estimate may be an additional 80,000 African-Americans who have also claimed to have been discriminated against by USDA staff.

... Settling this case is clearly a priority for the White House and USDA. Secretary Vilsack described the funding agreement reached between the Administration and advocates for black farmers early this year as “an important milestone in putting these discriminatory claims behind us for good and in achieving finality for this group of farmers with longstanding grievances."

However, confronted with the skyrocketing federal deficit, more officials are taking a critical look at the billion dollars spent thus far and wondering when these discrimination cases will ever end. Already, the number of people who have been paid and are still seeking payment will likely exceed the 26,785 black farmers who were considered to even be operating back in 1997, according to USDA. That’s the year the case initially began as Pigford v. (then Agriculture Secretary) Glickman and sources predicted that, at most, 3,000 might qualify.

At least one source who is extremely familiar with the issue and who asked to remain anonymous because of potential retribution, says there are a number of legitimate cases who have long been denied their payments and will benefit from the additional funding. But many more appear to have been solicited in an attempt to “game” the Pigford system.

Here are just a few questions about Ms. Sherrod that deserve answers:

* Was Ms. Sherrod's USDA appointment an unspoken condition of her organization's settlement?

* How much "debt forgiveness" is involved in USDA's settlement with New Communities?

* Why were the Sherrods so deserving of a combined $300,000 in "pain and suffering" payments -- amounts that far exceed the average payout thus far to everyone else? ($1.15 billion divided by 16,000 is about $72,000)?

* Given that New Communities wound down its operations so long ago (it appears that this occurred sometime during the late 1980s), what is really being done with that $13 million in settlement money?

Here are a few bigger-picture questions:

* Did Shirley Sherrod resign so quickly because the circumstances of her hiring and the lawsuit settlement with her organization that preceded it might expose some unpleasant truths about her possible and possibly sanctioned conflicts of interest?

* Is USDA worried about the exposure of possible waste, fraud, and abuse in its handling of Pigford?

* Did USDA also dispatch Sherrod hastily because her continued presence, even for another day, might have gotten in the way of settling Pigford matters quickly?

The media and the blogosphere shouldn't be so quick to forget about Shirley Sherrod.

Shirley Sherrod Named Georgia Director of Rural Development

RDLN Graduate and Board Vice Chair Shirley Sherrod was appointed Georgia Director for Rural Development by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on July 25. Only days earlier, she learned that New Communities, a group she founded with her husband and other families (see below) has won a thirteen million dollar settlement in the minority farmers law suit Pigford vs Vilsack.

In announcing the appointment of Shirley and other new officials, Secretary Vilsack said that "These individuals will be important advocates on behalf of rural communities in states throughout the country and help administer the valuable programs and services provided by the USDA that can enhance their economic success."

Shirley is a graduate in the first group of RDLN Leaders and serves as Vice Chair of our Board of Directors.

She earned her master's degree from Antioch through RDLN, has helped orient every group of RDLN participants, and has taken leadership in many other ways. She serves as Georgia lead for both the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund and the Southern Rural Black Women's Initiative (SRBWI).

Minority Farm Settlement

Justice Achieved - Congratulations to Shirley and Charles Sherrod!

We have wonderful news regarding the case of New Communities, Inc., the land trust that Shirley and Charles Sherrod established, with other black farm families in the 1960's. At the time, with holdings of almost 6,000 acres, this was the largest tract of black-owned land in the country. Now with a cash award of historic proportions, the group will be able to begin again.

In 1969, New Communities received a planning grant from OEO and was encouraged to expect substantial funding for implementation, but Governor Maddox would not permit further funds for the group to come into the state.

Nevertheless, New Communities built up farming operations to help retain the land. They had highway frontage where they had a farmers market to sell their crops. They raised hogs and sold the processed meat in a smokehouse they built on the highway. Their sugar cane mill on the highway also attracted customers.

New Communities was ahead of the times in raising eight acres of Muscatine grapes, which are now widely grown in the area. They also farmed 1,500 acres of row crops, including corn, peanuts and soybeans.

Over the years, USDA refused to provide loans for farming or irrigation and would not allow New Communities to restructure its loans. Gradually, the group had to fight just to hold on to the land and finally had to wind down operations.

In 1985, as the land was being lost, Shirley entered the RDLN program. Previously, she had worked behind the scenes, but as she participated in RDLN, she began to realize her capacity as an up-front leader.

She invited the Federation of Southern Cooperatives to sponsor her in the RDLN program, earned her master's degree with a thesis that continues to provide a blueprint for her ongoing work with black farmers and others, helped orient all succeeding groups of RDLN Leaders, and became vice chair of RDLN's Board of Directors.

As you all know, Shirley is Georgia Lead for both the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund and the Southern Rural Black Women's Initiative.

