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Imagine you are responsible for providing legal representation for indigent people in your state (the public defender's office). Seven years ago, a request for additional funding to meet increased case load was vetoed. Your budget was cut in 2015 and now the governor's office is recommending further cuts. Making things worse is the fact that the number of cases has increased 12%. What would you do?
The Director of the Missouri Public Defender System came up with a novel approach to help meet the increased caseload burden and sent a letter to the Governor (PDF) compelling him to work cases.
Additional reporting here, here, and here.
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Missouri Governor Fails to Fund Public Defender's Office so They Compel him to Work Cases
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday August 05 2016, @02:28PM
None. Missouri is a state and not at war with anyone. Wars are the domain of the Federal government, which is separately funded, so they're entirely irrelevant.
There's nothing stopping Missouri from properly funding its court system, except a lack of will in the state legislature and the governor's office.
It'd be nice if our country spent less money on wars overseas, but this has absolutely nothing to do with how states manage their budgets. Any state that has a budget shortfall is perfectly free to raise various taxes: state income tax, state sales tax, etc., or to make cuts elsewhere.