SF MAYOR GAVIN NEWSOM IS LOCKING THE DOOR TO BUSTER'S PLACE!

We're here to fight the Mayor's plan to close Buster's Place, the only place homeless people can go to, any time, for respite from the cold, the cops, the concrete, and the craziness.

We should remember that the Mayor's cuts, and the Governor's cuts, and the President's cuts are not just savage and cruel. They're also permanent.

The Mayor wants to permanently close Buster's Place. He wants to permanently close in-home nursing care for people whose chronic disease and disabilities. Last year, he wanted to permanently close programs, while using surplus for one-time capital projects.

The Governor wants to permanently reduce Medi-Cal payments to doctors, even though the payments are among the lowest in the nation, and California has half the number of Medi-Cal providers per person. The Governor also wants to permanently eliminate Medi-Cal coverage for "optional" services like dentistry for adults, glasses, hearing aids, foot care for diabetics, psychology, and speech therapy.

And US presidents have been permanently dismantling HUD for decades, leading to this epidemic of homelessness that Buster's Place, in its small way, is trying to mitigate.

So if they're making all these cuts permanently, it means that this budget crisis, serious as it is, is not the reason for the cuts. The budget problem is the excuse for the cuts. It's the opportunity for the cuts. It's the same as New Orleans. When the hurricane struck, they used it as an opportunity to get rid of public schools, public housing, and public healthcare that wasn't even touched by the water.

They want to kill as many programs as they can now, not just to save money today, but also to be sure they won't be around tomorrow to ask for more money. It's the fiscal pre-emptive strike.

Business and its government are desperate to cut future social programs, particularly Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid/Medi-Cal. Some reasons:

70 million new US residents will reach retirement age in the next ten years. They're expected to live longer, and will have a lot of expensive chronic disease like diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.

Thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan vets newly disabled by brain injuries, amputations, and post-traumatic stress will cost more than the war itself to treat.

The economic bubble, where each dollar of over-inflated real estate value supported $20 to $30 in loans, has collapsed and threatens to bring down the whole system.

The new Joint Chiefs of Staff says Iraq-levels of military spending must continue after withdrawal to finance rebuilding the military for future wars, perhaps along the Pacific Rim or Africa.

So you can see that kids, old people, disabled people, and poor people are obstacles to the agenda of business and government.

They want our programs to die, and ultimately, they want us to die.

A system that does these things does not deserve to exist.