Governments tend to spend money on low-value activities because they do not have market signals or customer feedback to guide them. In this report, I examined the problem with respect to the Transportation Security Administration. As one example, TSA’s SPOT program for finding terrorists spends more than $200 million a year with few if any benefits.

Duplication and waste are common themes within the Department of Homeland Security. A recent report from the DHS inspector general (IG) provides another example of wasted tax dollars.

A June 24 article in the Washington Post looked at sea level rise in North Carolina. Unfortunately, the article followed a common template of portraying a battle of science vs. conservative politics and environmentalism vs. capitalism. But as I noted here about water and drought in the West, liberals and libertarians can agree on the benefits of cutting anti-environmental subsidies.

A tragedy is unfolding in Texas as thousands of illegal immigrants are pouring over the southern border. Alex Nowrasteh has examined the immigration statistics here. But in this blog, let’s take a look at the budget situation.

The programs, regulations, and laws that define most federal activities are so numerous and complex that it strangles effective governance. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is no exception. During the Hurricane Katrina disaster, DHS officials were in a fog of confusion, overwhelmed by events and all the complicated emergency rules and procedures.

In discussing one of her main achievements as British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher said, “privatization is at the center of any program of reclaiming territory for freedom.” One area where Britain reclaimed a lot of freedom is aviation. Since the 1980s, that nation has privatized airlines, airports, air traffic control, and in some cases airport security screening.

Two years ago, a thorough, bipartisan Senate report concluded that the federally created information-sharing hubs known as “fusion centers,” long billed as a “centerpiece of our counterterrorism strategy,” were in fact an expensive boondoggle. Despite being funded by the Department of Homeland Security to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over a decade, the centers produced no useful counterterror intelligence and often focused instead on local law enforcement matters unrelated to any legitimate national security purpose.

In the months and years after the 9/11 disaster, federal policymakers did what they usually do after crises: they increased spending and seized more power. At the Bush administration’s urging, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 as a complex amalgamation of 22 different federal agencies.

A new Rasmussen poll finds that just 19 percent of voters think that the federal government “does the right thing nearly all the time.” The poll also finds that two-thirds of voters think that the government “looks out primarily for its own interests.”

I am writing a study on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and looking at the issue of presidential disaster declarations. Under the 1988 Stafford Act, a state governor may request that the president declare a “major disaster” in the state if “the disaster is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the state and the affected local governments.”