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county's top stories more than four hundred people remain stranded over russia's far is closed after three ships are frozen solid only as the ice breakers are trying to reach the vessels of the ports thicknesses forcing them to move out of there at less then getting paid it's. hard work for harder times with god as unemployment rate still bright people at finding it increasingly difficult to get a job despite israel easing is located. and washington is ready for another two years of divisive political struggle as the one hundred twelfth u.s.

congress is sworn in with a republican majority the party is making big promises about spending cuts and hopes to do rail what it calls president obama's big government grow. up and explores the you are school his decision to publish a politically correct version of mark twains huckleberry finn also shots of trade unions have become the scapegoat of america's high rate of unemployment. for the. we've got. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers. well can they alone or show the real headlines with none of the mercy we're going to live out of washington d.c.

now today a literary classic huckleberry finn is under fire for using words that aren't accepted in today's society so while some are trying to change up those to be the words of the book others are saying that changing the story is destroy this literary masterpiece but is this just a sign the political correctness in this country has gone too far next are unions becoming the new scapegoats or the only fifty two percent approval rating last year workers unions are being blamed by lawmakers republicans specifically for many of the unemployment issues in the u.s. but is it really fair to blame those unions where you have a debate on the issue and it is oficial the republicans have taken control of the house so with the new arrival what's on the official agenda what changes should we expect and what promises aren't they going to keep we're going to hear from tom hartman and the for air also do you remember how the d.o.d. was under pressure from congress to tighten up regulations on defense contractors well it turns out they may have gone back on their word completely rather than

tightening restrictions they in fact loosened them can anybody else explain the point of this i'm going to call scott horton of harper's magazine to talk about the changes at the end of the show but now let's move on to the night's top story. mark twain's the adventures of huckleberry finn is the fourth most banned book in the united states so now comes news that one english professor auburn university in montgomery alan greenblatt approached publishers with the idea of changing the literary work to make it more reader friendly the n. word will be replaced by slave the word engine over placed by indian parents teachers anyone else out there who's trying to protect the nation's children from offensive words they don't like the two hundred nineteen times of the n word was used in this book despite its historical context the social commentary that it provides and critics are now. now foaming at the mouth they're calling it censorship the destruction of a literary masterpiece but is this just another sign that political correctness in

this country is going too far or if not even political correctness than perhaps simply a fear of truth well joining me to discuss it is christopher chambers georgetown university professor and author of the blog as revenge chris nice to see you in there happy new year i want to get your take on this whole huckleberry finn have you think that mark twain will be turning in his grave right now oh i think so i mean you have to remember he started off as a journalist he was a storyteller he was a reporter he did a lot of things before huckleberry finn but he spent the most time on this book in that he didn't. work it was because he knew it was important he wanted to make a real classic as opposed to the stuff he was just doing for money you know like we do today he would be rolling in his grave i mean as an author myself as a journalist as an educator on i don't know not really outraged just be foetal by this i mean does it make any sense i mean it's about context context and craft

context and craft that is how you have to look at these works it's a work of art and you can't change it when it's a work of art at the same time it's the fourth most bad book in the united states so you know i mean in this professor's at the way he's defending himself saying that you know kids aren't reading it period they don't even know if this work of art you know this is the literature exists because it's banned from their schools because of one or two words that are so-called offensive even though they represent you know the thought of that time you know well you know that's the thing i mean it in the context of the work i mean you have to look at the whole p.c. sort of world we were there on the right or on the left it's about laziness it's not about liberal guilt to not want to do offend or conservatives want to want to sanitize or plain vanilla is history and art it's really about laziness we don't we don't want to trust people to look at. i meant to look at something and then go beyond that said what does it mean what were those times like what is the author trying to say what is the artist trying to say you know it's all about laziness

