"My husband used to say that if I left him, I'd just be another statistic, another welfare mom," she said.

She stated that she "regrets keeping quiet as Em cultivated his public persona of a trailer dweller with a crazy welfare mom."

In contrast, the film's one mother is portrayed as a mean, white-trash welfare mom, a "fat, lazy hillbilly" in her daughter's words.

In the end, it seems, Mother Nature is just another welfare mom, ruining homes and taking billions of tax dollars to do it.

To change that culture, you don't have to get every unmarried welfare mom into a job.

(She doesn't boil bunnies, but she does throw a welfare mom and her two small children on the street to make a point about police forfeitures.)

Welfare and food-stamp benefits are not nearly enough to pay for essentials, so welfare moms need outside income to survive.

Now, at the end of the century, Thompson has upended the state's political culture by targeting welfare moms.

Each time I press the Governor on how many welfare moms won't find a job before time runs out, he says, "I expect to hit 1,000 percent."

Yet there is a great deal of coercion involved in "putting welfare moms to work."