MEGAN MCARDLE ON PIGFORD: How a Discrimination Settlement Turned into a Bonanza for Fraudsters: Farm loans. Sympathetic administrations. And a judge who didn’t worry about false positives. “Cutting checks to random people is not a good way to remedy past discrimination in a loan program. In fact, almost any other remedy seems like it would be better. Especially since the Times story suggests that there’s no evidence that the discrimination underlying the new settlement even happened.”