William Flax wrote:

Your choice of a pen name strongly suggests where you stand in the
ideological spectrum. But, of course, you understand that I am not
speaking about people stealing food.

No, indeed you weren't, you were speaking about the general social
breakdown in New Orleans, and not about stealing anything.

The breakdown is seen in stealing appliances--which have nothing to
do with evacuating the City; nothing to do with surviving--in stealing
drugs from hospitals, indeed, in firing on rescue workers. If these
miscreants were trying to do something constructive, they would be
aiding the relief effort, not sabotaging it.

Who's arguing that they are doing anything constructive? I think
they're idiots for putting their own greed ahead for their own
well-being (let alone others'). What were they going to do with those
plasma TVs? Sell them on eBay?

Stop trying to justify the destructive behavior of the alienated
enemies of society, and try to understand what is going on.

Stop misrepresenting what I said, and get back in the real world. The
single biggest indicator of crime is *poverty*, and in New Orleans'
case, the single biggest reason for the number of poor people there is
the corrupt system of cronyism and political/economic patronage that is
unique to New Orleans and Louisiana.