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As Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was about to sign their union-busting right-to-work-for-less bills into law, Chris Matthews spoke to UAW President Bob King and the State Director of the Michigan chapter of Americans for Prosperity's Scott Hagerstrom. Matthews attempted to get Hagerstrom to come clean about who "signs his paycheck" and despite repeated badgering from Matthews, refused to acknowledge that AFP is just a front group for the Koch brothers.

He just works for a grass roots organization, like the Red Cross don't you know! And they have lots of donors. He didn't want to talk about their one big one though. Here's more on Hagerstrom and his remarks back in February of 2011 from Think Progress: Koch Front Group Americans For Prosperity: ‘Take The Unions Out At The Knees’:

In a speech earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual conference, Americans For Prosperity-Michigan Executive Director Scott Hagerstrom revealed the true goal of his group and its allies like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) efforts. Speaking at CPAC’s “Panel for Labor Policy,” Hagerstrom said that AFP really wants to do is to “take the unions out at the knees”:

HAGERSTROM: It’s easy to go out there and fight taxes and increased regulation, you know we send out an action alert on taxes to AFP and we get thousands of people to respond. You send out one on a more complicated issue and it just doesn’t quite resonate…We fight these battles on taxes and regulation but really what we would like to see is to take the unions out at the knees so they don’t have the resources to fight these battles.

Taking “the unions out at the knees” has long been a goal of the Koch brothers and their many front groups. In the run-up to the 2010 elections, the Kochs worked with other anti-labor billionaires, corporations and activists to fund conservative candidates and groups across the country. Now after viciously opposing pro-middle class policies for years, Koch Industries is trying to eliminate the only organizations which serve as a counterweight to the well-oiled corporate machine.

Sadly they managed to succeed in that goal today in Michigan. Sourcewatch has more on Americans for Prosperity here and the fact that they are indeed just a front group for the Koch brothers here.

This interview has a bunch of right wing blogs worked up of course, the usual suspects that I'm not going to link to, calling Matthews "unhinged" and claiming he "berated" Hagerstrom because he asked him time and again who funds AFP. If they think this is Matthews coming "unhinged" they must not watch the show much, because this is pretty mild by his standards. There are times that stuff can be annoying out of him. This wasn't one of them.

The AFP chair was on there pretending he's got the interest of those workers in Michigan at heart and that they're just some grass roots organization instead of an AstroTurf front group who only care about a race to the bottom on wages so their rich donors can squeeze some more blood out of the working class.

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President Barack Obama says he is so confident of the U.S. auto industry's return to greatness that he is buying an American electric car at the end of his second term.

In a fiery speech to the United Auto Workers (UAW) members on Tuesday, the president said that his decision to bailout General Motors and Chrysler had been a success.

"If we had turned our backs on you; if America had thrown in the towel; GM and Chrysler wouldn’t exist today," Obama told the crowd. "And you know why I knew this rescue would succeed? It wasn’t because of anything the government did. It wasn’t just because of anything management did. It was because I believed in you. I placed my bet on American workers."

"Three years later, the American auto industry is back," he continued. "GM is back on top as the number one automaker in the world, with the highest profits in its 100-year history. ... And you’re not just building cars again. You’re building better cars."

"I know our bet was a good one because I’ve seen the payoff first hand," Obama insisted. "I’ve seen at GM’s Lordstown plant in Ohio, where workers got their jobs back to build the Chevy Cobalt, and at GM’s Hamtramck plant in Detroit, where I got to get inside a brand-new Chevy Volt fresh off the line."

At that point, the president detoured from his prepared remarks to explain just how much he liked Chevy's new electric car.

"Secret Service wouldn't let me drive it," he joked. "But I liked sitting in it. It was nice. I bet it drives real good."

"And five years from now when I'm not president anymore, I'll buy one and drive it myself!" Obama exclaimed, prompting the enthusiastic audience to chant, "Four more years! Four more years!"

The president's speech to auto workers comes on the day that Michigan voters are casting their ballots in the Republican presidential primary.

In contrast to Obama's embrace of the $80 billion auto bailout, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently claimed that the current White House resident "gave" the car companies to the UAW.

"My view is this: We have to have industries that get in trouble go through bankruptcies," Romney explained at a CNN debate last week.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has also recently taken a shot the auto industry's effort at building more energy efficient models.

