Surprise surprise, when you distribute homeland security grants to states who don't have any realistic homeland security needs, it gets wasted.

WaPo reports on an analysis of the Homeland Security spending:

Lawmakers say that since the Homeland Security Department's formation in 2003, an explosion of no-bid deals and a critical shortage of trained government contract managers have created a system prone to abuse. Based on a comprehensive survey of hundreds of government audits, 32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have "experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement," according to the report, which is slated for release today and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post.

Some might say, "hey it's a new department, it will get better with time." However, that sadly does not seem to be the trend.

"We all assumed they would get better with age," said Keith Ashdown, vice president for the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "But now the evidence is overwhelming that they've gotten much, much worse."

I'll have to read this when it comes out, I'm curious to see if there is a correlation between spending identified as wasteful, and distribution to landlocked, empty states with no terror targets. My hypothesis would be that states like New York and California won't waste it, because they actually need it, and are motivated to ensure the money is utilized well. However, that might just be naivete, people waste money in every state. But still, there is this (I still haven't updated it sorry, it's supposed to look even worse since they cut New Yorks funding in half and said they had no national landmarks).



Homeland Security Department 2005 estimated total allocations to the individual states divided by the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 state population estimates.