JMart writes in the com­ments:

The assault on pub­lic edu­ca­tion in this state is a “per­fect storm” (for­give the cliche of the moment) of greed, denial and proselytizing.

Here’s greed: My grand­par­ents and my par­ents made sac­ri­fices, made do with less, to try to hand down a bet­ter life to the next gen­er­a­tion. But I’m a baby boomer. Screw that. It’s all about me. I want my tax cuts. How else am I going to pay for gaso­line for my V‑8 SUV when it’s over two bucks a gallon.

Here’s denial (west­ern Kansas ver­sion): I’m a farmer, my father was a farmer, my grand­fa­ther was a farmer. My kids can be farm­ers, too. Nev­er mind that the fos­sil aquifer is run­ning dry. Nev­er mind that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that pays the crop price sup­ports that make this life pos­si­ble is bank­rupt­ing itself with deficits. What has always been will always be.

(East­ern Kansas Ver­sion) It does­n’t mat­ter what those farm­ers out west think. It does­n’t mat­ter what those judges in the Supreme Court think. We can raise enough mon­ey from local tax­pay­ers to have excel­lent schools here, even if they’re absolute crap every­where else in the state. As long as we keep click­ing our heels togeth­er and wish­ing with all our might, it can happen.

(Shawnee Mis­sion dis­trict ver­sion) We’re still rich and elite. Real­ly. There’s no decline here. No dark­er-skinned peo­ple speak­ing lan­guages oth­er than Eng­lish, no Sec­tion 8 hous­ing, no pover­ty. Things are no dif­fer­ent than they were in 1975. Really. 

And now the Big guy, pros­e­ly­tiz­ing: Good pub­lic schools keep peo­ple out of our Chris­t­ian madras­sas. We have to cut the liv­ing day­lights out of pub­lic edu­ca­tion so the schools will be viewed as fail­ing. With the mon­ey we save on tax­es, we can pump up the qual­i­ty of our reli­gious schools and par­ents will feel com­pelled to send their kids to our indoc­tri­na­tion cen­ters, and we can brain­wash them to our hearts’ content.

And that is what (some) Repub­li­cans have against school funding.

I keep promis­ing my take on the assault on pub. ed., but it’ll wait a lit­tle longer, since the ban­dages on my fin­ger are slow­ing my typ­ing. This is a nice sum­ma­ry of the polit­i­cal geog­ra­phy of Kansas, and how it plays out on so many issues. The rich east, the poor, rur­al west, the author­i­tar­i­ans lying in wait to snatch up any­one who gets a lit­tle mixed up.