Chris Reed, writing at America's Finest Blog (for non-Californians, this is a reference to Reed's town, San Diego, which long ago was dubbed America's Finest City), has ferreted out an interesting statistic that needs more explanation.

That stat: California, with one-eighth of the nation's population, has nearly one-third of all folks enrolled with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program created by the 1996 federal welfare reform. All told, that's 1.2 million people in California. New York, with a population roughly half of California's, has just more than 252,000 people enrolled in the program.