She has also chaired the board of the Farmers Legal Action Group, which has been active in the minority farmers law suit, along with the Federation and other groups. FSC and SRBWI hosted RDLN's National Network Assembly in 2006, during which Network members had a chance to immerse themselves in Civil Rights history, with the guidance of Shirley and Charles (the first field director of SNCC), Albany singers and others, and to visit the economic development projects that have grown out of that Civil Rights history.

The cash award acknowledges racial discrimination on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the years 1981-85. (President Reagan abolished the USDA Office of Civil Rights when he became President in 1981.)

New Communities is due to receive approximately $13 million ($8,247,560 for loss of land and $4,241,602 for loss of income; plus $150,000 each to Shirley and Charles for pain and suffering). There may also be an unspecified amount in forgiveness of debt. This is the largest award so far in the minority farmers law suit (Pigford vs Vilsack).

The attorney for New Communities has been Rose Sanders of Chestnut Sanders and Sanders, sister of National Rural Fellows graduate Harold Gaines and Advisor for RDLN Leaders Lillie Fields and Rose Hill.

No one can compensate those involved with New Communities for the difficult history they experienced. The award covers only a few of the years in question. Nevertheless, with these funds, New Communities will be able to start work again -- forty years later -- to realize the promise of their original dream, reconnect with the legacy of the Civil Rights movement, and meet the challenge of the needs and opportunities of the current historical moment.

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Sources: AP, Biggovernment.com, Breitbart TV, CNN, Left Coast Ledger, MSNBC, NY Daily News, Rural Development.org, Washington Examiner, Youtube, Google Maps

Stephen Colbert Draws Attention To Self, Then Farmworkers During Hill Appearance

Stephen Colbert Host Of "Colbert Nation" brought a dose of his trademark "truthiness" in testimony before a House subcommittee hearing Friday on the conditions faced by the nation's Farmworkers.

The encounter produced some awkward moments and pointed asides -- beginning nearly at the outset, when House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers requested that Colbert refrain from testifying and submit only written comments.

(The chairman withdrew the request soon afterward.)

Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren of California, in her opening statement, commended Colbert for using his celebrity to draw media attention to the hearing.

"Maybe it was [President Clinton's] impeachment? But it's been a long time since we've had this kind of coverage," Lofgren said.

The overall tone of Friday's hearing was serious: a discussion on the future of the American farm industry, which heavily relies on illegal immigrants as workers. But Colbert -- who plays an intemperate, right-leaning Bill O'Reilly-style host on "The Colbert Report" -- remained in character, peppering his testimony with sarcastic comments, which gently mocked himself as well as the staid atmosphere of the hearing room.

Colbert joked of his "vast experience" as a farm laborer, which consisted of one day spent picking vegetables -- an experience that grew out of an on-air interview with Lofgren.

One way to address the labor ills of the agricultural sector, Colbert joked, is for Americans to "stop eating fruits and vegetables … and if you look at obesity statistics, people already have." Colbert added that his Gastroenterologist had suggested that most such food is necessary roughage. Colbert called to submit a video of his Colonoscopy into the record.

Colbert also suggested Americans find plants that "pick themselves" and raise the soil level so workers don't have to bend over.

The crowd occasionally burst into laughter during Colbert's remarks, while some Democratic members and their staff smirked from their perches in the hearing room. Most of the committee's Republican members did not appear amused.

After Colbert's five-minute statement, Conyers noted that Colbert's remarks dramatically differed from the prepared testimony he submitted.

Republicans and Democrats alike challenged Colbert's presence before and even during the hearing. "Would you call yourself an expert witness when it comes to our labor issues or not?" Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) asked the talk show host. Colbert responded that he was testifying at Lofgren's invitation.

California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu noted that Republicans have also proposed celebrity witnesses in the past, such as Loretta Swit from television show "MASH." Lofgren, for her part, compared Colbert to celebrities such as Bono and Angelina Jolie, who had also used their renown to publicize important causes on Capitol Hill.

Colbert said he was "happy to use my celebrity to draw attention" to this issue, and joked that he hoped his presence would bump coverage of the committee hearings "all the way up to CSPAN1." (The hearing was shown on CSPAN3.)

During the hearing, members and speakers addressed the United Farm Workers' "Take Our Jobs" effort, which seeks to place unemployed Americans in farming jobs. Lofgren and others said the effort has been widely unsuccessful, in part because illegal immigrants are the only ones willing to do the jobs.

But Rep. Steve King of Iowa -- the committee's ranking Republican -- and other GOP committee members argued that the real problem lies with agricultural employers who fail to provide attractive jobs that appeal to legal Americans. Americans will do the work, King contended -- "they just want to be paid a respectable wage" for it.

Conyers invited King to work together to get more Americans in farmworker jobs -- a challenge King said he would accept, even though Conyers clearly believed that such an initiative would not pan out.

And in winding down his own remarks, Colbert got serious for a moment, leaving no doubt which side of the issue he came down on. He wanted to appear before the committee in order to speak up for farmworkers, he said, because "migrant workers suffer and have no rights."

Sources: C-Span, Colbert Nation, Comedy Central, Yahoo News, Youtube