that's what it's about and i think this professor just took this just awful lazy way out i mean you know i think he should have his you know professor license yanked for it for intellectual cowardice i mean just because it's being banned and it's not being banned as much anymore because people are starting to see that this is a artistic classic written by a guy who was a journalist you know i mean he has to be turning in his grave now he'd probably be turning in his grave at the coverage of the story because people are trying to like link it to say you know the use of the word the n. word in hip hop or something like that he's just saying look i want to do i'm a classic about what life was like in kind of a mythic allegorical way when i was a kid and he wrote it at a time when race relations were even worse after reconstruction he's just reflecting what are these moves i mean even if we take this beyond just this book just mark twain and what's going on today i mean is that aside you call it laziness but you don't think it's political correctness that's what i don't think it's

people being a little too scared to really talk about the truth that try to conquer and you know i don't know if they set straight on part of fear is laziness you don't want to have to deal with the griping of a few you know small minded jerks and i mean there are small minded jerks on the left who look at all if that were people use that all the time i mean you look at all clips of the dave chappelle show you hear it all the time people it's a word that word is a word that even langston hughes it has so much packed in it negative and i would say positive but cultural so i mean you know there are people who just lost their minds over this just stupidly and i have to see the context of it i could watch d.w. griffith the birth of a nation the most racist movie ever made and appreciate the craft and try to understand the context in which it was written and that's what you have. to do with the work of art these are people saying oh there's no good i'm going to use the word down here nigger nigger nigger you know you know i know well what's the risk

we nigger and go with me what is all that it's not that complicated it's about context you craft people are just lazy and part of fear is laziness they don't want to deal with that with the drama but if we're talking about context i mean is it only excusable then if it's a work of art because you know we had i'm going to bring up another controversy from earlier this year dr laura who has a radio show who went on this now infamous rant that everybody really freaked out about we have a clip of it i'd like to play a place. but you heard it so what you did and i'll say it again. is what you hear on h.b. why don't you let me finish a sentence ok don't take things out of context don't double and. i mean contact me i know. and i know. so chris tell me what was your reaction when dr laura went on the run is that wrong that was you know let me be clear and correctly to fire look at the context if the context is

creation and reflecting a certain time yes this woman's reputation and use of that word. it is an indication of where she wanted to take this she was using that argument as a lot of conservatives do this a lot of liberals use with the we don't want to offend anybody thing as a shield i mean that was that's separate from what mark twain was trying to do that's separate from what a work of art or a reflection of history is trying to do she's a strong and rile up her base and get into an argument with a black woman on the air so her callers could call in and sometimes is it ok to rile people up in order to get that show you off your every day if you all of you raise your children where you're so scared of you can't ever say any kind of word that i mean what kind of kids are you really going to raise new start ignoring the issues let me read you one of my favorite quotes by the way this was from i mean he was talking about specifically the mark twain wrote a piece about you and james had this great piece where he said america talks about race like scared parents talk with their kids about sex he says were vague

sometimes terribly terribly misleading and on occasion we leave out huge aspects of the situation that would allow kids to make better decisions about how they conduct themselves i mean do you think that's really kind of like sexy you kind of wander around here but you never actually wanted to that's that's it in a nutshell and twenty you know is is something that we can use to study it that's not what she was doing ok now what the problem here is there's where the liberals go crazy is that one of those. when the book is taught in class so what you want to know i mean i agree with them but what do you want says is that when the liberals decide to allow so twenty to be taught it goes crazy in the other direction and they spend inordinate amounts of time this is true in class after class after english class after english class in american high schools on sensitivity training on the n. word rather than teaching the damn book understanding the beauty of the book but it's all about what should we use the n.

word but it's about sensitivity training so as a dr laura here obviously got a lot of flak going to bring up another issue which is the brink sanchez earlier there was fire from c.n.n. because he went on a rant also about his boss as a stickler some of them really. this is he was actually ok it's coming so i'm telling you that everybody runs c.n.n. is a lot like stewart and lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like stewart and to imply that somehow they people in this country who are jewish are an oppressed minority yeah they have a history of oppression no question about that they can't relate to say he was fired for that statement do you think that he should have been. i think you should be fired for being stupid mean again going to be as we have fired being stupid and talking crap about your hierarchy talking about c.n.n. executive rights and no matter what you say you see i mean there's already there's some ethnic you know the usual kind of anti-semitic the jews run hollywood the jews were the media kind of thing but again you have to look at the context and craft

