BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: katesheets / Flickr)During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump pledged over and over again that he would build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep the "rapists" out, and, at the same time, he would keep America safe from "radical Islamic terrorism." Both those promises were aimed at stoking up fear and loathing against immigrants and Muslims. It certainly stirred up his base. To my knowledge, Trump, who falsely claimed to know nothing about the white supremacist David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, turned a blind eye to terrorism perpetrated by extremist right-wing groups.

Trump's blind eye notwithstanding, terrorist acts committed by extreme right-wing groups and individuals continues to be a clear and present danger.

In late-August, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), issued a report titled Domestic Terrorism: An Overview, which maintained that while it was important in the post-9/11 period to focus on terrorist attacks emanating from outside the country, "domestic terrorists—people who commit crimes within the homeland and draw inspiration from U.S.-based extremist ideologies and movements—[and] have killed American citizens and damaged property across the country," should not be overlooked.

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Photo: Andrew Turner / Flickr)When average Americans were oppressed in the 18th century, they knew where the plutocrats lived, and they didn't have military-style police forces holding them back. The Stamp Act drove the New York masses to ransack the houses of Governor Cadwallader Colden and the British major who was pointing army artillery toward the local town. Another mob looted the house of pro-English aristocrat Thomas Hutchinson, carrying away his fine furnishings and emptying his wine cellar in part of what the British called a "war of plunder" to take away the "distinction of rich and poor." 

That doesn't happen today. The super-rich are safely ensconced in their gated estates with private security forces and 9-foot walls and surveillance systems and sniper posts. But now they have good reason to fear the future. We all do. The too-rapid evolution of intelligent machines, with the ability to make decisions that can impact human life, is bringing us closer to a man-made epidemic that we won't be able to control. As armed drones become tinier and cheaper and smarter and more readily accessible, they could launch the modern revolution of the undervalued human being.

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Portrait: DonkeyHotey / Flickr)It's difficult to find any other reasons for President Donald Trump to fire, without explanation, the remaining members of the council advising him on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, other then he is indifferent to the health needs of minority communities, LGBTQ Americans, and that he is once again playing to his white conservative Christian evangelical base.

The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA),which was established in 1995, makes national HIV/AIDS strategy recommendations —setting out how health officials should respond to the epidemic.

David Kilmnick, the president of the LGBT Network, criticized the dismissals. "We have finally made significant progress in trying to end the epidemic once and for all and the irrational and immature moves by Trump will only set us back," he said in a statement.

Oddly enough … or maybe not so oddly enough … in September, Trump issued an executive order "continuing 32 advisory committees — including the council on H.I.V. and AIDS — whose operating authorities had been set to expire," The New York Times reported late last year.

Protestors carry signs as they demonstrate against proposed cuts to Medical and Medicare outside San Francisco city hall on September 21, 2011 in San Francisco, California. (Photo: AUCD)JOHN GEYMAN FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

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Medicaid was enacted in 1965 under the Lyndon Johnson administration as a social insurance program to provide lower-income Americans with the health care they need. Since then it has been solidly supported by all subsequent administrations as a social contract within our society, as a matter of fairness and necessity. As poverty and inequality have increased in more recent years, it has become a mainstay assuring necessary medical care for some 74 million Americans, covering more than one in five Americans, almost one half of births, 39 percent of children, and about two-thirds of nursing home and long-term care, and more than one-quarter of mental health services. It has been described as "the backstop for America's scattershot health care system."

Not anymore. The Trump administration is out to shrink the program by whatever means, now including administrative actions by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that bypass action by Congress. Seema Verma, Trump's appointed head of CMS, did just that in Indiana during Michael Pence's governorship. She has recently released a 10-page memo detailing how states can apply for waivers that can rein in their Medicaid programs, even in states that expanded Medicaid since 2010 under the Affordable Care Act. Through these waivers, states can exclude able-bodied adults from coverage unless they are working at least 20 hours per week. Children and disabled people are excluded from the work requirement. Ongoing reports will be required documenting that Medicaid recipients are working. If they fail to comply with these requirements, they can be locked out of coverage entirely. These new reporting requirements will greatly increase the bureaucracy involving Medicaid.