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Are you Joe Public? One of Americas more than 94 million permanently unemployed? A doctor, truck driver, or other worker at risk of technological unemployment? Then you, Joe, had best learn a new word: Democide.

Whats democide? Its the killing of people by a government most often based on their socioeconomic status.

The Republican healthcare plan, the AHCA dubbed Trumpcare earlier this week, is more than mean-spirited. It is madness. It is that pure evil that oozes up from the cracks of greed, selfishness, and self-entitlement.

Is it outside the realm of possibility for that small sect of the wealthiest Social Darwinists, who believe that the rich and powerful are the product of natural selection, and their well-paid Republican think tanks and politicians, to entertain the notion of thinning the herd?

What has their agenda been in Trumps first 50 days? Keep more poor people from entering the country. Thin the herd. Deport the working poor. Thin the herd.

You dont have to have a Paul Ryan Powerpoint presentation to figure out that Trumpcare, which proposes moving millions of people from Medicaid to tax credits, isnt just an accounting sleight of hand to have the government pay for healthcare without really calling it a social program. It is a reverse redistribution of wealth, back to the haves, that can only have one absolute effect.

If that sounds like the premise for some cheesy Hollywood future Nazi flick, think again. Democide is not uncommon in human history. Simple starvation is usually the class weapon of choice. The Irish famine killed an estimated million people, and Stalins starvation of the USSR, most notably Ukraine, sent as many as 49 million people to their deaths.

There are 94.7 million Americans who are considered not in the labor force, not even seeking a job, a number which jumped again another 664,000 in 2016, CNBC reports.

Out of 209 million working-age Americans, thats a staggering 45 percent of the workforce, which may explain why Democratic tone-deafness to their plight pushed ballots for Trump in key rust belt states.

While the GOP distracts us with border walls, and pits poor and threatened middle class whites against equally struggling minorities and immigrants, two forces are at work, which conservatives assiduously avoid discussing, that have huge ramifications to every American and most of the economies of the planet.

Automation and global warming.

Automation affords us all kinds of wonders. Instant global communications, cool games, amazing images, better cars, new medicines. Used properly, it can bring humanity greater prosperity, health, and well being. That is, if, of course, you believe that all human beings have equal worth, and, freed of work by the machines, can be equally supported, along with the rich and powerful, by the technology that takes them out of the working world.

Republicans, of the Social Darwinist/Randian selfish stripe, though, hold a darker world view of that automation, rooted in their selfish dogma. They arent just rethinking your right to healthcare. Theyre mulling over how many of us are really all that necessary in this brave new world.

The assembly line, the warehouse of the 21st century, doesnt use sweatshop labor. Robots in a warehouse dont eat, sleep, drink, need breaks, have family problems, or health issues.

If you are a college-educated professional smugly thinking that you arent vulnerable like your blue collar brethren, think again.

IBMs Artificial Intelligence program, Watson is beginning to outthink physicians in diagnostics, and radiology and pathology to the point that many types of medical jobs in those fields will go away soon. Robotic surgery reduces error and improves patient outcomes. One estimate is that 80 percent of doctors will be unnecessary by the mid-century.

Uber is already replacing humans with pilotless cars. Mercedes, amongst others, is well on the way to delivering pilotless trucks to the worlds highways. So shed another estimated 4.8 million professional drivers from the workforce. Recalling antiques like land-line telephones, if people just start using cars by calling them up on their apps and just paying by the ride, rather than owning one, kiss 1.4 million auto dealership jobs goodbye, and perhaps 600,000 independent mechanics who wont be working on fleet pilotless cars. In all, more than a third of the population could find itself jobless as a result of automation in this century.

The Great Recession was the Great Realignment by Americas corporations, paper pushers made obsolete by the first major wave of automation by personal computers in the office space. Electronic documents and cloud computing will continue that downward trend in basic office jobs. CEOs earned huge bonuses for firing people who had been technologically unemployed but still working at Americas corporations, for years.

Robots will soon drive, lift, nail, climb fearful heights, fix broken sewage pumps in toxic conditions, and a host of other jobs better, longer and cheaper than humans in North America.

Millions of Americans are just, frankly, unnecessary as labor. As automation continues, millions more will be displaced, and no one, Republican or Democrat, is talking about what we do to restructure a society where work no longer defines us.

The second 400-pound elephant of the Republicans quiet agenda is Global Warming.

