Once you download it, use this list of walkie talkie lingo to make things interesting:

Simply put, those professions are not under attack from anyone.

A troubling report in the Washington Post covered a married couple in Ohio that was feeling as if their professions (one was a fire fighter, the other a nurse) had been marginalized by the recent budget showdowns that have involved several states curtailing the collective bargaining power of the unions.

Indeed, the unions have come under scrutiny, but the employees have not. After all, it is the unions that are bleeding the state dry.

In every case across the nation, Governors are trying to push back against Big Labor to save public sector jobs—not destroy them. It is greedy labor bosses that are standing in the way of keeping America’s public sector employees at work and spreading falsehoods all the while.

When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker successfully curbed the power of the public employee unions in his state, Big Labor and their Democrat politician goons cried loudly that the governor and his “right-wing” supporters were trying to force the state employees out of their jobs. On the other hand, a fact that Big Labor refused to consider and deceptively hid from the employees that they claim to represent, had Governor Walker not taken the action he did, he would have had to immediately begin laying off state employees.

Irresponsible reports from the main stream media have attempted to change the terms of the debate. Why is it that the Washington Post and numerous other MSM outlets have given up on providing objective coverage in an effort to play nice with the special interest labor unions? The battles in these states are about government budgets that have ballooned beyond belief and politicians that have promised too much with no intention of ever being able to keep those promises. Greedy labor bosses and corrupt politicians have decided that they shall not share the sacrifice that so many are making as state governments are hit with the harsh reality that the money just simply isn’t there.

Instead of being responsible, union bosses and their politician cronies have decided that everyone else must give up their own money to keep them in place through higher taxes. The public employee unions refuse to give an inch of their power to save the jobs of the employees that they claim to represent. So, after one realizes that, one must wonder whose interests they actually represent? Clearly they are representing the interests of the labor bosses and spitting on the state employees whose wages they pilfer for union dues.

At the end of this debate, one can clearly see that Big Labor uses the employees as pawns on the political power chess board, claiming that anyone who disagrees with the power of the union bosses must inherently hate all public employees. They use the employees that they represent as nothing more than a tool to stir up emotions rather than provide responsible representation. Any rational and objective observer of these battles can see through these shameless arguments leveled from the labor bosses. People do not have less respect for firemen today than they did on this day last year—they just have less respect for the “fat cat” labor bosses that represent them while looting the taxpayers.

Adam Bitely is the Editor-in-Chief of NetRightDaily.com. You can follow Adam on Twitter at @AdamBitely.

Atlas Shrugged Part 1 opened in 300 theaters this past Friday. Fortunately, I had the chance to see it twice over the weekend—and I’m glad I did!

The movie opens with clips from futuristic newscasts in the year 2016. The clips show an America that is eerily similar to today. The stock market is tumbling, oil shipments from far away lands are disrupted, and the economy and unemployment are out of control.

The characters from the book are brought to life in the movie in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. You are introduced to Dagny Taggart, the protagonist of the movie. She is trying to save her family’s railroad company from disaster as she handles the fallout from a train derailment on her company’s most important rail line. Dagny is confronted with politicians and government-sponsored institutions that try to stymie her every move to bring the company back to life.

The villain in the movie, Wesley Mouch, couldn’t have been more spot-on. Through Mouch, you are reminded of the modern day Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama triumvirate that seeks to use the power of Big Government to regulate society towards their version of America that is cured of all of societal imbalances. Mouch is a greedy, power-hungry lobbyist that uses every disaster in America to create a new regulation. Watching Mouch react to the disasters that unfold in the plot is like listening to Rahm Emanuel announce that you never let a disaster go to waste.

As the plot unfolds, you find Dagny Taggart teaming up with Hank Rearden to repair the damaged rail track in Colorado. Along the way, Dagny and Rearden, a wise businessman/inventor who knows that something is wrong with the world but doesn’t have the answers, join forces with Ellis Wyatt, an entrepreneur who hates government regulations.  The team is constantly confronted with the question of “Who is John Galt?” If you have not read the book and do not know the answer to that question, you will begin to discover it in part 1 of this trilogy.

Throughout the film you are inundated with laws and regulations that are passed at the hands of Mouch that further establish the overbearing government that Ayn Rand wrote of in her classic book. From legislation like the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to the “Anti-dog eat dog rule,” you see a society that is overrun with government regulators and how they are worse off because of it.

At some points in the film, the dialogue does get sloppy. At one point, Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon get too windy when discussing heading to a town hall to obtain records. It almost felt as if you were watching a clip from CSI where the detectives use too much dialogue to discuss their next move. At another point, the film crew decided to focus whole minutes on the countryside of Colorado, distracting the viewer with scenery of the mountainous West while nothing is developing in the plot. These elongated scenes did nothing to further establish the plot and serve as a distraction midway through the film.

Another scene that is poorly done is when Dagny confronts a union boss who threatens to withhold workers from working on her new rail line. Instead of a dramatic encounter with the labor boss, Dagny simply shrugs off the union spokesman and moves on with her business, which highlights the problems that the writers of this film had when it came to developing intriguing dialogue. Aside from the poor dialogue and much-too-long and overly dramatic views of country scenery, the remainder of the film does not disappoint.

