Balancing the Budget plus a Short Story

Here's a short story from the pen of Harvey Sage.  Harvey tells us that his inspiration for it came from a happy visit to a surgery center. Incidentally, Harvey has recently published an e-book of six short stories called TUNA FOOD which is available on Amazon.com for less than $3.  But here's the story:

THE NURSE WHO WOULDN’T CURSE  

Harvey Sage

“Shit!!!”

“Sir, please watch your language. Cursing is unacceptable and inappropriate.”

“Sorry nurse. But look at all the wires and tubes sticking in me. Damn!”

“Sir!”

“Sorry nurse. I’ll try to control my fu… oops. My language.”

I had woken from an anesthesia induced coma-like sleep. I was in between recovery and post op exams. The room was busy as Grand Central Station at Christmas. Doctors in purple scrubs were hustling and bustling, laughing at the stupid error one new intern made during a colonoscopy. He’d cut into the intestine causing massive hemorrhaging. “Hope he’s got a lot of insurance” was the main comment seconded by “If the patient dies they can’t sue him for as much as if he lived. Let’s hope for the best.” They laughed.

At a nearby bed a green clad nurse stood by a dazed refugee from the operating room, shaking as if just freed from a concentration camp. She had a clip board full of forms and was asking life important questions that garnered a confused set of responses. Then, satisfied, she held the clipboard in front of the patient and said “initial here, here, and here and sign here and here.”

“But nurse, I can’t see without my glasses.”

“Don’t argue with me. I’m very busy. Just do as I say, OK. It’s just a formality. It’s not like you’re signing your worldly possessions away.”

“Be careful!” screamed my favorite nurse who didn’t curse. Some gurney jockey almost ran her over as he sped his patient to the fray. Grist for the mill, those caught up in Med World were at the mercy of the multi colored professionals. Nurse Katchet acted like a chief air traffic controller pointing here, shouting there, keeping the dance going. She was solidly built, like a linebacker for the Chicago Bears, with a face that matched. She was the stuff nightmares are made of. Yet she didn’t curse. Not our sweet loveable Nurse Katchet, defender of lingual decency. Was she a deacon in a church. Was she on the board. Pity the poor pastor who had to answer to her. What would be her job in heaven or that other place. Katcher, Keeper of the Gate!

Another victim- patient- was brought in. Evidently he had an obstruction of his bowel. One of the wunderkind was trying to get into the flow of things with an enema bag. Nurse Katchet came over to supervise. She began barking orders to the tech. He got flustered and told her to shut her efn mouth.

“Sir, watch your language. There are many people around here who don’t appreciate expletives.”

The wunderkind went back to his attempt at a bowel breakthrough. Then victory as a stream of brown gook shot out like a column of Patton’s tanks going thru German lines. It sloshed all over Katchet’s clothes, her face and her hair, oozing down to her shoes.

From the depths of her being this champion of rectitude, this model of controlled decorum who watched every word she- and others-said screamed out for all the world to hear.”OH SHIT!!!”

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A "Balanced Budget Amendment" ...  Latest Scheme to Avoid Tax Increases

The latest blackmail scheme from the ninnies on the right is a “Balanced Budget Amendment” whereby the United States will not be able to spend more than it takes in each year.   This means that either spending must be reduced or tax revenue increased to make everything come out even at year end.  So long as the Republicans control the House of Representatives, tax increases are considered to be worse than the black plague, so that means spending cuts will be the only tool available to achieve a balanced budget.  Because the Republicans need their screwball Tea Party wing to stay in power, they will give in to this, much to the pleasure of the corporations (awash in profits, but unwilling to hire domestically), the banks (hoarding cash and unwilling to make loans) and the really wealthy (who pay the lowest taxes in history and invest their money in vehicles so tightly managed that nothing “trickles down”).

Speaker John Boehner claimed that 150 economists endorsed the Debt Ceiling Increase bill the Republican-controlled House barely passed (and which the Senate predictably promptly tabled).  This is the same as saying 150 shamans endorsed whatever the witches in Macbeth were brewing in their kettle.  By now you know the contempt in which I hold economists.  But anyway, to squeeze out enough votes to pass this legislation, the Republicans added the gibberish about a Balanced Budget Amendment as the price of Tea Party support.

The Republicans keep saying that the country should manage its budget the same way families and businesses manage theirs, spending only what you have saved and buying only what you can afford and borrowing only rarely for such thing as houses, cars and capital improvements.  They don’t understand that government spending is different from outlays within a family or business budget.  Profit is not an objective nor is saving for a rainy day.  It is okay for Governments to borrow what they need in excess of revenues to pay for what is necessary, pay interest on what they borrow, keep an eye on how much is borrowed and raise taxes to make sure the whole process is manageable.   Right now, with tax increases “verboten,” this leaves the emphasis on spending for only what is truly necessary.   In the eyes of some, a rocking chair on one’s children’s front porch would be a fine substitute for some of the “entitlement” programs we have up to now believed to be necessary.

But getting back to a “Balanced Budget Amendment,” if the G,O.P really and truly believes that the government should never spend more than they take in during a given year, and start the next year owing nothing on the prior year’s spending,  and still insists on likening government budgeting to family budgeting, every member of the Republican delegation to Congress and every one of the ninnies out there who professes to be a follower of the Tea Party should take a solemn pledge to fully pay off all of their credit card debt accrued within the year by December 31 and owe nothing at that time other than things like mortgage and car payments.  (This paragraph consists of but one long, long, sentence.  I thought of changing it, but what the heck, I've made you re-read it, haven't I?)

The bottom line on this is that everything the G.O.P. is doing in connection with increasing the debt ceiling is geared to using the crisis to prevent any increases in taxes.  That is what it is all about.  Nothing more.  This benefits the very wealthy, corporations and banks.  They have financed the extreme right wing, which while not gigantic in numbers, has been large enough to be the swing vote in Congressional elections, elect some of their number to office and finally, be able to change to hitherto more rational policies of the Republican Party.   

Someone once said that a nation deserves the government it has.  We deserve better.  You can help achieve “better” the next time you go into a voting booth and also by making sure others who believe in government “of the people, by the people and for the people” go to the polls.

Jack Lippman

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