However, in California, where millions of illegal immigrants live, a semi-formal version of state-level amnesty has been gathering steam for years. Despite dogged opposition by Republican and Tea Party activists, Sacramento’s slow-motion legalization of the undocumented has paved the way for the White House’s planned moves to receive a much smoother reception than in other state capitols.

Still, the exact details of Obama’s intended actions remain murky, and even among libertarian-leaning immigration doves, his assertion of sweeping executive powers has hit against fierce criticism. Indeed, as the Washington Post noted, the president himself previously disavowed the constitutionality of what he may now have resolved to do — insisting he was “not a king” and could not “just suspend deportations through executive order.” Californians have not been immune to the sense of ambiguity surrounding Obama’s shifting immigration policy.

Apprehension and expectations

In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, one illegal immigrant described his discomfort in emblematic terms. Ernesto Perez — a 44-year-old father of four who has spent 19 years residing illegally in the United States — told the paper, “Obama is the only hope we have right now. Because three of my kids live with me, I’m always afraid that I will be separated from them. They need me. We need each other.”

Perez’ long undocumented stay underscored just how lax California has been in prosecuting illegal immigration, and for how long. His personal uncertainty, however, confirmed what millions of legal and illegal residents have known about president Obama for years: his willingness to deport. Critics from the left, such as Bill Moyers, have slammed Obama for breaking records with over 2 million deportations during his time in office.

That’s why illegal immigrants in California have depended so much on the Golden State’s incremental approach to legalization. Through a battery of state laws and regulations, Sacramento has given undocumented residents several protective paths toward the kind of status that makes it harder to deport.

With taxpayer money, access has been opened to educational loans for college, legal representation in juvenile court proceedings, driver’s licenses and the practice of law without a Social Security number. The California Supreme Court ruled in January that Sergio Garcia, an illegal immigrant who duly passed the California Bar Examination, could not be prohibited by the state from practicing law; Gov. Jerry Brown authorized Garcia’s license soon thereafter.

A push from activists

California activists dedicated to full legalization have used the state’s legal landscape as a justification for pressing president Obama for sweeping changes. In a typical statement making the rounds, California Immigrant Policy Center director Reshma Shamasunder urged Obama “to move on executive action and end unjust deportations that have caused the separation of families, as quickly as possible. Given the stalling we’ve seen in Congress for so many years, we hope he is bold in his action and covers as many people as possible.”

As KQED reported, California’s rules 麻将牌 helped swell the immigrant population to its current level, with about half of the children in state claiming an immigrant parent and one in four residents claiming foreign birth. Although legal immigrants have not pushed in a collective way for swift and full amnesty, Latino voters have consistently shown support for some kind of expanded “path toward citizenship,” as policymakers in both major political parties often put it.

For their part, Republicans have warned of consequences if Obama opts against enforcing the immigration laws on the books. Michael Steel, the spokesman for Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-OH, adopted the colorful language characteristic of today’s media relations officials, “If ‘Emperor Obama’ ignores the American people and announces an amnesty plan that he himself has said over and over again exceeds his Constitutional authority, he will cement his legacy of lawlessness and ruin the chances for congressional action on this issue — and many others.”

Rhetoric or reality? With the president’s announcement on amnesty coming tomorrow, the fireworks will begin in earnest. The new, Republican-dominated Senate is seated in January, added to continued GOP control of the House.

Obama is leaving office in two years due to term limits. So in the new year, jockeying to be his replacement will intensify in both the Republican and Democratic parties, with his amnesty possibly the top issue out of the starting gate.

By John Hrabe

In 2004, then-state Senate President Pro-Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, coined a profane, albeit effective, slogan that helped convince Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign into law the nation’s first ban on foie gras. A favorite target of animal rights groups worldwide, the French delicacy is created by force-feeding ducks for their specially-fattened livers.

After an eight-year implementation process, the Burton bill finally took effect last July, and with it, spawned a budding resistance movement. From French socialist politicians to an online retailer in Reno and restaurants in Hermosa Beach and Paris, the Foie Gras Résistance is fighting back against California’s draconian law.

