The Ahmanson Ranch project, owned by Washington Mutual Bank (WMB), is a planned community development located in the far eastern portion of Ventura County north of Agoura Hills in the Bell Canyon area.

Ventura County (as well as the West Hills of the San Fernando Valley, which it borders) certainly needs more affordable housing, and that's the theme that WMB is sounding over and over to justify this project. However, the project not only fails to deliver any significant affordable housing, but it is an ecological disaster. Out of some 3,000 homes planned for the project, less than 674 are categorized as 'low-income' by WMB. And of those, 300 are actually 'granny flats'- one-room apartments attached to a luxury home; and 50 are Single-Room Occupancy homes (aka "Studios") expected to be used primarily to house golf course employees (What, did you think they could build a community without a golf course? WMB has plans to build TWO of them!). Just 15 "affordable" units in the Ahmanson development will have 4 bedrooms, while 245 "affordable" units will have 2-3 bedrooms.

Then there is the traffic congestion. The development of some 10,000 people is estimated to increase traffic in the 101 corridor -- already at 160 percent of designed capacity -- by another 50%. In 2002, we are already at the traffic levels that WMB's 1992 Environmental Impact Report predicted would be reached in 2010, even before one Ahmanson Ranch house has been built. WMB is trying to downplay this discrepancy and argue that nothing has substantially changed from the original estimates from the 1992 report: Certainly nothing which should slow down, let alone stop, their project.

Then there are the ecological impacts. There are several indigenous plant and animal species in the area which many believe are likely to perish if the project goes ahead. The development is going in at the headwaters of the Malibu watershed which drains down to Surfrider Beach at the Ventura / Los Angeles county line. This beach area is already struggling with the pollution that drains into the ocean there, making it a hazardous place for visitors; many believe that pesticide, fertilizer, industrial waste and other drainage from Ahmanson Ranch will only exacerbate the problem. Add to that the fact that Ahmanson Ranch is in the middle of an area which already requires the importation of water from the Colorado River to sustain it; Ahmanson Ranch will put greater demands on this scarce resource and likely drive up water bills even further. (And, of course, golf courses aren't golf courses without lush, green lawns, are they?)

There are local groups opposing this project. One of the most visible, the Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch, is pushing the Ventura County Supervisors to require a new, updated Environmental Impact Report before allowing the project to proceed. Visit their website at http://www.RallyfortheRanch.org.

The 2000 elections were the most expensive elections in history. In 2000, we had our first $100 million U.S. Presidential campaign; our first $70 million Senatorial campaign; and our first $30 million Congressional House campaign.

The 2000 elections spent an estimated $3 trillion dollars to put our elected officials in office. And that amount exceed the $1.5 trillion spent in 1996, and there is every expectation that the 2004 elections will shatter even those records set in 2002.

Most of that money came in through "soft money" contributions made by corporations and wealthy individuals to the major political parties. And much of it was spent on mass media such as radio and television. Over the past 40 years, political campaigns have migrated from 'face-to-face' campaigns and debates to media events where the one who can run the most commercials is the one who can get their message out. And because it comes down to raising money, our elected leaders spend most of their time fund-raising and they have to answer to those who can contribute the most to their re-election. The recent Enron debacle was a illuminating point in how corporate money has corrupted our electoral system to provide huge tax and regulatory benefits to those who have the deep pockets to buy our congressmen.

Congress has been maddeningly slow in addressing this problem. The much-ballyhooed McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Bill, recently passed by Congress, is a constitutionally questionable band-aid that is likely to do little to affect the ongoing game of political patronage. Yet, this bill took almost 10 years to move through Congress; and along the way it was stripped down to a shadow of the original proposed bill. And even this bill is likely to fail constitutional muster as it is challenged in the courts by the very legislators who benefit the most from the current system.

The only real antidote to our current system of political patronage is to have our campaigns publicly financed. This new approach, called "Clean Elections Finance", provides public campaign monies to any candidate who disavows private campaign contributions. This approach is already in place in Maine, Vermont and Arizona.

With Clean Elections, the candidate no longer has to spend most of their time fund-raising for their re-election; nore are they beholden to special wealthy private interests. They win their campaigns the old-fashioned way, by selling the electorate on the issues that they believe in.

California is gearing up to put a "Clean Elections" initiative on the ballot in 2004. For more information, visit http://www.CaliforniaCleanElections.org.