a creation or versus somebody just shooting their mouth off i mean i think there is a wall you know we have the freedom of speech in this country aren't you allowed to shut your mouth off well it depends i guess maybe not yeah your boss if he said not at your bosses and you have to be smart about it again if he or helen thomas or any number of people on the other side of were fired for other things put it in the context of let's have a discussion about it let's have a debate this is my position that's different i mean that's not what was going on with rick sanchez and that's not given the history and the structure of look dr laura's show what she's about either it's not an n.p.r. show on the n. word it's not professor randall kennedy who wrote the bestseller the was the book was called nigger and it was about what the word means and trying to put it in context if you're doing that a reading a book review about that book that randall kennedy wrote or something like that that's one thing it's context context context if i want to say right now i could say the n. word and it would be fine because of the context because we're having

a real discussion as i don't know i mean people still going to give me flak and people who probably give you flak but that's that's that's the way it is i mean there's going to be. oversensitive people people with an axe to grind people with a political point of view. on either side left or right but are going to come after you regardless of what you say the media but if you if you frame the issue frame the context that's all you need to mark twain would probably say that i will thank you so much for joining us in the meantime it's coming out in february this new edition of doesn't mean the old edition is bad or anything but this other option is going to be out there doesn't seem like too many people are ok with not going to. now still to come tonight the muslims are invading seemed happy after several groups said they would not take part of the conservative meeting next month over gay groups attending now some are having a problem with muslims attending as well and there seems to be a new theme emerging when things go wrong blame the unions and i will debate why unions are drawing the criticism the two people with very different views on the

topic. renewed the latest something. from. the future covered. just as conservatives are celebrating their newfound control of the house they've decided to pick a new fight the conservative political action conference is already getting an earful after allowing homosexual conservatives from a group called g.o.p. proud to participate but now one very well known conservative is accusing c.

pack of coming under the influence of the muslim brotherhood conservative leader frank gaffney known for his involvement with conservative politics over the past thirty years says that allowing a muslim influence in the group will ultimately bring america under shari'a law you see the american conservative union hosea back every year and one of the members representing the a.c.l.u. is soon held caught by conservative muslim who is well known in d.c. as political circles and gaffney says that khan has used his muslim roots to infiltrate islam into c. pac and is quote running an influence operation on capitol hill that's quite sophisticated and slick now we reached out to kohn and full disclosure we've had him on a guest on this show before and his response to the accusation was quote my fellow board members and i packed the conservative movement are ignoring his false assertions he's throwing a tantrum but life goes on so as the muslim board member take the high road on this matter gaffney continues to hate mongering he also goes on to accuse other

conservatives of allowing of this muslim takeover as he calls it but if anyone else out there think this is a little ridiculous first muslims are made on capitol hill and now it's see back you know must be really scary for c. pak to have actual muslims and actual gay people walking amongst them and how shocking that would be that homosexuals could actually start interacting. conservatives in d.c. oh wait that already happens and guess what everybody is ok with it nobody cares or what if there are muslims in the us who could be peaceful who respect the various religious affiliations throughout the country oh it better to have been to so what do you want me i know how about we make a little wanted sign for you so here you go wanted suhail gone respected political conservative background and yet his religious beliefs and ties to the muslim community have now got him on his fire it's sad isn't it when years of hard work and accomplishments all get overlooked because of your religion now we're going to host

a debate on this issue later on in the week. is the big apple going rotten these days york city is starting to look pretty dirty thanks to mallard's of trash that is keeps piling up and for a county a country of supposedly in a recession it seems like american waste is still piled up around every corner. has more on the story. you're standing next to a pile of garbage taller than yourself how does that make you feel it's a pretty impressive world the world marks the new year one thing marking new york are melton's of garbage. striking a huge blow to the city's traditionally glamorous image you can't even cause the street with a baby carriage to hold the people cannot even walk in with a discreet. anthony is a mailman his job takes twice the time these days sadly he notes his salary has not doubled that makes my work very hard because they really box.

