Imprisoned Legislator Says Others Benefit From War on Crime

THE INSIDE VIEW: Word is that Pat Nolan, formerly the state assemblyman from Glendale-Burbank and now known around the Dublin federal prison as Inmate No. 06833-097, is doing as well as can be expected.

Not only has he been promoted in his prison duties--again--but he has picked up the pen and become a scribe.

In the fall issue of a conservative journal called the California Political Review, Nolan writes in a guest editorial that he is still disillusioned about the state of justice in America.

Or injustice, perhaps, in Nolan’s eyes.

“Too many people profit from the War on Crime,” he writes, arguing that no one wants to actually win the war because that would end the gravy train.

Among the profiteers in Nolan’s view are lawyers, prosecutors, prison guards, prison builders, bond sellers and social workers. All stand to gain from the overblown, bloated and self-serving War on Crime.

And the victims? People like himself who are overzealously prosecuted for marginal white-collar infractions. Nolan is serving a 33-month sentence for political corruption after taking $10,000 in campaign contributions from an undercover FBI agent who was seeking legislative favors.

“A substantial portion of the men with me here at the Federal Prison Camp in Dublin are here for bureaucratic ‘crimes’ arising from disputes with government employees over billing procedures, loan documentation, late filing of documents or other violations of statutes that are technical in nature,” Nolan writes. “It came as quite a shock to me--though it shouldn’t have--to learn that our judicial and penal systems are just like every other bureaucracy. In my 15 years in the Legislature, I was blind to this fact.”

Now that he has had his eyes opened, Nolan should find plenty of reading material to keep his ruminations sharp. For his new prison job, he’s been elevated to the status of librarian.

This follows an episode in which, in his former capacity as street-sweeper operator, Nolan had a little run-in of sorts with the authorities.

It seems he had got the sweeper’s water squirter operating again after a long hiatus just as he was driving the machinery toward a trio of prison bosses who stood chatting on the curb.

You can guess how that one ended.

*

SIGN WARS: You can expect a race for high school student body president to have its juvenile moments. But congressional politics is supposed to be high-brow, right?

Don’t believe it.

Witness, for example, the behavior this week at the Cal Lutheran University debate between U.S. Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) and his GOP challenger, Richard Sybert, in Thousand Oaks.

Sybert enthusiasts fired the first shots in this opera buffa by taping signs advertising their champion in a neat row across the rear wall of the debate site, a CLU auditorium at which numerous other candidates for local races set up booths of their own to greet voters.

When the late-arriving Beilenson folks saw the Sybert signs, they began slapping up their own signs on the same wall, in the only expanse not claimed by Sybert placards.

But, in the heat of battle, the Beilenson folks failed to see a public relations gaffe in the making. The debate sponsors had put up their own sign, on this same contested wall, designating the entire rear area of the auditorium for “special interest groups” to set up informational booths to advertise their political causes and wares.

In effect, the Beilenson-ites plastered the congressman’s posters just above the “special interest groups” sign, creating the impression of some alliance between the two.

The irony: Beilenson fiercely prides himself in not taking special interest money. “If I take a photo of this, will you run a picture?” one Sybert backer asked a reporter.

Realizing their mistake, the sheepish Beilenson team relocated their signs--to beneath the existing row of head-high Sybert signs. “We’re on top,” one youthful Sybert partisan was heard to exult. More glares and flushed faces.

Finally, a debate organizer, with schoolmarmish precision, sternly adjudged the increasingly tense rear wall area off-limits to all candidate signs.

Within minutes, the partisans had dutifully pulled down their respective signs and scattered to the winds, like so many chastised children.

*

REVELATIONS: U.S. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) surprised a few observers with the conciliatory remarks he made at a candidate forum sponsored last week by the conservative Christian Coalition, TV evangelist Pat Robertson’s group.

And Berman, who has virtually impeccable liberal credentials, had some success with this unfamiliar crowd.

In prepared remarks, Berman--now seeking his seventh term in the House--said that it was his belief that “evangelical Christians should be praised, and not reviled” for their involvement in the political process.

Despite differences, he and the coalition share many fundamental views, Berman added. Notable among these: a growing skepticism about the ability of government to cure societal ills and a belief that the existing welfare system has actually perpetuated poverty and undermined the work ethic and family values. With such shared views as a starting point, Berman said he hoped that he and the conservative Christian community could enter into a new dialogue over issues facing the nation.

But one of the highlights of the congressman’s remarks was his support for the concept of schools’ setting aside a “moment of silence” to give pupils a chance, if they wish, to pray or otherwise “attend to the spiritual nature of the human soul.”

Of course, the Christian Coalition is absolutely in favor of school prayer, said Sara Hardman, the coalition’s California chairwoman.

Still, Berman and the fundamentalist movement are not exactly in sync on school prayer. Berman, being a good politician, did not emphasize the differences in his remarks at Friday’s forum.

For example, fundamentalist Christians wanted Congress this year to pass measures that would punish local school districts, by denying them federal aid, if they prohibited school prayer. Berman voted against these measures.

The federal government should “keep its clammy claws off this issue and leave it to the local jurisdictions to decide what’s best as long as it’s consistent with the Constitution,” Berman said in an interview with The Times. That’s too passive for many Christian activists.

Still, Berman’s efforts to reach out to the coalition was appreciated by some at Friday’s event. “He may have picked up a few votes,” Hardman said. “I talked to him afterwards, and he was very conciliatory. He wants us to dialogue, and I agree.”

*

MAKING TRACKS: With the showdown vote less than a week away, Supervisor Mike Antonovich is working hard to persuade his colleagues on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board that the best place to put a rail line across the San Fernando Valley is along the Ventura Freeway.

Antonovich has also waged a campaign to capture the hearts and minds of residents. Last month, Antonovich sent a mailing to 230,000 Valley households praising the concept of an elevated line along the freeway and painting the rival subway option as an environmentally unsound, unsafe alternative.

The mailing claimed nearly $41,000 of Antonovich’s district operating budget, and the bulk of the recipients don’t even live in his district.

But the longtime supervisor calls it a justified expense to warn Valley taxpayers that a modified subway with some open-air stations would run the risk of “flooding of the channel, illegal entry and contact with the high-voltage rail and accidents with oncoming trains by those daring to venture onto the tracks,” Antonovich wrote in a letter to the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., which opposes the Ventura Freeway route.

“Part of it is our district,” Antonovich deputy Habib Balian said of some of the northern Valley area where residents received the flyer.

“It’s not just people who live by the freeway or a (possible) Valley subway” who would be affected by the rail project, Balian said. Antonovich “felt he had the responsibility--and legally he was able to--to use the operating budget to send a mailer.”