After Taxes, a $4,800 Salary Grants Nearly Same Take-Home Pay as a $21,000 Salary

After taxes and entitlement program benefits are accounted for, a single parent with a salary of $4,800 earns nearly the same take-home pay as a single parent with a $21,000 salary, according to a report from the Tax Foundation.

The report, titled “Income Tax Illustrated,” evaluates two examples of a single-parent family with one child. In one example, a single parent earns $4,800 in annual salary before taxes, but after accounting for entitlements, this family’s take-home earnings climbs to $22,090. Benefits included in this calculation comes from Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, and the Housing Choice Voucher program . . .

“As low-income households earn more money, not only do their tax burdens grow rapidly, but they also receive fewer benefits from federal social assistance programs,” the report says. “In fact, individuals who move to higher paying jobs sometimes end up with less overall disposable income, after taxes and transfers” . . .

“The federal government’s system of taxes and assistance programs for low-income families is not very well-designed,” said Scott Greenberg, an analyst at the Tax Foundation. “For households making under $30,000, there are a number of transfer programs and tax credits that phase out simultaneously, making it difficult for these families to increase their take-home incomes by moving to a higher-paying job.” (Read more from “After Taxes, a $4,800 Salary Grants Nearly Same Take-Home Pay as a $21,000 Salary” HERE)

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Majority of Americans Feel Like Strangers in Their Own Country

A Super PAC tied to Ohio Governor John Kasich is annnouncing a new multi-million dollar effort to torpedo Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination.

Trump’s continued dominance of national and state-level polling has vexed the GOP establishment and pushed it to near-panic as voting nears . . .

Whatever failings there may be in his specific policies, Donald Trump’s campaign has tapped into a strong, visceral feeling of millions of Americans. Seeking to destroy Trump, the candidate, may further alienate the Republican party from a rapidly growing block of voters.

According to the Reuters survey, 58 percent Americans say they “don’t identify with what America has become.” While Republicans and Independents are the most likely to agree with this statement, even 45 percent of Democrats share this feeling.

More than half of Americans, 53 percent, say they “feel like a stranger” in their own country. A minority of Americans feel “comfortable as myself” in the country. (Read more from “Majority of Americans Feel Like Strangers in Their Own Country” HERE)

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Gowdy Heard What Obama Said About Syrian Refugees and Pulled the Pin on a Truth Grenade

President Obama has taken up the cause of importing Syrian refugees into the U.S. with a vengeance, saying that they are harmless, despite the fact that some of the terrorists who killed over 100 in Paris are linked to Syrian refugees. Congressman Trey Gowdy isn’t remaining silent in the face of Obama’s claims.

As President Obama continues to push for a wide expansion of his program to import Syrian refugees into the U.S., Congressman Trey Gowdy, R – SC, is blaming the President’s policies for creating the Syrian refugee crisis in the first place.

According to The Hill newspaper, Gowdy addressed the issue as he chaired a meeting of the House Judiciary subpanel on immigration.

“The president says we’re scared of widows and orphans, with all due respect to him, what I’m afraid of is a foreign policy that creates more widows and orphans,” Gowdy said on Capitol Hill.

Gowdy is responding to Obama’s attack on Republicans who oppose the expansion of his refugee importation program delivered to reporters on November 18 where he called the opposition “political posturing.”

“Apparently they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America,” Obama said on Wednesday. “At first, they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of three-year-old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.” (Read more from “Gowdy Heard What Obama Said About Syrian Refugees and Pulled the Pin on a Truth Grenade” HERE)

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This US City Has Been Flagged as Potential ‘Hotbed’ for Terror Recruiting

Recent apprehensions of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia along the southern U.S. border have renewed security concerns in the region, amid claims that Phoenix in particular is becoming a “hotbed” for terror recruiting and activity.

One source told Fox News the FBI even briefed Phoenix police two weeks ago to notify them that the Islamic State is trying to recruit “high-school age students.”