At a campaign event in Suwanee, Georgia last week, Gingrich told supporters that he would bring back cheaper gas because “you can’t put a gun rack on a Volt.”

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday insisted that President Barack Obama made a mistake by saving the U.S. auto industry because "the president gave those companies" to the United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union.

During a CNN debate in Mesa, Arizona, the former Massachusetts governor admitted that he had supported Wall Street bailouts while calling for the car companies go bankrupt in a New York Times op-ed.

"I don't want to save any Wall Street bank, I just don't want to make sure we lose all of our banks," Romney explained. "My view is this: We have to have industries that get in trouble go through bankruptcies."

"I wrote my piece and I said, 'Look, these companies need to go through managed bankruptcy.' And the head of the UAW said, 'We can't go through managed bankruptcy. The industry will disappear if that happens.' And the politicians, Barack Obama's people, 'Oh, no. We can't go through managed bankruptcy.' Six months, they wrote, I think it was $17 billion in checks to the auto companies and then they finally realized I was right."

He added: "Because they put that money in, the president gave the companies to the UAW. They were part of the reason the companies were in trouble. Giving these companies to the UAW was wrong."

The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn has called that claim "a pretty skewed version of the truth."

"[T]he unions had by 2009 already made major concessions in order to help the companies restructure... Then, during the bankruptcy, the unions agreed to further concessions still, on pay, vacations, job security, health benefits, and work rules. As a result, traditional Chrysler and GM hourly employees have seen no annual raises since 2003 and will see no raises until at least 2015, when they bargain the next contract."

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Fox is at it again, bashing unions. Of course the panel on Bulls & Bears thinks this is a fantastic idea other than their one out-gunned "Democratic strategist" -- GM may link vehicle quality, employee pay incentives. This might be a good time for a reminder of just what it took for American auto workers to get rid of things like piece work in the first place.

The historic 1936-37 Flint auto plant strikes:

The feisty young United Auto Workers launched the first of a series of sit-down strikes against General Motors at Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint. The goals were to earn recognition for the UAW as the bargaining agent for GM workers, and to make the company stop shipping work to plants with nonunion workers. The strike lasted 44 days and became the first of many union victories. [...]

On Nov. 18, 1936, the UAW struck a Fisher Body plant in Altanta. On Dec. 16, they hit two GM plants in Kansas City, and on Dec. 28, a Fisher stamping plant in Cleveland. Two days later they struck Fisher Body No. 1 in Flint. Within two weeks, approximately 135,000 men from plants in 35 cities in 14 states were striking General Motors.

As the nation was emerging from the Great Depression, the striking workers enjoyed the sympathy of most of the people, including Michigan governor Frank Murphy and popular New Deal President Franklin Delano Roosvelt. Roosevelt had promised in his inaugural speech to drive out the "economic royalists," a pointed reference to the General Motors officials. [...]

The News gave this account: "The guardsmen forming a line around the No. 4 plant were part of a contingent of 1,200 who formed a bayoneted ring of steel around the 80-acre grounds which house all 12 plants of the Chevrolet Motor Car Co. at Flint. Machine guns emplacements were at strategic approaches and except for a small group of pickets outside the gates of the No. 4 plant, all visitors were barred unless they had special military passes.

"The guardsmen surrounded the grounds and 'enforced peace' on orders of Gov. Murphy, following the rioting."

The News also gave the union version: "Then company police and hundreds of thugs, armed with tear gas pistols, tear gas bombs, blackjacks and clubs manufactured in the Chevrolet woodshop, attacked all workers in the plant, using floods of tear gas. It was a clear case, apparently, of company thugs against the workers since all the injured workers were found in the plants and no one was injured on the outside of the company property. City police do not seem to have been involved."

The National Guard fixed bayonets and halted any delivery of food to the occupiers. But the governor never ordered the troops into action.

The strikers vowed a hunger strike until their families could bring them food, or their demands were met. The sit-downers appealed to the governor.

President Roosevelt asked GM to meet with the union once more. The tension subsided. General Motors signed an agreement with the UAW, giving the union bargaining rights in 17 GM plants shut by sit-downs.

Employees at the 17 plants involved got 5 percent pay hikes and were allowed to speak in the lunchroom. The company agreed not to discriminate against union members and agreed to begin negotiations on other matters.

