<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : It’s a Fine Line Between the Political Parties’ Lines

Test your PQ, your political quotient, about Wednesday’s State of the State address and the reaction to it. A member of which party said these? (Answers below.)

--”I remain committed to the concept of preventive government--that giving a kid a good start in life is the best ticket to a bright future.”

--”Just ask yourself, do you feel safer than you did three years ago?”

--”We can make this state safer if we get rid of the inmates bill of rights.”

*

Pillars of salt: At the top of the text of Gov. Pete Wilson’s State of the State speech, the news release announces: “Wilson says crime and jobs are the twin pillars on which California’s future will be built.” And here we thought we already had enough crime.

*

Paper chase: Almost to the last tick of 1993, the by-appointment Department of Motor Vehicles was overwhelmed by apparently illegal immigrants calling frantically to get driver’s licenses or ID cards before a new state law demands proof of legal residency for such documents.

But just as the government’s year bears no resemblance to the calendar’s, the law takes effect March 1, not Jan. 1. DMV offices in Los Angeles and Orange counties were jammed, says spokesman Evan Nossoff, and from what applicants were saying, clerks concluded that they were undocumented immigrants trying to get some documents. A typical Southern California office handles about 100 applicants a day, but in the days before the midnight confetti fell on Dec. 31, “there was a rush,” says Nossoff, and “we were booking as many as 200 a day.”

*

Anti-Drug Spending

The war on drugs cost $24 billion in 1991, the latest year for which figures are available, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. State and local governments took the lead spending the most on corrections--jails and prisons--then on health and hospitals, and finally judicial and legal services.

The overall per capita spending by state and local governments was $63.08. Below are the top five states, ranked by state and local drug control spending per capita in fiscal 1991:

STATE & DRUG CONTROL SPENDING

* 1. Alaska: $154.44 * 2. New York: $149 * 3. Connecticut: $130.45 * 4. California: $102.30 * 5. Florida: $85.04

Note: State and local monies included $3.2 billion from the federal government

Compiled by Times researcher TRACY THOMAS

*

Smoke an amphibian, go to jail: Something new from the Macbeth School of Pharmacology: toad juice. A San Joaquin Valley couple was arrested for possessing a hallucinogenic substance, bufotenine, milked from the backs of Bufo alvarius toads. It’s not pasteurized, merely dried and smoked. More astonishing than the offense is how narcotics agents recognize illegal toad wrangling. And more astonishing still--that anyone figured out how to get a toad high in the first place.

The guys with badges may not have been so discerning in Oakland, where an Emeryville sexagenarian says he was busted for possession of denture powder. Louis C. Clark’s suit claims that he and his son were put in the slammer for three days but never booked. One officer says the son spit out a bit of rock cocaine during the encounter; the Clarks’ lawyer says father and son were simply putting up Sheetrock that day and their truck was full of the stuff. As for that other powdery substance, Clark says: “All I did was put my bottle of denture adhesive on the dashboard and slap in my lower teeth.”

*

More star power on the delta: Newly elected state Sen. Steve Peace, an 11-year Assembly Democrat who now moves from the green side of the Capitol building to the red, produced the 1970s horror movie spoof “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” He acted in the original and two sequels under the stage name Rock Peace. In the film, the actors were splattered to death by hostile, aggressive Best Boys--the perfect training for a life in politics.

*

. . . and the check is in the mail: Even the source--Forbes magazine--says this isn’t exactly scientific, but it is reason to hope. The place in America where you’re likeliest to get sued is Washington, D.C., where lawyers become involved in 61% of auto accidents (and where lawyers are probably 61% of the drivers). California ranks 13th --cross our hearts--in the Forbes survey, behind places such as Rhode Island and New Mexico, states where whole cities could be populated by California’s 113,392 practicing attorneys.

*

The answers:

Republican (Pete Wilson)

Democrat (Kathleen Brown)

Democrat (John Garamendi)

EXIT LINE

“We’re trying to get it declassified so we can talk about it.”

--Raymond Finucane of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the nation’s two centers for designing nuclear weapons. Finucane and Ellen Raber led a project that won a big annual award from the CIA and National Security Agency, but no one is allowed to say what it was that won the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, nor even what Project Woodpecker signifies.