Despite the law, gourmet shops, online retailers and restaurants have found creative ways to satisfy epicureans’ desires.  On Dec. 8, one foie gras retailer hosted a “Foie Gras Tasting and Holiday Sales Event” in Reno, Nev.  “Mirepoix USA, formerly located in the San Francisco bay area in California, relocated to Reno, Nev. last October in anticipation of the foie gras ban,” the company explained in a press release for the event.

Complimentary

Restaurants, too, have circumvented the law by offering the item as a complimentary side dish. The infamous animal rights group PETA is hoping to put an end to this tactic. In late November, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a lawsuit against Hot’s Kitchen for selling a burger that is served “with a complimentary side of foie gras.”

“No restaurant can act outside the law by illegally selling the diseased livers of abused birds, and PETA will help make sure that this one doesn’t,” said PETA general counsel Jeff Kerr. “Serving a ‘complimentary side of foie gras’ is as cruel as it is unlawful.”

Some critics of the law say its vagueness has made it impossible to bring forward a single enforcement action.

“It’s so vague as to be unenforceable in any manner that comports with constitutional requirements of due process,” wrote Reason magazine’s Baylen Linnekin, who serves as the executive director of the nonprofit Keep Food Legal. “After all, why hasn’t some governmental unit brought even one enforcement action in the state?”

PETA filed the lawsuit after unsuccessfully trying to persuade the Hermosa Beach Police Department to bust the criminal operation masquerading as a restaurant.

“We contacted the Hermosa Beach Police Department, but with a lot on their plates, they haven’t gotten around to the case,” PETA’s Michelle Kretzer wrote on the group’s blog.

If the thought of the police crashing dinner service at a swanky restaurant sounds absurd, you’ll love PETA’s first cause of action for the lawsuit: unfair business competition. Ironically, the California law that drove some businesses to leave the state is buttressed by regulations against unfair business competition. PETA alleges that the free side dish of foie gras unfairly gives an edge to some businesses.

A spokeswoman for the restaurant called the lawsuit an “outrageous” publicity stunt.

“Publicity stunts such as the filing of an outrageous, baseless lawsuit, followed by the issuance of press releases are nothing more than an attempt to exploit the media by stoking controversial flames and are designed to line the pockets of profiteers,” Kelley Coughlan, a representative for Hot’s Kitchen, told Reuters. 

French Socialists Fight the Ban

While California restaurateurs have been crafty in their evasive maneuvers, the most passionate members of the foie gras resistance movement have been socialist politicians in France. It’s not hyperbole to say that the California Democratic Party is more liberal than the Socialist Party of France.

This summer, Socialist president Francois Hollande offered  to “bring as much [foie gras] as needed to authorities of the country [the United States]” to help convince Sacramento that the ban was absurd.

“I think they will listen,” said Hollande, who has proposed a 75 percent tax rate on incomes exceeding 1 million euros. “We wish we could have more of it here in France, and sometimes cannot, due to lack of purchasing power — I wouldn’t want to deprive the Americans!”

No one wants the carbon footprint of a transatlantic flight weighing on a French socialist’s conscience, which is why I traveled to Paris to get the French reaction to California’s ban and taste the French delicacy for myself.

Enjoying Foie Gras in Paris

I sat down with the manager of one of Paris’ most popular foie gras proprietors. In her mellifluous French accent, Lucie Loï, director of the highly-rated Le Comptoir de la Gastronomie, summed up the reaction of the French food community.

“You cannot touch it. You cannot ban it. It would be crazy,” she told me as I washed down a plate of foie gras with a glass of champagne.  Foie gras is considered an important “part of the cultural and gastronomic heritage protected in France.”

I asked Loï about animal rights groups’ characterization that the delicacy is produced on factory farms.

“Foie gras is the product of extreme animal cruelty,” the Humane Society of the United States claims on its website. “Factory farms produce it by force feeding ducks so much that their livers become diseased and enlarged. This causes a tremendous amount of suffering and can make it difficult for the birds to walk and breathe normally.”

Loï vehemently objected. Her business only purchases foie gras from a farm cooperative in rural France.

