Al Sharpton: Looters Were Angry Taxpayers

Rev. Al Sharpton said Thursday that looters who terrorized flood-ravaged New Orleans this week acted out of anger that the services paid for with their taxes were not available.

“The ones that are looting are people there that work paycheck to paycheck, [who] paid their taxes for an infrastructure that collapsed on them,” Sharpton told MSNBC’s “Countdown.” “People in that kind of environment are responding in all kinds of insane ways,” he explained. “It doesn’t justify TVs being stolen, but clearly to get water and to get food and to get milk for babies, even though it is not refrigerated, certainly, you could [not] call that looting.”

The firebrand agitator blamed President Bush for the looting, saying much of the unrest took place while the “pharaoh diddled in his suburban Rome in Crawford, Texas.”

“The president stays on vacation, comes back a day late and a dollar short? I mean, this is an outright . . .” he complained, without finishing the sentence.