Interesting tidbit learned this morning while watching an old episode of Blockbusters on Game Show Network: Alaska leads the nation in federal aid per capita. Host Bill Cullen was surprised (noting that Alaska is rich in natural resources), but I think there's a simple explanation. Come up with your own hypothesis and see if it matches mine (below the fold).

My explanation: because Alaska leads the nation in Congressmen per capita (it has the smallest population, but the same number of US senators as every other state), it has more Congressional voting power per capita to parlay into aid. (I'm guessing this pattern is already discussed in the literature.) And we know from the "bridges to nowhere" episode that Alaska's senators are shameless.

P.S. Yeah, I know, watching old game shows is kind of pathetic, but hey -- I can't spend all my hours on dialysis reading.

CORRECTION: An email correspondent points out that Alaska actually ranks not 50th but 47th in population (North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming have fewer inhabitants; numbers are here). Okay, so the correlation doesn't have an R-squared of one.