Agents are on the look-out for any suspicious activity. Fox News has learned Border Patrol agents in Arizona caught three Saudi nationals last Saturday trying to evade a highway checkpoint. They were detained in an area considered one of the hottest smuggling routes in the U.S. and just a few miles from where, two days later, agents arrested five Pakistani nationals and one Afghani trying to enter the U.S. illegally.

“When it comes to terrorism there are no coincidences, and that fact that three Saudi Arabians were detained in the same area … days before Pakistanis and Afghans were arrested in the same area isn’t coincidence,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

The Border Patrol called the FBI, which responded with Homeland Security Investigations, and officials took custody of the Saudis. The three did not have required identification on them at the time but told agents they entered the U.S. on student visas to attend the University of Arizona. That turned out to be true. (Read more from “This US City Has Been Flagged as Potential ‘Hotbed’ for Terror Recruiting” HERE)

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Poll: Democrats, Even Clinton Supporters, Warm to Socialism

Senator Bernie Sanders’s speech on Thursday explaining his democratic socialist ideology carried little risk among supporters and other Democrats: A solid majority of them have a positive impression of socialism, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released this month.

Fifty-six percent of those Democratic primary voters questioned said they felt positive about socialism as a governing philosophy, versus 29 percent who took a negative view.

In an address Thursday afternoon at Georgetown University, Mr. Sanders argued that the redistribution of wealth was at the heart of the American social contract, seeking to link himself with the legacies of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The applause he drew should come as little surprise: Sixty-nine percent of Sanders supporters see socialism in a positive light, versus just 21 percent who view it negatively.

Even most of those supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination approve of socialism, 52 percent to 32 percent . . .

Over all, Democrats are just about as keen on socialism as they are on capitalism. In a Gallup survey from November 2012, 53 percent of all Democrats gave socialism a positive rating, while 55 percent did so for capitalism. (Read more from “Poll: Democrats, Even Clinton Supporters, Warm to Socialism” HERE)

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While DC Debates Religion, Refugees, Iraqi Christians Feel Uncle Sam’s Boot

Amid Washington’s raging debate over refugees and religion, more than two dozen Iraqi Christians who crossed into the U.S. from Mexico in hopes of joining their friends and families are being deported after their bids for religious asylum were rejected.

A total of 27 Chaldean Christians, driven from their homeland by Al Qaeda and ISIS, entered the country in April and May, hoping to join the thriving Iraqi Christian community in and around San Diego. But the door to America is being slammed on the 17 men and 10 women over what their supporters say are technicalities.

“These are families who were split up because of religious persecution, and now the government – which we love – is preventing them from being reunited,” said Fr. Michael Bazzi, of St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral, in El Cajon. “We wonder why, for thousands of Muslims, the door is open to America, yet Christians are not allowed to come.”

The Chaldeans are among tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of Christians from Iraq and Syria who have been displaced by fighting and persecuted by Al Qaeda, ISIS and even the Iraqi government. But because some had first gone to Germany before making their way to the border, and in some cases were deemed to not have been forthcoming about it on their applications for religious asylum, they were held at the Otay Detention Center in San Diego since entering the U.S. while their applications were considered. So far, 22 have been ordered out of the U.S. and the other five are awaiting a likely similar ruling.

“We will continue to seek to remove the ones who have been ordered removed,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack told FoxNews.com. (Read more from “While DC Debates Religion, Refugees, Iraqi Christians Feel Uncle Sam’s Boot” HERE)

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HHS: Bailing out Obamacare Insurers an ‘Obligation’ of the Federal Government

The Department of Health and Human Services attempted to reassure private insurers on Thursday that they’ll be able to recover losses from participating in Obamacare by claiming it was an “obligation” of the U.S. government to bail them out.

At issue is a provision within the law known as the risk corridors program. Under the program, which runs from 2014 through 2016, the federal government is to collect money from health insurers doing better than expected and use those funds to provide a federal backstop to other insurers who incur larger than expected losses from rising medical claims. The idea was to provide training wheels to insurers in the first years of Obamacare’s implementation, and to take away any incentive for insurers to cherry pick only the healthiest customers.