While the movie was produced on a shoestring budget, this production is a must-see. The actors, which were mainly television actors, and the cinematography, were top notch. To find the movie in your area, simply click here. I cannot encourage you enough to make sure that you see this film this weekend. And I cannot wait for parts 2 and 3 of this epic trilogy.

Adam Bitely is the Editor-in-Chief of NetRightDaily.com. You can follow Adam on Twitter at @AdamBitely.

Writing in the Washington Post, Samuelson claims that “[w]hen the entire financial system succumbs to panic, only the government is powerful enough to prevent a complete collapse.” Clearly, Samuelson has never taken an economics course.

First, when the financial markets tumbled in 2008, the correct reaction would have been to allow the financial system to naturally collapse and allow it to rebuild itself by reallocating resources to those entities that were best suited to do that. Instead, the government stepped in and provided the TARP fund, which propped up zombie corporations and companies that had mismanaged resources. Such activity allowed bad business practices to continue.

Second, the government does not exist to prevent businesses from failing. When the Founding Fathers designed the Constitutional system of government, they laid out a system that allows the American citizen to perform at his best with extremely limited government intrusion.

Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress tasked with bailing out corporations that perform badly. But in our modern government, where the Constitution has been so badly perverted to mean anything to any politician that wants to do prevent the free market from doing what it does best, the politicians in D.C. created a fund that now exists to prevent favored businesses from failing.

Such a fund is nothing to celebrate. This fund has thus far denied the marketplace from providing its most sacred function of ensuring allocation of scarce resources. When signals are distorted in the market place, as they were with the bailouts provided from the TARP program, it does not allow investors and consumers to have all the information about the firms they do business with.

While Samuelson celebrates that this program did not cost the taxpayer as much as it was originally forecast to cost, he misses the key point that such programs should never exist in the first place. The only good cost of such a program is zero, and the only way to ensure that such a program does indeed cost zero is to never implement it in the first place.

As politicians in D.C. slap themselves on the back from supposedly “saving” the finance market, they should be blamed for staving off a free market correction. If politicians in D.C. wanted to ensure that the financial markets got back on their feet correctly, they should have stayed out of the collapse entirely.

Samuelson should read the wisdom that is offered daily from George Mason University economist Russ Roberts at CafeHayek.com. As Roberts stated, “remember that the cost of the TARP isn’t the cost to taxpayers. Even if banks paid back every single penny, the cost of the TARP is that it reduces current and future prudence.”

Sure, Congressional inaction on this matter would have caused some level of pain in the marketplace, but that pain is part of the correction process. And if that pain is the cost of correcting the markets, then it is worth it to ensure that bad business practices are flushed from the system.

What started in 2008 was a long and drawn out process that will never deliver the results that a correction without government intervention would have delivered.

All Congress did was prolong the agony and make the correction slower. They wanted a “soft” landing, and they got one, with growth still less than 3 percent and unemployment still at about 9 percent almost three years later.

TARP was not successful in removing the bad actors from the financial markets, which would have happened had a recovery free of government intervention occurred. Instead, TARP served to prop them up and to allow them to continue with their financial chicanery. Therefore, the government has only proved that it was not powerful enough to ensure a robust recovery that would cleanse the financial markets of its bad apples.

Adam Bitely is the Editor-in-Chief of NetRightDaily.com. You can follow Adam on Twitter at @AdamBitely.

My fiance spotted the above “Buy Local Mobile” over the weekend in Washington, D.C. and snapped a picture of it for me to see.

Perhaps the owner of the car is on vacation, so I will not go into the other obvious failures of this person to follow the absurd “Buy Local” ideology (an ideology that Cafe Hayek’s Russ Roberts defined as the Middle Ages). But how odd is it that this “Buy Localer” is driving a Land Rover Discovery, a vehicle that has never been produced in the United States. Clearly this person has created some personal exemptions when it comes to supporting “local” business.

I challenge this person, if they should ever see this post, and any other “Buy Localer” to try and live your life based consuming only those goods that are produced locally. Clearly this person has indicated that he or she was unable to locate a locally produced supply of this specific type of car that they demanded. I wonder how many other goods this person uses that are not produced by a local business.

As for me and the rest of us who economize and recognize that there is no problem getting goods from those that have a comparative advantage producing them, we will continue to ignore your stupid “Buy Local” preachy bumper stickers and continue to purchase those products which we demand at a specific price from whichever supplier is willing to engage in an exchange–irregardless of where the supplier is geographically headquartered.

(H/T to my fiance @ASki04)

THE SUBJECT LINE WAS, “She said yes!”: “This evening, on the corner of 12th and Constitution just outside the Museum of Natural History, I asked Andrea Malewski to marry me. She said yes! Regards, Adam Bitely, Director of New Media, Americans for Limited Government.”

That’s right folks, I’m getting hitched to Andrea Malewski (@ASki04)!!!

