By Amanda Sakuma on Up with Chris Hayes
Up host Chris Hayes summarizes the week of news after Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown was called out for including his 23-year-old daughter on his health insurance - a provision made possible through the "Affordable Care Act" that Brown nearly derailed.
Republicans are criticizing President Obama for campaigning on his victory in killing Osama bin Laden, saying he is politicizing the event. Former US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P.J. Crowley joins the conversation on how Obama is touting the death of bin Laden for political gain.
The broad center in American politics is rapidly diminishing. Why? Up panelist Chris Mooney and Jonathan Haidt, author of "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are divided," debate why liberals and conservatives are so polarized over many basic political issues, and wonder whether reason can be an effective antidote to seemingly irrational beliefs.
Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, discusses her work with the "We Do" campaign, which mobilizes gay and lesbian couples to seek marriage licenses in an effort to change perceptions about LGBT people throughout the south.
Joining Up w/ Chris Hayes are New York Daily News columnist John McWhorter, Newsweek/The Daily Beast contributor Michelle Goldberg, playwright Esther Armah, and author Chris Mooney as they discuss the influence of increasingly extreme, anti-gay rights forces within the GOP.
Up host Chris Hayes has the list of topics viewers should know for the upcoming week, including May Day's origins in violent responses against labor workers protesting an eight-hour work day.
Daron Acemoglu, co-author of "Why Nations Fail," joins the Up w/ Chris Hayes conversation on challenging government institutions as he shares his thesis on the corrosive power of a nation's elites.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is facing backlash to his austerity program after the UK limped through two quarters of a contracted economy. Would an American austerity program proposed by Republicans do the same to the US economy?
With the Occupy Wall Street movement calling on supporters to join their strike on Tuesday, the Up w/ Chris Hayes panelists discuss the interests that unite the participants and beneficiaries of such a protest.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is organizing a nationwide strike on May 1st, the International Workers Day. The Up w/ Chris Hayes panelists discuss the history of worker strikes in the US, their subsequent decline, and how Occupy plans to revive labor protests.
The Up w/ Chris Hayes panelists - including Marina Sitrin of the Occupy Wall Street Legal Working Group, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, and co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal, Bill Fletcher - examine President Obama's relationship with labor unions and their influence on Capitol Hill.
Up host Chris Hayes summarizes the news of the week, including reports that surfaced showing that student debt passed the $1 trillion mark and is growing at double the rate of the with mortgage debt during the height of crisis.
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.
