"A good project for a journalist to work on"

Oregon Muse writes in the Ace of Spades blog,

"You know, we (meaning the federal government) has given a lot of money over the years to fix problems that never seem to get fixed. Like education, for example. Think of the billions of dollars being spent on public schools compared with the functional illiterates our schools produce regularly and yet money continues to be spent.
"Or, what about our blighted urban centers? Like Baltimore. Once again, literally *billions* of dollars in aid has been given, year after year, to the city of Baltimore, but it's still a corrupt, crime-ridden sh*thole. And nobody seems to be asking the obvious questions, why is this happening? Why do we keep spending money and nothing improves?

"This sounds to me like a good project for a journalist to work on. That is, follow the money. Start with whatever appropriations committee makes the decision, find out how much money was allocated, how and where the funds were delivered to the city, what Baltimore city official(s) were authorized to disburse the funds, what departments or individuals received the funds, and how were the funds spent.

"I'm curious because we used to do the same thing with corrupt, Third World sh*tholes, i.e. give them billions of dollars in aid year after year and no matter how much we gave them, they would still remain corrupt sh*tholes. Somebody finally figured out that the money was not being spent on the alleviation of poverty, but was being diverted to the bank account of whatever corrupt kleptocrat was in charge.

"So I wonder about Baltimore. Elijah Cummings is supposedly a rich man, so how did he get so rich on a Congressman's salary? Did he do anything other than the usual "insider trading" type stuff that our elected officials can do but we can't because it's illegal? I don't know, but maybe it's one of those things a journalist should be looking into. That is, when they're not too busy looking for white supremacists under every bed and vilifying a high school kid for wearing the wrong hat."