Writing in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, Obama admits that he loves the free market society that exists in America. As he wrote, “America’s free market has not only been the source of dazzling ideas and path-breaking products, it has also been the greatest force for prosperity the world has ever known.” And he is exactly right.

His next paragraph, however, contradicted this newfound admiration of that very system. Sounding like a typical politician, Obama felt the need to justify the role that government regulators play in the supposedly “free” marketplace.

Obama says, “throughout our history, one of the reasons the free market has worked is that we have sought the proper balance.” Of course, the balance he refers to is government regulators interfering in the marketplace. Obama continues, “[w]e have preserved freedom of commerce while applying those rules and regulations necessary to protect the public against threats to our health and safety and to safeguard people and businesses from abuse.”

This quick reversal inside of two paragraphs reminds one of George W. Bush’s similar reversal that he made in the fall of 2008 while advocating the bailout of the entire financial system. Bush stated that he had to go against the free market ideals that he so deeply believed in to preserve the free market system.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote, the “market economy safeguards peaceful economic cooperation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one masterplan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge.” Government regulators in the marketplace do not preserve the “freedom of commerce” as Obama stated, rather, they hinder it. History has shown this time and again.

Government regulators use force to steer the marketplace in the direction they deem fit. This can be seen through such legislation as ObamaCare, which forces everyone to purchase health care all the while regulating the health care industry by forcing health care providers to perform certain functions for the customers. This is the exact “masterplan” that Mises warns of that hinders marketplace freedom.

If the American marketplace were truly free, it would not have government regulators dictating to companies how they perform their business. Consumers would be allowed to freely choose between companies with the freedom to purchase products or services from companies that they freely chose to engage in trade with, and would similarly have the freedom to not do business with companies that they would rather not engage with. These freedoms do not currently exist in the American marketplace.

Obama realizes that government regulators can be harmful to a degree. He issued an executive order that requires federal agencies to make sure that their regulations protect safety, health, and the environment while also promoting economic growth. This order demonstrates how un-committed Obama is to stopping out-of-control regulations that are harming the marketplace.

If he were truly serious about reforming the regulatory system, he would have banned regulations and started scaling them back. But that was not done. Instead, he asked the regulators to justify their regulations to the American people the way they have done since the beginning of time.

Adam Bitely is the Editor-in-Chief of NetRightDaily.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamBitely.

Small businesses are the backbone of the economy. Most businesses in the U.S. are “small businesses.” But there is a terrible epidemic of misinformation being spread about what a “small business” actually is.

First, the notion of supporting small business just because they are “local” is absurd. Consider the following. One would assume that you would boycott McDonald’s on a “small business” day. However, a boycott of McDonald’s would in most cases result in a small business owner being penalized. Most McDonald’s locations are franchised, meaning they are owned and operated locally. It’s not a big “fat cat” businessman that you are boycotting, rather, it’s your neighbor.

You might be surprised to see just how many “big businesses” are actually locally owned and operated. Check out the International Franchising Association for a surprisingly large list of companies that would qualify as a “small business” in most cases.

Second, people shop at specific stores for various reasons. People should not be purchasing products from a company simply because of its size or where it is located. Rather, products should be purchased because both the consumer and the seller are benefited from the transaction. Keep in mind, the local non-chain grocery store doesn’t sell a wide array of different products that are not found at the bigger chain stores. They are selling products that people know and like such as Pepperidge Farm or Campbell’s. Further, the employees at both the chain and non-chain stores are all locals who live in the area. Wal-Mart is not importing their employees from other states or nations to staff their stores, they rely on local folks to work in much-valued jobs.

And third, this was a simple ploy from American Express to pressure businesses to accept their cards. American Express charges a higher rate for purchases processed on their cards, thus, many small businesses refuse to accept American Express purchases. But imagine a day when American Express customers go expressly to stores that American Express pushes their customers towards only to discover that their cards were no good. The small business would realize that they lost a considerable amount of business and thus, the result would be that they would be willing to now accept the purchases.

Too often I see poor logic employed to convince me to purchase local, small business items. But everywhere I turn, I cannot see how I’m not supporting local small businesses with my day to day purchases throughout my community. For quite a while now, I have been spotting the “Buy Local” bumper stickers on cars. But I have often noticed, like Jim Swift, that these stickers are on vehicles that are foreign and completely dismiss the entire notion that the sticker purports.

As the Small Business Saturday website that was launched by American Express reads, “Small Business Saturday recognizes the importance of small businesses to the overall economy and local communities. It’s a day to support the small, independently owned businesses we can’t live without.” They fail to recognize that all businesses support their local communities, regardless of their size. If they were not fulfilling a need in the community, they would have shut their doors and moved on finding another market for their goods.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with small businesses. But there is something wrong when one decides to dictate that there are only certain “local” businesses that deserve our business. I’m having a very tough time trying to think of a single business in my community that solely imports its workers from outside localities, only to send the money made off to foreign and distant lands.

Adam Bitely is the Editor-in-Chief of NetRightDaily.com. You can follow Adam on Twitter at @AdamBitely.