A third-generation union organizer, Mike Elk worked grew up with a strong pride in the labor movement and previously for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE). Currently, he works at the Campaign for America's Future in Washington, D.C. Additionally, he has worked as a staffer on the Obama-Biden Campaign and conducted research on worker owned cooperatives at the Instituto Marques de Salamanca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. When Mike is not reading twenty blogs at a time, he enjoys jazz, golden retrievers, and playing horseshoes.

Blog Entries by Mike Elk

Protestors to Goldman Sachs: "You Are Not God" - Bernanke Explains Why

2 Comments | Posted November 17, 2009 | 12:20 PM (EST)


Somebody call up Pat Robertson! Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is going around claiming he's "doing God's work."

That's exactly what he's quoted as saying last week in an interview for the Times of London. A group of around 200 protesters gathered outside the company's Washington headquarters Monday to...

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Liberal Elitism Will Make Sarah Palin President - How Only Union Organizing Can Stop It

661 Comments | Posted November 12, 2009 | 10:29 AM (EST)


Conservatives win many votes saying that liberals are elitist. I am here to tell you that the liberal movement is indeed very elitist. Its organization's staffs are composed mainly of Ivy leaguers whose life experiences are dramatically different than the 70 percent of Americans that never graduate from college. Very...

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Labor Leader Trumka To Testify Against "Reform" Bill Deemed "TARP on Steroids"

26 Comments | Posted October 29, 2009 | 03:07 AM (EST)


After leading the dramatic three-day Showdown in Chicago at the American Bankers Association (ABA) Convention in Chicago, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will head to the House Financial Service Committee today to testify against proposed reform legislation and argue that the bill actually gives the banks more power.

As...

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Frank Allowing Weakening Amendments to Financial Reform to Pass Without Roll Call Votes

17 Comments | Posted October 20, 2009 | 06:25 PM (EST)


As markup on financial reform legislation continued today in the House Financial Service Committee, a pattern has emerged in which committee members are not forced to go on the record to vote for key amendments that weaken financial reform. Instead, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Barney...

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Advocating for a Weak Dollar Policy Is Like Throwing a Birthday Party for Osama Bin Laden?

12 Comments | Posted October 19, 2009 | 12:58 PM (EST)


Despite all the apocalyptic nay saying by right wing economists that the falling dollar is a bad thing, its actually a really great development for Economic Recovery:

From Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman:

The truth is that the falling dollar is good news. For one thing, it's mainly...
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Wall Street's Favorite Democrat Misrepresents Financial Watchdog Elizabeth Warren

6 Comments | Posted October 15, 2009 | 03:04 PM (EST)


Democratic Congresswoman Melissa Bean is earning the title of Wall Street's favorite Democrat.

The three-term Illinois Congresswoman and leader in the New Democrat Coalition has pocketed almost $2.2 million since she's been in Congress from the banking and financial services interests she oversees as a member of the House...

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Martin Luther King Would Have Loved the Teabaggers, Not Called Them Racists

287 Comments | Posted October 6, 2009 | 10:54 AM (EST)


A few weeks ago, I attended the teabagger protests in DC. The thing I noticed the most about the folks there was that, for the most part, they were friendly, nice, hardworking people. Sure, there were some crazies; sure, there were some racists. For the most part, though, they looked...
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Key Senators, Krugman Call for Tariffs on High-Carbon-Footprint Imports

8 Comments | Posted September 23, 2009 | 06:25 PM (EST)


Speaking Tuesday on a Campaign for America's Future conference call, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said that the climate change legislation will not get 50 Senate votes if it does not place a tariff on imports that have unacceptably high carbon footprints.

For example, Chinese steel mills produce

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2.5 Million Green Jobs Lost From the Bailout Bonuses Alone: Escaping the Wall Street Economy of Debt

13 Comments | Posted September 19, 2009 | 01:22 PM (EST)


This week on the anniversary of the financial crisis, there has been a flurry of talk about the bailout. We often talk about the bailout in terms of the increase in the national debt and the lack of transparency at major banks. Rarely do we discuss it in terms of...

