As most of you probably know, I live in Southeast Michigan, and I can't tell you how fantastic this news is.

Karl Henkel at The Detroit News reports:

Ford Motor Co.'s record North American profit in 2012 will have a ripple effect on auto communities across the country and especially here in Southeast Michigan.

Roughly 45,800 hourly United Auto Workers members who work at Ford plants in the United States will receive record profit-sharing checks of $8,300 on average in March.

"The expected increase in profit-sharing checks for autoworkers this March is good news for Michigan's economy," said Robert Dye, chief economist at Comerica Bank. "It will help to buffer households from the drag of higher payroll taxes," which increased 2 percent for all working Americans on Jan. 1.

On average, the $8,300 profit-sharing check will have an economic impact of $20,750 per worker, when factoring a multiplying ripple effect, said David Sowerby, portfolio manager for Loomis Sayles in Bloomfield Hills.

The $8,300 profit-sharing check shatters the previous record for Ford UAW workers, which was $8,000 in 1999. It also breaks the all-time UAW profit-sharing record of $8,100 that Chrysler workers received in 1999.

"Anybody watching this right now who went to college, or got to put their child through college, anybody who's living in a house, has three square meals a day, that was all because of what happened with that strike in Flint." – Michael Moore on The War Room with Jennifer Granholm, December 12th, 2012, discussing Michigan's new right-to-work law. (Granholm was Michigan's Governor from January 2003-January 2011, and was succeeded by lying, Koch Brothers-owned Republican, Rick Snyder.)

"That strike in Flint" was the basis for Moore's first documentary, "Roger & Me," about the laid off auto workers of General Motors in Flint, Michigan. Many of those original UAW sit-down strikers from Flint were on hand for the "right to work" protest in Lansing on Tuesday. They included ninety-one-year-old Geraldine Blankinship, and this gentleman, whose name I didn't catch sadly, who also happened to be celebrating his 96th birthday.

Michael Moore is a native of Michigan, attended the University of Michigan, and is the son and grandson of auto workers. His uncle LaVerne was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike.

Illustration by Robert Grossman/Rolling Stone

Uh oh. This is not going to be a good day for Mittens:

For Mitt Romney, it's one scary Halloween. The Presidential candidate has just learned that tomorrow afternoon he will be charged by the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and other public interest groups with violating the federal ethics in government law by improperly concealing his multi-million dollar windfall from the auto industry bailout.

At a press conference in Toledo, Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics in Washington stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney's so-called "blind" trust.

The Nov. 1, 2012 press conference is scheduled for 2 p.m. EST at the UAW on Ashland Ave., Toledo, Ohio.

The President of United Auto Workers local 5285, Ricky McDowell, said that organized labor supports President Barack Obama because he saved their jobs.

“With the help of President Obama saving the Big Three, with the stimulus money, it saved the GM and Chrysler brothers and sisters. So without the support of the international union from Detroit, and if we had let Chrysler and Chevrolet and GM go down, there wouldn’t be a Big Three, there wouldn’t be an international union,” he told PBS during a Labor Day parade in Charlotte, North Carolina. “So he did save our jobs.”

Several hundred union members, drummers and step teams marched in the parade while chanting pro-union and pro-Obama slogans, hoping to draw attention to the fact that North Carolina is the nation’s least unionized state.

The Democratic National Convention is being held in Charlotte this year, beginning Tuesday, September 4th, and UAW president Bob King and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka are both scheduled to speakers.