The 2000 elections starkly illustrated the bias of the "Winner-Take-All" two-party system in the United States. Most U.S. elections are won by a plurality, which means that a vote for any third-party candidate is considered either "thrown away" or, in reality, rewards the candidate the most ideologically opposed to the third-party voter (aka a "Spoiler" vote). When you have only two major candidates, the electoral power resides in the hands of the "Undecided Center" and thus discourages candidates from distinguishing themselves from the others in any meaningful way in order to paint themselves as representative of that Center.

In addition, thousands of political districts with non-partisan offices require run-off elections if none of the candidates reach a majority. This requires a whole new round of setting up a voting date, printing ballots, campaigning, etc., costing millions of dollars.

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) solves both of these problems. With IRV, voters rank their votes on their ballot; their favorite candidate is ranked #1, their second-favorite candidate is ranked #2, etc. until all of the candidates are ranked. Then the tallying is done by adding up all of the #1 votes across the board; if no candidate has received a majority of the votes, then the candidate who received the least votes is removed from the pool and all of the ballots that ranked that candidate as their #1 choice then move down to counting their #2 choice. The process continues iteratively until one candidate receives a majority of the votes.

It's a little more complicated conceptually than what we do today, but the advantages are enormous. By ranking your votes, voting for a third-party candidate doesn't automatically benefit the 2nd-party candidate you like least, eliminating the "Spoiler" role. It also resolves having to hold a 2nd "runoff" election, because the runoff happens automatically in the ranking. And ultimately, it reduces the penalty for major candidates to take strong political stands because there is no longer any "Undecided Center" to try to control. All candidates in the same end of the political spectrum will benefit each other in that voters will be able to pick all candidates that reflect their views and reject those who don't.

Instant-Runoff Voting is a more democratic electoral process that is used in democracies all over the world. It is time to use it as the primary voting tool in the United States. For more information, visit http://www.fairvote.org/irv.

The infamous "Three Stikes" laws in California were originally proposed by California Governor Davis' predecessor as a way to clamp down on crime and improve public safety. What they have become is a tool to enforce ideological agendas of District Attorneys and causing a boom in prison-building while hamstringing local judges from doing their jobs.

"Three Strikes" was touted as locking up the violent career criminal for good, permanently removing them from society. But we have seen more and more examples where small acts like being caught with an ounce of marijuana or stealing a sandwich from a local convenience store, even decades after their last criminal conviction, is used as the third "felony" for DAs to use to justify locking up otherwise useful and harmless citizens. And there's nothing that the judges can do about that. "Three Strikes" takes the punishment out of the hands of jurors and puts it in the hands of the prosecutors.

There are dangerous career criminals out there. But "Three Strikes" is being abused to target minority communities and others who have never committed violent offenses in the name of showing that DA's are "tough on crime". We citizens deserve to be treated better than this, to be given a fair hearing on any criminal accusations and, if found guilty, to be given a sentence commensurate with the level of our crime.

Green Party Lieutenant Gubernatorial candidate Donna Warren is making "Three Strikes" the focal point of her 2002 campaign. For more information, on Donna's campaign and "Three Strikes", visit http://cagreens.org/donna/ or Families to Amend California's Three Strikes Law.

The Death Penalty has been a favorite tool of conservatives to supposedly 'crack down on crime,' best illustrated in George W. Bush's infamous record of sending inmates to the chair while serving as Governor of Texas from 1994 to 2000. In 1999, Bush sent 38 people to their deaths, setting a one-year state record in the United States and beating the last record, also set by Bush in 1997.

Yet, major law centers like the University of Chicago have done research on handfuls of people who have been sitting on death row and discovered that many (30% in one study) were actually innocent of the crimes, based on improved forensic (DNA) and other evidence. This so alarmed Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan that he unilaterally imposed a moratorium in carrying out any further death sentences in his state until the time comes when he can be assured that the death penalty is imposed without bias or possible error.

This makes perfect common sense. Yet, 37 states and the federal government still carry out death sentences, including California. Despite Governor Ryan's flawless reasoning, California Governor Gray Davis has shown no interest in ensuring the same elimination of error in California's death row.

It's time for the Death Penalty to be put aside until we can be assured that innocent men are not being put to death. There is an effort to put a Death Penalty Moratorium initiative on the November 2000 ballots. For more information and learn where you can sign a petition to support the initiative, contact either Death Penalty Focus of California at http://www.deathpenalty.org, or the Southern California ACLU at http://www.aclu.org/death-penalty/.

The UFW has been struggling with Pictsweet Mushroon Farms in Oxnard for the past several years to reach agreement on a contract to raise the wages of its workers to something approaching a living wage. The last wage contract expired in 1988 and wages have not changed since then. In addition, working conditions at Pictsweet are dark and dangerous; yet Pictsweet has refused to do anything to protect the health of its workers. Pictsweet has been awarded court damages for firing workers in support of the UFW and has even threatened to shut down its Oxnard plant to keep the union out.