in one instance however the amount of garbage prevented a tragedy as one new yorker suicide attempt proved unsuccessful this weekend when it jumped out of the window did not turn fatal due to an unexpected software into piles of refuse one of thousands filling many of the almost six thousand miles of new york city streets the average american is said to produce fifty tons of garbage in a lifetime new york city has reportedly accumulated as much as fifty thousand tons of garbage in just one week just because we're in a financial recession is mean that we're in a more recession but it will world recession is exactly what the trash invasion has turned the big apple and while some officials have graded themselves a plus for handling the situation new yorkers are outraged terribly upset about it it's gross it's. good in. taxes. as an

economic cry. leads to budget cuts to boycotts in the sanitation department. out on the street it may be time to ask how soon before the big. turns rotten. new york. well one thing that's definitely turned rotten are the feelings that most americans have towards unions and a gallup poll released last year or this year excuse me it was found that only fifty two percent of americans approve of unions that is the second lowest approval rating in history since gallup began measuring the trend in one thousand thirty six and it seems like the law makers mostly republicans in a number of states are now going to use that to their advantage faced with growing budget deficits angry and unemployed residents the new strategy seems to be blame the unions from california to new york governors are probably promising to review benefits received by government workers in ohio the new governor wants to ban strikes by teachers but are unions really the money sucking enemy of the working

man they're paying the out to be or is this just a g.o.p. strategy to cut down there campaigning power we're discussing with me is christopher brendan ini the executive director print only i'm sorry executive director of the alliance for worker freedom and michaela labor journalist and contributing editor for in these times gentlemen thank you both for being here what do you think is going on here i mean are unions just kind of an easy scapegoat in times of economic turmoil when americans are angry there's only it seems to be a small portion of the population that's it's a member here that could be benefiting and everyone else just gets to jump on top of them all of course any time you you know you need to have as much to do with the economic downturn as the two for you do it it's a lie it's a plain and simple life in fact the i.m.f. just came over port that said we need more units because workers in this country are not making enough money this is the first time that we've seen a rise in productivity from one nine hundred eighty to two thousand and ten we've seen a rise in productivity but not to mention wage and rising which groups and that's

as a result of unions declining and this is a result of illegal union busting the top of the illegal union busting that my colleague here i believe supports with the. you know the paradoxical why it's for worker freedom let's make it clear that the journal of the left to be does not support worker for. well represent any workers any way shape or form christopher out of that where it is your congress of the alliance for worker freedom but you're anti-union no it's really not anti that union we're pro workers so we think that if you are worker no we think that if you're a worker and say i want to be a teacher in maryland you should not have to be forced to join the union which is currently the case with nobody forced to join a union anywhere in the united states that's outlawed by taft hartley ok viewers were required to pay union dues are you required to pay taxes of your system the united states of be represented by an elected official be required to pay taxes right if the union represents you even if you don't agree with them are you required to pay taxes if we have a republican house i don't agree with the public and house i still have to pay taxes to it so that's a pretty invalid point and tough partly doesn't force anybody to join

a union so that's entirely untrue statement well back to your original question it's not just republicans that are that are apparently being anti union now we've seen the new governor of new york andrew cuomo coming out saying he's going to have to review the. public employee compensation and all these things and the reason we're having this reinvigorated debate now is we've got a whole slew of all these new governors and the common thread between all these governors is that all their states face huge budget deficits so in the immediate future we've got a seventy two billion dollars budget deficit and in the long term future three trillion dollars in underfunded public employee pension plans that you know you know it is highly disputed by just about everybody even the most conservative economists it's only a trillion and that's a highly disputed are going to be the problem exists in a lot of these states are facing huge budget deficits but is it the fault because it is everyone right now is essentially painting out to be the picture that is the fault of the you know not the i would say public workers are the ones that are

