"Gary Drescher" GLDrescher
In what way? For me to be "losing" so far, you'd have to be able to show
quantitatively, from the reports so far, that the extent of the violence
in New Orleans is greater than has broken out during collapses of civil
authority in other times and places throughout the world,

Did I say that? No. I didn't.

Then perhaps we're misunderstanding each other here too. My point was that
to plausibly attribute the violence in N.O. to welfare assistance, you'd
have to show, at a minimum, that there is more violence in N.O. than in
otherwise-comparable circumstances where welfare assistance is absent.

No, I wouldn't. That is only making the issue more complex since we'd also
have to take into account a bunch of other variables.

Nothing in "the reports so far" even *attempts* to make that comparison.
(Nor has anyone shown--though you and others have flatly asserted--that
the perpetrators of the violence or looting were recipients of welfare
assistance. If, as it appears, the most serious violence is coming from
gang members, then it is at least as plausible to speculate that they
support themselves by drug dealing instead. If the Prohibition-era Mafia
had been thriving in New Orleans when the hurricane struck, don't you
suppose *their* gangs would have taken over too when the police department
collapsed?)

At this point, you're just grasping at straws to make your point. You seem
to have at least as much of a bias in favour of welfare as anyone here has
against it. And it's resulted in a bunch of irrelevant tangents. We'll see
whether I'm correct or not soon enough.

moo