How we got homeland security wrong.

[reprehensor]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/22/homesec.tm/

The fortification of Wyoming, and other tales from the new front line

By AMANDA RIPLEY
Monday, March 22, 2004 Posted: 12:12 PM EST (1712 GMT)

snip

We can estimate the cost of an attack on a port in Los Angeles vs. an attack on a port in Prince William Sound. We can calculate where a nuclear blast of a given force would kill 500,000 people as opposed to 50,000. These are the logical estimates that insurers and investment banks are seeking as they try to quantify the risk they face.

But while all this strategic thinking is going on in the private sector, the government has responded to terrorism in a less rational way.

snip

Of the top 10 states and districts receiving the most money per capita last year, only the District of Columbia also appeared on a list of the top 10 most at-risk places, as calculated by AIR for TIME. In fact, funding appears to be almost inversely proportional to risk.

If all the federal homeland-security grants from last year are added together, Wyoming received $61 a person while California got just $14, according to data gathered at TIME's request by the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent, nonprofit research organization. Alaska received an impressive $58 a resident, while New York got less than $25. On and on goes the upside-down math of the new homeland-security funding.

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Remember, it's just a coincidence that the VP's home state got a huge amount of Homeland Security dough.