The Times from Munster, Indiana • 16

1 TRBT" (ft Wf'M'W COMIHEINITAIRY The Times, Sunday, June 26. 1988 OUR VIEWS Jesse's Lake County delegate battle resolved MICHAEL JACK50N A compromise struck between the Jesse Jackson camp and the national Democratic leadership regarding Lake County's delegates to the national convention was a fair and equitable one. The compromise will allow" both Gary Mayor Thomas Barnes and his rival, former mayor Richard Matcher, to participate in the 19S8 national convention, which begins July 18 in Atlanta. It's only fair that Hatcher be selected as a delegate. After all.

he is Jackson's vice campaign chairperson, and four years ago was Jackson's national campaign chairman. Hatcher and Jackson are longtime political pals and Hatcher deserves to be among Jackson's elite when Democrats gather to build their platform for the future. To snub Hatcher would be like pulling credentials of Michael Dukakis' campaign chairman before the Likewise. Barnes deserves to be heard at the national convention. Barnes has endorsed Jackson for president and he represents a majority of the voters of Gary, a longstanding Democratic stronghold that overwhelmingly endorsed Rev.

Jackson in the Indiana primary May 3. Even though Barnes and Hatcher have refused to campaign side-by-side, each represents a large segment of Gary's politically divided population and therefore each is worthy of representing their city at the national forum. In short, Hntrbfr rprtrpcenKs carryover trom uary mayurai im.c, when Barnes beat Hatcher, who was a five-term incumbent. Since then, the two leaders have rarely spoken to each other, and their political supporters have become polarized. Their division continued into presidential politics last spring when Gary opened two' Jesse Jackson campaign headquarters one friendly to Hatcher, one friendly to Barnes." Ironically, the separate-but-equal headquarters were located on the same downtown city block.

Hatcher and Barnes faced-off again during the Indiana' Democratic State Convention earlier this month. It was there that Barnes and his ally. Lake County Commissioner Rudolph Clay, were elected as two of Indiana's committed Jackson delegates defeating Hatcher and his ally. Carlos Tolliver, in a not-so-close vote. However, under the compromise arranged Thursday, all four Barnes.

Clay. Hatcher. Tolliver will get half-votes at the convention, and each is committed to Jackson. Hatcher contends that Barnes and Clay aren't true Jackson backers, and says they should be removed as delegates. He further -argues, and correctly, that state party rules allow for a presidential candidate to strike unfriendly candidates for national delegate.

The problem is. Barnes may be unfriendly with Hatcher, but Barnes is not unfriendly with Jackson. REGGIE JACKSON JESSE JACKSON Since it appears the Massachusetts governor will win the party nomination for president on that first ballot, neither the mayor nor ex-mayor will get a chance to vote for anyone but Jesse. The Barnes-Hatcher battle for delegate is a organization; Barnes represents Gary's electorate. Their dispute is simply a case of two men with similar goals choosing different paths to glory.

As committed delegates. Barnes and Hatcher must vote for Jackson on the first ballot. OTHER OPINIONS A private matter Midwest abundance goes dry at a men's club WASHINGTON In a case Vicki George Will JIpP 1 A nmo 111" iiiiui i to yr Times columnist tar- Times columnist tie bands around their foreheads to keep the salty sweat from running into their eyes. Once there was a rumor of rain and every one of us left our machines to rush to the door to see for ourselves. The exaltation at the sweet thought of rain was palpable but it was a false alarm and we returned sadly to work.

Church congregations have banded together to pray for rain and some of us are not above reaching back for an older, more elemental religion based on superstition. We do things like wash our cars and leave our win dows open, willingly sacrificing our homes and automobiles to the temptations of more pagan gods. We have never spent so much time anxiously staring up before, never been so excited By the sight of a cloud, never felt so resentful of the stars' brilliance in a clear summer sky. One day on television we watched enviously as a golf game in Massachusetts was delayed on account of rain. The wheat is gone.