going to have to pay but isn't it perhaps the fault of the government the law makers that decide to spend it well i don't know any of the economic calamity and how it's all come to get it's the fault of wall street as the former president george w. bush said wall street got drunk and now we're asking workers to clean up the party that we weren't invited to in the first place the. issue here isn't workers workers weren't bankrupting states before when they had these we just the issue is the downturn of the economy and this was caused by wall street republicans want to see that it's unions because one this means not having to raise taxes on the rich or wall street and two it's eliminating a political enemy because if you will eliminate organized labor you eliminate the biggest force in opposition to republicans own is blaming unions for fannie mae and freddie bad for the economic downturn but there was a pattern all right what we're saying is that while fannie mae and freddie mac. and the economic data of the past two years is not the result of the state pension the state budget crisis you could have seen these going back five years looking at these accounting sheets you could have seen these coming it's now just coming to

a head because lawmakers have been kicking the can down the road and so. anyway you know it is it sure you may have seen this coming but who was supposed to see it coming was it supposed to be the workers who trusted their pensions to someone else that was investing them or the people they were doing at the first place alan greenspan i mean look at alan greenspan he was completely asleep at the switch we saw an eight trillion dollar housing bubble this wasn't the fault of some sort of worker in pennsylvania who was making thirty thousand dollars a year this was a fall of the government regulators who are in bed with wall street and did not regulate the economy we should be forcing the people who profit the most from this economic collapse wall street who are making now record profits to have to clean up this mess if you analyse the financial speculation tax that dean baker and others have outlined you could make two hundred billion dollars a year now the state budget deficit is seventy one billion so we could give that money back to states and then to help build economic environment even if you had if you were to issue this tax and i think it would be terribly problematic as if it

had been growth and all these neural negative side effects you still would have the underlying problem as states are spending too much and so what have governors tried to do andrew cuomo a democratic governor in new york he said he's gone and looked at the books and said ok we're spending too much for every one dollar we take in spending one dollar and ten cents we need to do these reforms we need to we need to get our books in check and when you try to do this who is it who's inhibited him unions and so you can i wouldn't say unions are solely to blame for these these state budget problems but at every turn when governors try and try to fix some of these unions getting their foot in the door and hitting necessary reforms for the states there's a lot of talk of the state of oregon you're not seeing this in oregon where you know you have an incoming governor there not saying hey let's lash what they did in oregon where they said we're going to raise taxes on rich people to cover up this budget deficit so so that's the reason that that's not true that you want to be in the way unions have such. people look at you to get the right why don't you first

officer and i told her they would. right it's a class thing but i do know a lot of people are angry with teachers unions you could say because you can't even fire a teacher even if they suck and they're not going to get it i got a free state a lot of people are angry when it comes as you think argue three percent i'm sorry but i do know that we have such a huge incarceration system you can't deny that unions do have a lot of influence you can't fire union teacher you just make them sin and i don't think that you know not true and that is a deep article that's been debunked by the financial lucero you know i but i really do read about all that fire. fire every year that's the bureau of labor statistics there's turnover the fire ok i would say why or why are americans disenchanted with organized labor say i'll give you one concrete example so we'll think of a blue collar profession i'm a construction worker if i'm a construction worker there's a ninety percent chance i'm not part of a union only ten percent of the construction industry is unionized now when obama came into office in two thousand and nine one of the first things he did was issue

an executive order saying that if you're if all federal construction projects have to be completed with organized labor so i actually that's actually not what he said what he said is that if you get a standard project and if the union contract can be competitively they'll get on that you never said x. y. and z. unit is going to get it because you know what they're doing construction on the white house right over there and they're using nonunion labor so they don't sit down and tell me that you have to use because that was construction of the white house would be union labor right now consistently in practice project labor agreements are predominantly organized labor and that's the reason they're in place you know that that's why democrats lobbied for them so what do i say if i'm one of those construction work ninety percent of construction workers who can't get this job i certainly angry and become very outraged i'm a construction worker and if you join a union. well i'll give you guys are running out of time but you know i just think it's very interesting to see how much this is shifted over the years over the decades in america but do you think of this as a bit of a.