We know that folks like the Kochs want to protect their big oil business and deforestation. Even though they wont allow state and Federal agencies to even talk about the rising temperatures, the people paying for stupid arent stupid. They know that with a temperature increase, the prospect of famines in the land of plenty grow. They, the chosen, must survive.

This is why Trumpcare can be viewed as its own more subtle variation of Final Solution. If you think thats hyperbole, consider outcomes.

A fast-food worker with Type II diabetes, who makes $22,000 a year, gets an estimated Trumpcare tax credit of $700. That leaves them $500 or more short of their health insurance premium costs alone, and thousands of dollars short of paying high insurance co-pays and non-covered expenses of thin Trumpcare insurance. People do not seek care that they cant afford. Diabetics, and millions of others with chronic illness, or long-term disability, will die younger.

Trumpcare, which would allow insurers to raise rates on the elderly by 30 percent, and knock 4 to 6 million Medicaid recipients off of state rolls by 2024, leads to state-sponsored killing of the poor for being poor. Meanwhile, under Trumpcare, as proposed, the wealthy will get a big tax rebate. Why? It maintains the income inequality that only further accelerates the weeding out process.

In a time where medicine and science have largely rid the world of plagues, world population is on the rise and resources, like food and timber, thanks to global warming, are threatened. Make healthcare unaffordable, and people die.

There is no Republican rhetorical ruse that works around that.

The irony is that Trump supporters most at-risk, nibbling on his blue rat pellet promises of making America great again, are the ones that are most targeted by the weeding.

All regimes that engage in this type of madness hold out the hope of salvation through their strong hand, only to crush the weak where it suits them, when it suits them.

Trumpcare is a plot worthy of another orange-haired villain, Auric Goldfinger:

Goldfingers parting words to the hero, James Bond, I want you to die, are easily envisioned to be the parting words to you, Joe.

Joe Public: How do you expect me to function if Im not healthy enough to work? If there is no job for me?

Auric Trump: No, Mr. Public. I expect you to die! You are a drag on the economy, and on the food supply that, with the damage we do to the planet, will be shrinking, bigly. I dont need as many of you as consumers. You threaten dwindling resources, and theres nothing that you can do to make us wealthier.

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Trump And Republicans Expect You To Die, Joe Public - Huffington Post

Swab containing a DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) human sample with genetic testing results. Photo via Getty Images

A little-noticed bill moving through Congress would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let employers see that genetic and other health information.

Giving employers such power is now prohibited by legislation including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic tests are part of a workplace wellness program.

The bill, HR 1313, was approved by a House committee on Wednesday, with all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17 Democrats opposed. It has been overshadowed by the debate over the House GOP proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, but the genetic testing bill is expected to be folded into a second ACA-related measure containing a grab-bag of provisions that do not affect federal spending, as the main bill does.

What this bill would do is completely take away the protections of existing laws, said Jennifer Mathis, director of policy and legal advocacy at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a civil rights group. In particular, privacy and other protections for genetic and health information in GINA and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act would be pretty much eviscerated, she said.

Employers say they need the changes because those two landmark laws are not aligned in a consistent manner with laws about workplace wellness programs, as an employer group said in congressional testimony last week.

Employers got virtually everything they wanted for their workplace wellness programs during the Obama administration. The ACA allowed them to charge employees 30 percent, and possibly 50 percent, more for health insurance if they declined to participate in the voluntary programs, which typically include cholesterol and other screenings; health questionnaires that ask about personal habits, including plans to get pregnant; and sometimes weight loss and smoking cessation classes. And in rules that Obamas Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued last year, a workplace wellness program counts as voluntary even if workers have to pay thousands of dollars more in premiums and deductibles if they dont participate.

Despite those wins, the business community chafed at what it saw as the last obstacles to unfettered implementation of wellness programs: the genetic information and the disabilities laws. Both measures, according to congressional testimony last week by the American Benefits Council, put at risk the availability and effectiveness of workplace wellness programs, depriving employees of benefits like improved health and productivity. The council represents Fortune 500 companies and other large employers that provide employee benefits. It did not immediately respond to questions about how lack of access to genetic information hampers wellness programs.

Rigorous studies by researchers not tied to the $8 billion wellness industry have shown that the programs improve employee health little if at all. An industry group recently concluded that they save so little on medical costs that, on average, the programs lose money. But employers continue to embrace them, partly as a way to shift more health care costs to workers, including by penalizing them financially.

