War On The Great Plains.

       Hey, Kansas is ground zero. There's a war going on out there. The question, and the reason, for that war is to find out whether or not the courts have any power. The state cut funding for education and the state Supreme Court decided that the Kansas Legislature had to pay the poorer school districts enough to equalize their funding per pupil with the wealthier school districts The idea being that every child is entitled to an equally good educational opportunity.
       So the Governor and the state Legislature is deciding whether or not to comply with or ignore the ruling. Gov. Brownback and the legislature claim that they alone have the power to oversee the purse strings. Another question is why did the state government decide to reduce educational funding? Well, they did it so they could pass the largest tax cuts in state history. It seems that lower taxes for adults, who can vote, are far more important to Kansan legislators than education for Kansan children who cannot vote, and by golly they aren't gonna have any court tell them differently.
       So ya see, the problem, and the question, is just how much power should a court have. Should a court, even a Supreme Court, have the right to force a government to live up to it's legal requirements to provide that education or not? The state government says that no court should have the authority to override the rights and responsibilities of the legislative branch. But the courts seem to be saying that when the legislative branch abdicates its responsibility, the court has the right and requirement to force them to fulfill their responsibility.
       If the legislature is right and the courts do not have the right to prevail in this, then what about other arenas? Would the court's powers be diminished to the point as being little more than a figurehead oddity? If the courts are right, is the legislature nothing more than an arm of the court?
       Seems to me that when the legislature ignores it's fiduciary responsibilities, we need the court to step up and when the court oversteps it's authority, the legislature needs to put it in its place. The conundrum is to know who's right. That comes down to the wording of the state constitution. Who gets to determine that? Isn't that the role of the courts? It may still be winter there, but it's getting hot.