Corn which should be high as an elephant's eye by the Fourth of July is not even knee-high. the young corn rolls its leaves into tubes to conserve any drop of moisture it may receive. In the factory where I work, even the most modest of women are down to the shortest shorts and the tiniest tops. They hang wet rags around their necks and "Drought: an extended period of dry weather, especially one injurious to crops." The dictionary definition is dry as a week old biscuit, much like the land itself. We have not had rain since the middle of April.

A drought is injurious to hearts and souls as well as to crops. The idwest is normally a place of over-flowing abundance. Our problems are generally those of too much rather than not enough. Our summers bring 100 degree temperatures coupled with energy-draining humidity. Our winters offer wind chill factors of minus 70 and walls of snow banked along every roadside.

And our spring showers are more likely to arrive in the form of a suddenly blackened sky filled with towering storm clouds. Our thunder is house-shaking and our lightning is sky-shattering. When the storm is over, temperatures and emotions have dropped 20 degrees and both water and satisfaction run curb-high in the streets. Mid westerners are constitutionally suited for dealing with excess. We do not fare as well trying to cope with scarcity.

In average summers, we live in a green land where 100 kinds of plant life vie vigorously for every square inch of growing space. is so plentiful in streams, lakes, rivers and wells that Me take it for granted. For heaven's sake, we have been forced to build dams and reservoirs to control its overflow from taking over our fields and our homes. Now our personalities are growing as needle-sharp as the blades of grass' on our withered lawns. Calls to the Women's Shelter and the Child Protection Team are going up and up as the drought stretches on.

The worry lines on farmers' faces are crevasse deep as more interesting for its sociological context than its stitutional content, a few women have won what is sure to be a famous victory in the Supreme Court. Its fame will grow in the telling about it. until it stands as a milestone on the rising road to the full emancipation of women. Too bad it also marks another contraction of what Louis Brandeis called the right most valued by 'civilized people, "the right to be let alone." The case concerning New York's private not really private any more clubs will be applauded most warmly by liberal groups who fancy themselves tribunes of the common people. The ap-plauders will include people who consider themselves immune to, and scourges of, the crass, commercial, aggressive, self-aggrandizing spirit of the day, a spirit often denoted by such people as "the climate of Reaganism." But the case is really intramural roughhousing in the ruling class, a battle between two briefcase brigades.

1965, New York City enacted a Human Rights Law prohibiting discrimination in any place of "public accommodation, resort or amusement," but exempting any "institution or that is "distinctly private." In 1984, the city amended the law with language designed to define a few private clubs as substantially "public" in nature and thus covered by the law. The amenders of the law had some male-only clubs in mind. The City Council declared a "compelling interest" in guaranteeing to all a "fair and equal opportunity to participate" in the city's commercial life. The council said that "women and minorities" are seriously held back by discrimination at clubs "where business deals are often made" and personal contacts valuable for business are formed. Now the Supreme Court has unanimously and correctly held that nothing in the Constitution prevents New York City from doing what it did.

However, it remains for the rest of us to do what the Supreme Court should not do, for reasons of dignity: guffaw. Some men desire havens from women. Some men believe that mixing of the sexes inhibits certain kinds of discourse. Such men (and women whose clubs also can now be stormed) may be peculiar or mistaken, but they have found- ed institutions where they would like to have a right to be "let alone." And today's emancipators seem so lost in abstraction that they are utterly unembarrassed by this: They have used government power to override a First Amendment value (freedom of association) and have done so in the name of "nondiscrimination." But the women who will benefit by being admitted to clubs are part of a small privileged class, and their desire to get into the clubs presupposes that the clubs will remain safe havens for privileged elites. Where is Karl Marx when we really need him? It is time for American reformers to learn to talk the language of class.

Interesting, is it not, that the right to discriminate on the basis of class is the only right so inalienable that it is unquestioned, even unnoticed. The improvers who amended New York's law can not see the moral ambiguity of their handiwork. The law cranks up the clanging machinery of civil-rights enforcement on behalf of a few hundred well-tailored women with briefcases they are eager to park next to the briefcases of men from the same class. These people would lose all interest in these clubs if, once inside, they found there men and women who are not, well, you know, the better sort-folks like us, with deals to make. The clubs are enticing precisely because they are selective.