The UFW is conducting a campaign to ask that mushroom customers drop Pictsweet as a supplier. Vons, Safeway and Ralph's supermarket chains have already agreed to this; however, one of the largest Pictsweet customers, Pizza Hut, is refusing to drop them.

The UFW is asking the public to write letters to Pizza Hut and to Pictsweet to ask them to reverse their positions and support honest workers to earn an honest wage. For more information, visit http://www.ufw.org/e-mail.htm.

Ventura County has one of the highest costs of living in the nation, yet it also has some of the lowest-paid workers in the country. Recently, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution requiring that all employees and contractors of the county be paid a minimum living wage of $9 or $7 with benefits. Other cities in the county, including Oxnard and Ventura, are considering similar ordinances for their city workers.

The Ventura Living Wage Coalition is leading the campaign for living wages to be paid to all workers in the county. For more information, visit http://www.livablewage.org/.

For over 30 years, Rocketdyne Corp. (now owned by Boeing) operated a nuclear testing site in the Santa Susana knolls of Simi Valley. The program has been dismantled since 1991, but Boeing Corp. has been working since then to try to decontaminate the site to a level that it may sell the land for industrial or even residential development.

Three items of interest have recently been disclosed by the local media:

• It has become public knowledge over the past couple of years that the Department of Energy is preparing new guidelines to allow corporations to sell contaminated metal nuclear waste to metal recyclers. It has been holding 'hearings' to try to persuade the local populace that not only is there no real danger to the public, but it's an environmentally responsible way to dispose of the waste. The public knows better, of course; no one wants nuclear waste matal to be used in jewelry, eating utensils, or even in children's braces. However, to-date these 'hearings' have not caused the DOE to consider rescinding these proposed regulations. The Bush Administration appears to be looking for the political cover to allow these regulations to go into effect as they now stand.
• Rocketdyne has also proposed that it be allowed to truck much of its contaminated soil to an unspecified off-site location. This could be disastrous in terms of exposing the local populace to possible spillage accidents, not to mention the area where it would ultimately be disposed. The DOE announced a date in 2001 for this transport to begin, but it was put on indefinite hold after a public outcry.
• In April 2002, the local media disclosed that Rocketdyne has apparently already been shipping some of its nuclear waste to Los Angeles landfills for the past 10 years, unbeknownst to local officials. (Rocketdyne has never been allowed to dump any waste at the Simi Valley city landfill.) LA Mayor Jim Hahn and other state agencies are launching an investigation as to how this practice happened and what the long-term consequences for those L.A. landfills might be.

For more information and history of this site, visit our Corporados page.

Immigrants' rights in the U.S. have been eroded by various conservative and other xenophobic groups for the past few decades. The most recent setback was a US Supreme Court Decision released in March proclaiming that immigrant workers who illegally secure employement in the U.S. are not guaranteed restitution if the employer later unfairly fires them.

On March 21 and 22, 2002, a delegation of human rights groups met in Monterrey, Mexico to call for the recognition and restoration of the rights and dignity of immigrants who come to the United States for a better life. This document came to be known as the Declaration of Monterrey.

Here is a copy of the Declaration of Monterrey.

The Green Party supports the Declaration of Monterrey, and calls for local, state and federal legislators to affirm and rehabilitate the rights of immigrants in this country.

Ventura County is one of the safest areas in the United States to live, with two of its cities (Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley) being consistently ranked as two of the nation's safest cities for the past decade. The county and city law enforcement agencies are also some of the best-funded in the country, claiming the majority of the budget expenses for the county and all cities within the county.

Yet, Ventura County has a horrendous record of police-related shootings, causing Amnesty International to rank Ventura County in 1999 as "a greater rate of negligent shootings by their officers...than any other county in California." Many, but not all, of these shootings involved dealings with mentally disturbed individuals who needed medical help.

Here is a list of all police-related shootings that have taken place in Ventura County since 1995.

The Green Party supports public safety, yet is alarmed at the unacceptable rate of police shootings in this county. The job of local law enforcement is to bring the accused before a judge and jury, not to be tempted to take on the rule of judge, jury and executioner themselves. Thus, the Green Party of Ventura argues that the record shows the use of guns as law enforcement tools to be inappropriate and calls for the replacement of all lethal weaponry by all law enforcement agencies in the county with non-lethal weaponry.