Worst state law nominee: Texas

In Texas, the local version of CalWORKS requires a participant to work 32 hours before they qualify for child care subsidy. A lady with a history with CPS for leaving her kids alone left her 17 month old in the SUV while she went to work, and he died.

"That Thursday would have given me 32 hours."

Matthews said she arranged for someone to pick up her son, but she said that person never showed up. The mother claims she went back and forth to her SUV all day to check on Tre.

"I never expected him to be there all day," she said.

 If the point of welfare reform child care is to allow participants to go to work, why in the world would they make them work a week without child care first? That's stupid. Or more likely, considering Texas's history of welfare laws, the legislature saw a chance to save a couple of bucks while punishing poor people one more time.

The woman does have some faults in her child-rearing techniques (laid out in detail in the Dallas Morning News), but a single mom with 3 kids has to get to work to pay rent and food. Bad mom or not, this child would not have died if his mom had had child care.