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Washington Post Spreads Myths That Trade Enforcement Will Hurt Climate Change Agreements

1 Comments | Posted September 16, 2009 | 11:16 AM (EST)


My breakfast nearly fell out of my mouth when I read this line about the China Tire Case on the front page of the Washington Post:

a chorus of economists and climate activists fretted that the president's action might undercut U.S.-China climate talks and poison relations just two weeks...
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Obama Shows Encouraging Signs on China, But Is It A Smokescreen?

2 Comments | Posted September 11, 2009 | 03:40 PM (EST)


In recent days, the Administration has made encouraging signs that it plans to enforce U.S. trade law, but is it smoke screen for advancing a free trade agenda?.

Today, it came that Senator Harry Reid and the Office of U.S. Trade Representative are in support of putting safeguards on illegal,...

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400 Former Obama Staffers: Don't Demobilize the Troops Before the Battle With the Insurance Industry

35 Comments | Posted September 7, 2009 | 03:33 AM (EST)


The first day of President Obama's administration, he made a promise to his former campaign staff at a party honoring their work:

"I promise you if everybody in this hall is willing to keep doing what you guys did over the last two years, then I am optimistic about America....

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I Am a Former Staffer of the President's and I Want Him To Fight Like He Promised Us

918 Comments | Posted September 4, 2009 | 03:11 AM (EST)


I just joined thousands of others, including several hundred former staffers from the campaign, in signing a petition to President Obama, telling him that health care reform without a public option is not "change we can believe in."

As a staffer of the President's working as a community...

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Labor Gets Tough and Threatens to Cut Off Cowardly Democrats

11 Comments | Posted September 2, 2009 | 12:34 PM (EST)


For a long time, Corporate Democrats have taken advantage of organized labor to mobilize voters for them and fund their campaigns. However, when big votes come up against powerful corporate interests, these Democrats continually abandon organized labor on key issues like the public option, Employee Free Choice Act, trade agreements,...

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Stop the Teabaggers, Give Them Green Jobs: Lessons From the Coalfields of West Virginia

77 Comments | Posted August 28, 2009 | 11:41 AM (EST)


West Virginia shows us how we could easily win over this key segment of society, working class whites, with a New Deal-style industrial policy. Currently, 85,000 people in the United States are employed by the wind industry; Slightly more than the 81,000 in the...

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On the Death of My Older Brother, Jeremy, and Ted Kennedy

1 Comments | Posted August 26, 2009 | 10:56 AM (EST)


In the coming days, many great eulogies of Ted Kennedy will be written. Many will offer personal anecdotes in the coming days about what a great man he was. I do not intend to write one here.

I have no great anecdotes or personal stories to tell about how...

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Teabaggers Are To Congresspeople What Union-Busters Are To Workers

1 Comments | Posted August 19, 2009 | 11:20 AM (EST)


After reading an article by Chris Townsend the other day in the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America's (UE) Political Action Update, I noticed the the strong similarities between union busting and the tactics of teabaggers -- namely, how they suppress, intimidate, and delay action at all...

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Specter-Sestak Attack Each Other From The Left on Free Trade

1 Comments | Posted August 18, 2009 | 10:23 AM (EST)


Trade policy may become a flash point in the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary, as both candidates at Netroots Nation sought to criticize the other as too supportive of unfair trade agreements.

Some union officials have expressed dismay over the trade positions of both candidates. Specter voted for the 1994 NAFTA,...

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Lobbyists Paid Off by China vs. 30,000 U.S. Workers: Which Side Will Obama Choose?

27 Comments | Posted August 11, 2009 | 06:18 PM (EST)


As the International Trade Commission considers comments on its recommendation to impose tariffs on Chinese tire imports, President Obama stands at a crossroads in the fight to rebuild the American economy.

President Obama has made a commitment in the past to uphold previously signed trade agreements. China, however, is...

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Banks Still Cheating People Out of Their Homes

15 Comments | Posted August 5, 2009 | 01:22 PM (EST)


Many of the nation's banks are failing to do their part to solve the nation's housing crisis, and are therefore obstacles to economic recovery. On Monday, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., called them out on it.

Speaking at the Center for American Progress, Durbin noted that the housing crisis...

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