What's that you say? Oh. no, not at all. Being selective is not like being discriminatory. Discrimination is declasse. It is what tacky people do people like Lester Maddox.

Being selective is what the best people do in order to "network" with their own kind. Charles Paul Freund of The New Republic has it right: "The struggle between women and private clubs smacks of the Iran-Iraq war; neither side is very appealing. Certain rich women want to get richer. Good for them. But what about the rest of us? These women are happy to keep the clubs' class discrimination.

In fact, that's sort of their point. Do we really want to trash remaining notions of privacy over this?" Rigfit on Here come, the carnalities irsJevs GOP should stress iob creation percent to promote venture capital Donald Lambro Times columnist formation and new business creation; offer tax incentives for. enterprise zones to stimulate small and minority business formation in depressed inner cities and rural areas; repeal the scheduled social security payroll tax increase; and reinstate tax breaks for workers receiving employer-provided educational assistance. "Let the Democrats talk about plant closings. We want to talk about opening plants and creating more jobs," Kemp told me in an interview." Actually, the hastily crafted Kemp measure contained a few ideas that Bush has already been pushing including cutting the capital gains tax rate.

WASHINGTON While the Democrats seek to turn the trade bill's plant closing provision into a hot campaign issue, a few Republicans are trying to get George Bush to talk about "plant openings" as the way to lift America to higher economic ground. New Rep. Jack Kemp has fashioned a plant opening measure that would help strengthen U.S. businesses and, at the same time, put the vice president's sagging presidential campaign back on the economic offensive. Kemp, along with Wisconsin's Bob Kasten in the Senate, is urging Bush to use the measure to throw Massachusetts Gov.

Michael Dukakis on the defensive, forcing him to defend a static economic policy of more regulation and possibly higher taxes. President Reagan's trade bill veto, because of its plant closing provision, was the right action for the wrong reason. The plant closing provision, which could tie up businesses seeking to become more competitive in a thicket of bureacratic and legal red tape, is bad enough. But it's a hard sell po- port restrictions sag (the trade deficit fell by nearly 13 percent, and U.S. exports climbed by 10 percent in the first quarter), Dukakis and.

Democrats in Congress see the plant closing provision appealing to blue-collar voters who deserted their party in droves in 1980 and 1984. With nothing to shoot back with, Bush and the Republicans have been out-gunned from the beginning on this no-win issue. Sadly, the administration has failed to come up with the kind of positive "export expansion" proposals that should be at the center of the GOP's pro-growth response on this issue. Enter Jack Kemp, the defeated presidential aspirant, who is now working to steer the Bush campaign toward an aggressively expansionist economic platform. When Kemp has had access to Bush, pumping him up with his entrepreneurial, new-business-reaction ideas, the vice president has been at his best before blue-collar and urban audiences.

The Kemp-Kasten proposal would, among other things, cut the capital gains tax rate to 15 litically when voters ask why workers shouldn't "be given advanced notification of a plant's demise. In fact, the trade bill's protectionist provisions alone provide ample justification for a veto. Under current law, the president decides 1 when another bounty is engaged in "unfair" trading practices, allowing him to take a number of factors into consideration including what is in the best interests of American consumers and businesses. The Democratic measure turns this authority over to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's bureaucracy, opening up trade policy to enormous special interest pressures and removing the chief executive from key economic poli The TIMES Published at 41 7 Fayette Hammond, Ind.

Waller J. McCarthy, publisher William Nangle. executive editor John Zimmerman, editorial page editor The Times: Your afternoon advantage Jerry Chambers, operations editor Rick Barter, news editor Ron Brow, sports editor J. Aaron Trolman, director of photog. Don Caldwell, advertising director William Lostoski assl to publisher 1 Dale Thompson, production manage' Richard Caldwell, business manager Mark Henschen circulation director cy As public support for new im.