Republicans, fearing that this could turn into an open-ended government bailout in the event of industry-wide losses, included a provision in last year’s spending bill that limited the program, requiring HHS to pay out only from the pool of money collected, rather than supplementing it with other sources of government funding. President Obama signed that bill.

Now that insurers have been able to look at medical claims, what they’ve found is that enrollees in Obamacare are disproportionately sicker, and losses are piling up. For the 2014 benefit year, insurers losing more than expected asked for $2.87 billion in government payments through the risk corridors program, but HHS only collected $362 million from insurers performing better than expected. Thus, the funds available to the federal government only amounts to 12.6 percent of what insurers argue that they’re owed.

So insurers are not happy. And now the industry lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans — which happens to be helmed by Marilyn Tavenner, who previously oversaw the implementation of Obamacare as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — is aggressively fighting for more money. (Read more from “HHS: Bailing out Obamacare Insurers an ‘Obligation’ of the Federal Government” HERE)

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Democrat Declared Winner in Runoff Election for La. Governor

Democratic state lawmaker John Bel Edwards defeated Republican Sen. David Vitter in Saturday’s runoff election for Louisiana governor.

Edwards will take over the office from former 2016 Republican presidential candidate Gov. Bobby Jindal in January . . .

Vitter entered the race as the early favorite amid a field of lesser known and lesser funded candidates, including state Democratic Rep. Edwards. However, after months of attacks, include those about his 2007 prostitution scandal, Vitter barely defeated his two Republican challengers in last month’s open primary and finished second behind Edwards by roughly 14 percentage points . . .

To be sure, Democrats didn’t expect to win the Louisiana governorship, considering Republicans now control every governorship and state legislature in the Deep South.

And when Vitter entered the race in January 2014 as the frontrunner, he was pulling in tremendous sums of campaign cash and firing up a dominant political machine that he’s used to get himself and his allies regularly elected to Louisiana offices. (Read more from “Democrat Declared Winner in Runoff Election for La. Governor” HERE)

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Minneapolis Shooting: Witness Says Man Was in Handcuffs When Shot by Police

Smoke tumbled from several small bonfires surrounded by protesters warming their hands outside the 4th Police Precinct in North Minneapolis on Saturday.

The demonstrators are a mixed crowd of black, white, and brown people who say they will not leave until justice is done. At the very least, they want any video that police have to be released in the officer-involved fatal shooting of 24-year-old Jamar Clark . . .

Several witnesses to the shooting or immediate aftermath told CNN the public needs to understand why the protesters are so angry. The witnesses are adamant that there was no reason for police to shoot Clark — they say he was restrained.

One told CNN he is sure Clark was handcuffed. Another said he was unable to move . . .

Wilson said he had just walked out of the Elks Lodge as it was closing when he saw the officers with Clark on the ground. The lodge is across the street, about 35 feet from where the incident happened. It was dark, about 10 minutes before 1 a.m. (Read more from “Minneapolis Shooting: Witness Says Man Was in Handcuffs When Shot by Police” HERE)

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Secretive GOP Group Targets Trump for Destruction

Top Republican establishment forces are joining up to eliminate Donald Trump from the presidential race through a “guerrilla campaign,” backed by secret donors, The Wall Street Journal reports Saturday.

In a page-one story, the paper reported that anti-Trump efforts are being spearheaded by a one-time Republican National Party online communications director who worked briefly for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s failed bid for the GOP nomination.

The group, called Trump Card LLC , is headed by former RNC employee Liz Mair. A detailed memo of their plans, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, says without efforts from GOP establishment, “Trump is exceedingly unlikely to implode or be forced out of the race.”

Further, Mair asserts in the memo, “the stark reality is that unless something dramatic and unconventional is done, Trump will be the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton will become president.”

Trump Card’s plan is to expose Trump’s policy positions as not being conservative. In the past, Trump has advocated higher taxes, supported affirmative action, called for a government-run, single-payer healthcare system used by Canada and Britain, and backed the Supreme Court’s Lowe decision that gives government the right to easily seize private property for private businesses. (Read more from “Secretive GOP Group Targets Trump for Destruction” HERE)

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