READ NEXT: Do workplace wellness programs improve employees health?

The 2008 genetic law prohibits a group health plan the kind employers have from asking, let alone requiring, someone to undergo a genetic test. It also prohibits that specifically for underwriting purposes, which is where wellness programs come in. Underwriting purposes includes basing insurance deductibles, rebates, rewards, or other financial incentives on completing a health risk assessment or health screenings. In addition, any genetic information can be provided to the employer only in a de-identified, aggregated form, rather than in a way that reveals which individual has which genetic profile.

There is a big exception, however: As long as employers make providing genetic information voluntary, they can ask employees for it. Under the House bill, none of the protections for health and genetic information provided by GINA or the disabilities law would apply to workplace wellness programs as long as they complied with the ACAs very limited requirements for the programs. As a result, employers could demand that employees undergo genetic testing and health screenings.

While the information returned to employers would not include workers names, its not difficult, especially in a small company, to match a genetic profile with the individual.

That would undermine fundamentally the privacy provisions of those laws, said Nancy Cox, president of the American Society of Human Genetics, in a letter to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce the day before it approved the bill. It would allow employers to ask employees invasive questions about genetic tests they and their families have undergone and to impose stiff financial penalties on employees who choose to keep such information private, thus empowering employers to coerce their employees into providing their genetic information.

If an employer has a wellness program but does not sponsor health insurance, rather than increasing insurance premiums, the employer could dock the paychecks of workers who dont participate.

The privacy concerns also arise from how workplace wellness programs work. Employers, especially large ones, generally hire outside companies to run them. These companies are largely unregulated, and they are allowed to see genetic test results with employee names.

They sometimes sell the health information they collect from employees. As a result, employees get unexpected pitches for everything from weight-loss programs to running shoes, thanks to countless strangers poring over their health and genetic information.

This article is reproduced with permission from STAT. It was first published on March 10, 2017. Find the original story here.

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House Republicans would let employers demand workers' genetic test results - PBS NewsHour

Lou Dobbs

President Trump made his view clear during his Feb. 28 address to Congress: Obamacare is a disaster which must be repealed and replaced.

However, House Republicans are wracked by divisions over how to go about repealing and replacing the health-care law.

Many conservative House members, including Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, and Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, have publicly opposed a draft of the GOP Obamacare repeal bill that was leaked last week.

Meadows took issue with the refundable tax credits included in the draft, saying they amount to a new entitlement program.

Walker echoed Meadows, saying the draft bill risks continuing major Obamacare entitlement expansions and delays any reforms. It kicks the can down the road in the hope that a future Congress will have the political will and fiscal discipline to reduce spending that this Congress apparently lacks.

Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at Conservative Review and author of Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges From Transforming America, similarly believes the GOP leaderships draft bill misses the boat.

The sad reality is Republicans, most of them in the House and let me tell you the House members make the Senate Republicans look like James Madison compared to them they dont understand free markets, Horowitz declared during a Wednesday appearance on the Fox Business Networks Lou Dobbs Tonight.

The official position of the Chamber of Commerce since 2012 has been to fix, not repeal, Obamacare. They dont understand that the worst parts of Obamacare are the actuarily insolvent regulations, and until you get rid of them and until you pursue lowering costs rather than this economic bean counting about coverage numbers, we are never going to get this right, and Trump was right last night: the way to cover more people is to lower costs.

Trumps address to a joint session of Congress came on the heels of a first month marked by hostility between the mainstream media and the White House.

A recently released analysis by Media Tenor, a nonpartisan media research firm, found only 3 percent of news stories about President Trump on NBC and CBS during Trumps first four weeks in office were positive, while 43 percent of stories on those two networks were negative.

Many conservatives consider rampant liberal bias in the mainstream media to be a given, but Horowitz urges President Trump to bypass the media by conveying a positive message directly to the American people, just as he did Tuesday night in his address to Congress.

The media is who they are, Horowitz told Dobbs. They are not going to change. The media is incorrigibly against conservatives, any Republican, certainly theyre against Trump.

But the key is for Trump not to become his own worst enemy and follow the media into their rabbit holes, and that was the lesson from last night where he was able to speak consistently on policy issues, sound upbeat, optimistic, forward-looking, and that is a way to get his views up into the consciousness of the American people and speak above the rancor of the media.

Who REALLY rules America? Stand up against the unelected tyrants in black. Find out how in Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges From Transforming America. Available now at the WND Superstore!

