Seniors, Jobs, Environment

By Timothy Oliver Stoen

JOBS: Many people in Senate District 2 are "a paycheck away from poverty," and others cannot find work which allows them to survive above the poverty line (an annual income of $15,600 or less for a family of four). The state needs to work with private industry to ENCOURAGE MICROENTERPRISE by providing strategically-devised micro-loans to people without start-up capital, and to provide training in business and in computer technology to encourage "Silicon Forest" entrepeneurs. In addition, we need to confront the profound economic fact that the modern income-producing asset is technology, not land, and therefore that every worker should be allowed, as per the "ownerships olution," access to capital credit so as to eventually earn a dividend check as well as a paycheck.

ENVIRONMENT: The natural resources of Senate Distric 2 are in decline, including 83 species of ground fish along the California Coast due to government-subsidized factory trawlers with 30-mile nets, and the loss of productive farm land to urban sprawl. We must PROTECT OUR COAST AGAINST OFFSHORE DRILLING, SAVE OUR FARMLANDS by enabling private land trusts to purchase development rights, and save our timberlands by requiring truly SUSTAINABLE FOREST PRACTICES. The state and federal government should purchase Headwaters forest, at fair market value, only on the basis of a Habitat Conservation Plan which effectively protects ALL remaining old-growth redwood groves.