The French resistance has even spawned a boycott of California wine.

“I call on all the restaurants in France that sell Californian wine to stop doing so in a show of solidarity for our foie gras makers and, more broadly, for all food makers,” urged Philippe Martin, the Socialist president of the general council of Gers, which produces 16,000 tons of foie gras each year.

For those looking to join la Résistance, Le Comptoir de la Gastronomie has international shipping and wide-variety of foie gras products to choose from.

By John Seiler

“Tax the rich” is a mantra not only in America, but globally. In California, Gov. Jerry Brown is insisting that anyone making $250,000 or more a year is “rich” and should pay more. At the national level, President Obama also is insisting that some making $250,000 or more is “rich” and should pay “their fair share.”

In France, new President Hollande wants to impose a 75 percent tax on those making more than $1.2 million a year.

Hey, why  not? The rich just rob from everybody else and splurge on yachts and Rolls Royces. They never re-invest their money in business and jobs creation. Instead, it’s governments that wisely spendsthe tax money taken from the rich, re-investing it in the education of workers, crucial research on new products and economic stimulus packages.

The Financial Times noted on the international climate (may be a pay wall on the link):

“Pierre Moscovici, the country’s finance minister, told Le Monde: ‘This is not a punitive measure, but a patriotic measure.’ The rich, he explained, are being given an opportunity to make ‘an exceptional contribution’ to solving France’s financial problems….

“The truth is that the new French government is at the extreme end of a new global trend: an international backlash against the wealthy that is reshaping politics from Europe to the US to China.”

China, of course, had long experience under Mao Zedong with punishing the rich for their sins, such as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1965-71). Unfortunately for the Chinese, after Mao died in 1976, his successors, especially Deng Xiaoping, unleashed greed and rich people started creating companies and exporting gizmos to the shelves of Walmart in America. But Mao still is featured in their currency, the yuan, so perhaps they can return to a time when the rich didn’t exploit the poor. The FT:

“The lifestyles of the rich and powerful is now the most sensitive and dangerous topic in Chinese politics. The website of Bloomberg News was recently shut down in China, apparently as punishment for the publication of an article on the family wealth of Xi Jinping, soon to be China’s new president.”

It’s also unfortunate that, while countries such as France and America and California are punishing the “rich,” other countries are taking advantage of this policy. The FT:

“David Cameron, the British prime minister, has offered to roll out the red carpet for French tax exiles.” 

There always are reactionaries. Both countries are part of the European Union, which makes it easy to cross borders for work and residence. Fortunately, wiser heads may prevail even there:

“But even in Britain, where the top tax rate is 45 per cent, there is a new mood of antagonism towards the rich. Even conservative politicians dare not defend bankers’ pay….

“If this new mood hardens, it could mark the end of an era of lower taxes, deregulation and rising inequality that began in the late 1970s, with the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the west and of Deng Xiaoping in China When Lady Thatcher came to office in 1979, Britain’s top tax rate was 83 per cent. She cut it, first to 60 per cent and then to 40 per cent — where it stayed until the financial crisis. Reagan inherited a top income tax rate of 70 per cent and cut it to 50 per cent and finally to 28 per cent. In China, Deng Xiaoping captured the spirit of the times when he remarked: ‘To get rich is glorious.’”

The new theme is: “To be taxed is glorious.”

Currently in California, the “rich” pay a top federal income tax rate of 35 percent and a top California state tax rate of 10.3 percent. Total: 45.3 percent.

If all the tax increases go through, those numbers would go, respectively, to 38.6 percent and 13.3 percent. Total: 51.9 percent.

Actually, an even better idea would be to restore the 91 percent federal level from the 1950s. Combined with the 13.3 percent California top tax rate, if Brown’s tax increase is passed, the top rate here then would be 104.3 percent.

A tax rate of 104.3 percent would benefit the rich the most because their money would be ploughed back into the economy on the construction of infrastructure projects such as the California High-Speed Rail Authority, thus generating more wealth for them and everybody else.

The 104.3 percent income tax rate: It’s an idea whose time has come.