A synopsis of the issues included in the union demands:

1. Recognition of UAW as sole bargaining agency.
2. Abolition of piece work in favor of straight hourly rates.
3. A 30 hour week and 6 hour day, with time and a half for overtime.
4. A "minimum rate of pay commensurate with an American standard of living."
5. Seniority rights based on length of service.
6. Reinstatement of all employes "unjustly discharged."
7. Mutual agreement on "speed of production."

The dramatic military style battles depict the times and the desperation of those involved. The outcome much later in time proved that both the union and the company could coexist and indeed prosper beyond anyone's expectations. Those who made the cars could finally afford to buy them, pouring profits back to the stockholders. Spreading the wealth caused more to be created. The pension and wages won by the workers raised the standard of living for the whole country.

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During a panel discussion on The McLaughlin Group Monica Crowley claims that George Bush and the UAW were conspiring together to make sure that the unions didn't have to make concessions and that the only reason that most Americans oppose the bailout is because it's not a bailout of the auto industry, but the union instead. George Bush is in bed with the unions. I've heard it all now.

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Can we please see more of Thom Hartmann on the cable news networks? Good for David Shuster for bringing him on while filling in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown. They discuss the Republicans absolute hatred for unions and the labor movement and their reasons for wanting to destroy it. Thom also has a suggestion for the Obama administration to get the economy back on track. Read Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures from 1791 which Thom has posted at his site.

Hartmann: David what he needs to do immediately is read Alexander Hamilton's 1791 report to Congress on manufactures. Hamilton laid out this six step plan to build an industrial economy in the United States and we followed it. We, Congress actually put into place in 1792 and it stood until Ronald Reagan came along and started deconstructing this, followed by George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush now and the legislatures, mostly pushed by the Republicans taking this thing apart. You could argue some of this started with Taft-Hartley. But basically the founders laid this thing out. They had it figured out and it worked. We built the biggest industrial infrastructure and industrial economy in the world.

We have gone, when Reagan came into office we were the largest exporter of manufactured goods and the largest importer of raw materials on the planet. And the largest creditor. More people owed us money than anybody else in the world. Now just twenty eight years later we're the largest importer of finished goods, manufactured goods, exporter of raw materials which is kind of the definition of a third world nation and we're the most in debt of any country in the world. This is the absolute consequence of Reaganomics.

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Rachel Maddow hits the nail on the head with this one. The GOP has now decided it is good for them politically to rail against unions and against Americans earning a living wage. I'd love to know just how low the wages of auto workers should go before it would satisfy these guys if someone is a union member, or if it just doesn't matter as long as the UAW is busted and their foreign interests in their states are satisfied.

It's a fine rant, kind of like an extended symphony, and she wraps it up by setting off the cannons behind Barack Obama's express concerns about the "devastating ripple effect throughout our economy" the collapse of the Big Three would have:

Maddow: That's what most Americans are worried about with this issue. What are the Republican Senators worried about who say they don't want to deal unless they can break the unions in this way? Besides their friends in Japan, I guess, who have state-subsidized plants in their home states, we can tell that Senator Corker's plan requires even further cuts from union workers and stakeholders in the companies than already have been offered. Blame the workers -- especially, blame the United Auto Workers. That's what we're hearing from Senate Republicans as our auto industry skids toward the brink of extinction. And they're saying if you do save the industry, they want to do it with conditions that break the unions while the industry is being saved.

It appears to me that Senate Republicans are on an ideologically driven union-busting adventure here, that happens to have the prospect of increasing the market share of the foreign-owned companies who work in their states. American-owned companies and the American economy as a whole be darned -- those foreign-owned companies that serve the individual states of these senators who are objecting to this bailout, they're the ones who are getting served.

Why aren't Democrats making them filibuster this -- making them stand up and defend this, if this is really what they want the country to know they're doing?

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Rachel Maddow talks to Ron Gettlefinger from the UAW about the demonization of union workers and the attempt by the right to blame the auto workers for the problems at GM, Ford and Chrysler. The chattering class on cable news has done its best to tout the Republican party line and scare everyone to death about the dangers of unionization when unions are our last front in trying to prevent a complete race to the bottom in this country, and Rachel's right, it is class warfare. The ones who have been winning that war are desperate to maintain the status quo. Look for this fight to get louder and uglier if they try to get the Employee Free Choice Act through the Congress again.