Watch the first hour of Up w/ Chris Hayes for Saturday, Oct. 8
Here's the first hour of our program today. Our focus for the hour is pretty much exclusively Occupy Wall Street, but Chris and our panel -- including Naomi Klein and Van Jones -- take the conversation to some pretty interesting places.
And you don't want to miss Chris responding to CNN's Erin Burnett after her attempt to make it look like she had somehow debunked the reasons for the protests.
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Over the past decade, Americans watched in bafflement and rage as one institution after another – from Wall Street to Congress, the Catholic Church to corporate America, even Major League Baseball – imploded under the weight of corruption and incompetence. In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters.
How did we get here? With "Twilight of the Elites," Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it.
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Tim Carney... Groan... heel of the palm to the forehead... Probably a nice enough chap, but his buttons are all too visible, and, well, there aren't that many of them...
Love the show but please do not invite members of Congress to be guests. They do nothing but spout their party's line no matter what questions they are asked. Your non-congress people guests are witty and intelligent and contribute thoughtful comments. Congress people do not. They are a waste of your time and mine and they never contibute anything new or thoughtful to the discussions.
I love Mike Daisey. Thank you for introducing me to him. Oh, I wish I could see his show. I hope someone (HBO ???) will film it.
I rather agree with Jim Thees who said don't invite Congress members as guests. I agree with him. When they speak, they lie. I fast forward through them during the many news shows I watch. I'm far more interested in what the press, critics, and scholars have to say.
Thanks, Chris, for arguing for activists to be involved in electoral politics. And the example of the right far predates Tea Party primary challenges -- while progressives largely focused on single-issue good-works groups and the occasional quixotic presidential campaign, movement conservatives spent decades running for everything from school board to town council, taking over the GOP from the bottom up to create today's hard-right party and seizing political power at every opportunity. (They also invested decades in massive letter-wriiting campaigns against the "liberal media" to create today's "balanced" journalism, another example we should emulate in a big way.) Thinking we can act outside the existing structure guarantees that the levers of that structure will remain in the hands of Koch and company.
The group of people that forms the "Occupy Wall Street" national movement constitutes a superorganism. Talking to a superorganism is not like talking to an individual. The media seems truly baffled by this anomaly.
Asking what a superorganism wants is like asking what an ant colony wants. Of course the first answer is not too illuminating: the colony simply wants to survive and to prosper without menace from other organisms or other threats in the environment. So what we observe the various parts of the superorganism in the context of their predicaments to see what specifically they want. Say we observe a rain swollen brook blocking the colony from access to a food source. If we thought of the colony as infantile, we might conclude the agitation was an expression of frustration, and as observers we should express our empathy. We probably would not feel the colony is particularly coherent in its activities. The colony "wants" to get a stick to bridge the gap, but the stick is way too small. The colony also "wants" to form a mass raft of ant bodies latched together to bridge the gap- this also may be ill considered. The colony also "wants" to go up and downstream to find a spot where the brook is bridged. It does all of these schemes spontaneously and in a chaotic fashion until one pathway is successful and the colony consolidates its activity on the fruitful pathway.
So why did this superorganism suddenly appear? When does the hive know that it is time for part of it to divide itself from the rest and fly off to create a new hive? Entomologists tell us it happens when the conditions are sufficient- when a tipping point is reached. Maybe the tipping point was the debt crisis- maybe it was the growing threat of reactionaries gaining formidable strength that threatened to reverse progress in social policies made during the last 70 years. Maybe it was the growing realization that the formidable challenges threatening our society are not being faced. The pathways to the food sources have become constrained and the swarm of ants must find another way.
Why does the human superorganism not normally revert to this instinctive problem solving mod? We normally have more efficient mechanisms employing language, concepts, and social conventions for governing and coordinating our collective activities. The social contract was that if we went to school, worked hard and followed the rules that we would prosper. The 99% have not gotten a share of the growth. The 1% has taken it all. The social contract is that we have differing views so we must compromise or we get nowhere. There is no compromise and we are getting nowhere. The old way of crossing the brook doesn't work and the superorganism collectively understands this. It will solve the problem, maybe not with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, maybe not the social action two years from now, or 3 years.
But the 99% will be relentless in its collective desire to achieve the goals of prospering again free from the menace of threats from the world around us.
So in the drum circles down at the demonstrations you might hear suggestions of that wild beat intro of the ancient Song by Blondie: Attack of the Giant Ants (You Tube). This can be a happy joyous endeavor, or not. La La la.
Clearly, the human SuperOrganism is not mindless.
The experiment was Policypedia. The problem I had with it was that it gets pretty wonkish and I think the "devil in the details" treatments of practical measures loses people pretty quickly. There have been hundreds of other sites that are working on finding a way over the brook, and I am confident we will come up with a way of sustaining the activities of the SuperOrganism in politics.
This is fast becoming the best news analysis show that I have ever seen. Thanks for your careful and intelligent conversations.
I think Up With Chris is by far the best of the best shows on television to give the honest information on what is going on in the political side of this country. Even though he has his own take on the political world he has guests from many sides of the political spectrum with their thoughts to be shared with dignity not trying to out talk each other. This is so refreshing. He does not play word games with people if he has a question it is a real question not a trap or a set up to put someone on the spot.
Too bad there are not more honest shows like this one out there. I am up on Saturday at 7:00am because I will learn something .
Student loan borrowers can enter deferment or forbearance if they can not make their monthly payments. Interest accrues on most loans during deferment or forbearance, but these loans will remain in good standing, and will not enter a delinquency or defaulted status. Borrowers can be proactive and set this up directly with the lender.
Student loan borrowers may also be eligible to enroll in Income Based Repayment for any federal student loan. IBR allows borrowers to set their monthly payments based on a percentage of their income. If a borrower's income is very small, or even $0, the monthly payment obligation would be $0! As with a deferment or forbearance, loans in IBR, even at a $0 monthly obligation, are considered to be in good standing and will not enter a delinquency or defaulted status. IBR is a federal student loan repayment plan program, and only applies to federal student loans (excludes private student loans!). Borrowers can contact their student loan lender(s) directly for additional info and to set up this option.
There really is no reason to ever slip into a student loan delinquency or defaulted status. There are options out there...deferment, forbearance, and IBR. Maybe these options are not ideal, but they are legitimate, and they are designed to help borrowers avoid financial catastrophe.
Lenders are not going to automatically set these up for borrowers! Borrowers have to be proactive to set up these repayment options/safeguards.
Chris references www.finaid.org in his segment, which is a great resource for anything related to student loans.
Thank you for addressing the CNN/Erin Burnett problem. I am too young to know how the media coverage of the civil rights movement looked like, if most media were trying to understand the essence of the movement or were just laughing at the protesters, but in 2011, if you fail to understand what's going on in the streets, journalism is not a job for you.
Thanks, Chris and MSNBC, for your new show. I've always enjoyed your past 'fill-in' roles, your quick thinking and reams of supporting evidence. I was a bit disappointed, however, in my first visit last Saturday, as it seemed the panel spent a lot of time sitting while you did the talking. I actually felt sorry for them. The camera occasionally spotted one of them appearing a bit bored. Maybe you have too many folks waiting to get their words in edge-wise. I much prefer your hour-long evening 'fill-in' roles without the panel and maybe one or two guest interviews. Also, I felt attacked with so many breaks. I don't usually keep track of the interruptions, but it seemed you'd barely get into a topic and it was '' time for a break." Yawn!
I'll give it another try. I'm guessing there are numerous kinks to iron out with a new show. Good luck! You've got a lot going for YOU!!