Misleading LAT welfare story

This morning's lead story is about California welfare money that's supposed to be going towards rent and clothing instead being spent in Vegas, Hawaii and Florida. Scandalous, right? Not so fast. Down in paragraph 18, we learn that the $69 million in out-of-state spending accounts for less than 1 percent of the $10.8 billion spent by welfare recipients during the period covered. Not only that, some of the spending is legitimate - family emergencies and such. All told, the amount of actual fraud is probably closer to 0.5 percent, maybe less. Now I'm all for uncovering blatant misappropriation of government money - and goodness knows there are plenty of examples - but 0.5 percent seems miraculously low for a state like California. No matter - this non-story will now be used in certain quarters as "evidence" that poor people are somehow undeserving of state aid. How did this ever get into the paper?