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Author to Lou Dobbs: House Republicans 'don't understand free markets!' - WND.com

New York Times (blog)

Smart Republicans? New York Times (blog) Ryan isn't a skilled politician inexplicably losing his touch, he's a con artist who started to believe his own con; Republicans didn't hammer out a workable plan because there is no such plan, and anyway they have no idea what that would involve. Or ... and more »

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Smart Republicans? - New York Times (blog)

President Donald Trump and other Republicans were quick to tout Fridays job report showing the U.S. economy added 235,000 jobs in February, but its worth looking at how they responded to similar good economic news under President Barack Obama.

Fridays jobs report, which showed unemployment at 4.7 percent, signals that the U.S. economy is moving in the right direction. But there have now been 77 consecutive months of job growth. When good job numbers came out under the Obama administration, Trump and other Republicans would undermine them by highlighting certain slow areas or suggesting that the numbers did not reflect an accurate picture of the American economy.

Trump has long claimed that the unemployment rate released in the monthly jobs report is artificially low, saying, inaccurately, in 2015 that it could be as high as 42 percent. Trump has argued that the unemployment number is misleading because it doesnt consider the number of people who have stopped looking for work, but even if you do include that figure, the numbers are nowhere close to what Trump claims.

Despite Trumps uncertainty about the unemployment rate, White House advisers and Republicans were quick to tout it Friday.

In August 2012, Sean Spicer, now the White House press secretary, was critical of the Obama administration after a jobs report showed that the unemployment rate had ticked up. But that same report noted that the economy had added 163,000 jobs, surpassing the expectations of economists.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee put out a statement on Friday touting the jobs numbers.

This is a great report. The fact that hundreds of thousands more people found new jobs last month is a good sign that our economy is moving in the right direction, he said in a statement. While we still have much more work to do, Im optimistic that the actions that President Trump and House Republicans are taking will add to this momentumcreating more jobs, growing families paychecks, and improving the lives of all Americans.

Brady also released a statement after the February jobs report came out last year, saying it was disappointing to see so little growth in full time work and wages. That jobs report showed that the U.S. economy had added 242,000 jobs, more than the number of jobs added in February of this year.

Asked about the statements, Brady spokeswoman Emily Schillinger, pointed to a HuffPost story highlighting how the February 2016 jobs report showed just 2.2 percent wage growth over the previous year, which wasnt enough for people to feel a difference in their lives. Fridays jobs report noted that hourly wages have increased 2.8 percent over the last year.

But in December, the jobs report showed 2.9 percent growth in hourly wages over the last year and Brady had a largely negative take on that report as well.

In June 2014, the U.S. economy added 304,000 jobs, but Reince Priebus, then chairman of the Republican National Committee and now Trumps chief of staff, still painted a grim picture of the economy.

Were glad to see some Americans found work last month, but we cant rest until jobs are easy to find, Priebus said in a statement at the time. Thats why Republicans have passed dozens of jobs bills in the House of Representatives. Sadly, Democrats in Washington, DC, have other priorities. The most recent GDP numbers not only revealed that the economy slowed down in the first quarter; they also showed that Democrat policies are wrong for the economy.

That report showed that the unemployment rate had declined 0.2 percentage points to 6.1 percent. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics noted that the unemployment rate had changed little over the month of February.

In 2012, as the economy steadily added jobs, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) criticized the Obama administration for not lowering the unemployment rate more quickly.

In November 2014, after the economy added 227,000 jobs and unemployment fell to the lowest level since 2008, McCarthy only gave tepid praise.

As Republicans played up Fridays jobs report, Elise Gould, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, noted that it was important to keep growth in context.

Fridays jobs report, which showed the economy adding 235,000 jobs in February, is notable for being the first BLS report of the Trump administration, she said in a statement. It may be tempting for todays policymakers to claim credit for this solid employment growth, but credit is only truly deserved when the economy grows faster than expected. Its important to remember that President Trump inherited an economy that was already making steady progress towards full employment.

Spicer said Friday that he believesthejob report numbers were accurate.

They may have been phony in the past, but its very real now, he said during a White House press briefing.

How will Trumps first 100 days impact you? Sign up for our weekly newsletter and get breaking updates on Trumps presidency by messaging us here.

This article has been updated with comment Sean Spicer made during the press briefing.

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Republicans Are Suddenly Thrilled About The Jobs Report - Huffington Post