by James Glaser
September 22, 2005

Here I am, back in Northern Minnesota, and the topic of looting in New Orleans came up, and I happened to wonder out loud how much of the looting will turn out to be an inside job.

Sure, I saw the people on TV coming out of the stores with the TV sets and stereos, and like everyone else, I wondered what they were going to do with them, because they had no electricity, nor even a home to put them in.

But you know what? The people that were doing that stealing on TV were out and out dumb. First off, if you are out stealing something, you don't stop and talk to a reporter, who has a film crew with him. Some of those people smiled for the camera, like they were saying, "now get this down real good like, so you can come and arrest me when things get back to normal."

Let's say you are a business man who has some valuable, insured product, and you take it with you before you head out to get away from the storm. You come back after the water recedes and you find your store has been broken into. Well many people will be saying, "Man those looters took everything." Or maybe, "there used to be a safe over there."

Now not everyone is going to cheat like that, but many people will. After this whole mess is over with, there will be reports of millions looted, but my guess is that most of that will be fraud. People who were out there in the 'spotlight' stealing don't really have enough smarts to make a really big haul. I am sure there were professionals taking the real valuable things in quantities large enough to make some big money, and people on the inside will have walked away with a lot too, but it will all be blamed on the poor slobs who had no idea of what they were doing.

That is how it works though. People with money will take advantage of a situation to make more, especially when they have it on film that the poor were helping themselves to what ever they could grab.

Poor people don't scam, they just go out and take without thinking, and they can only get what they can carry. I am sure the dollar amount and the number of things 'looted' will be staggering. Way more than all the poor people in New Orleans could have possibly taken away on foot, but the Poor will be given the blame for all the losses, and we will all pay for what is taken with higher insurance premiums. The professional thief and those who filed claims for what they never lost, will skate away free. No, it isn't right, but that is the way it works in this Christian country today.