Since The Free Agent was wee, one measure of the difference between a pessimist and an optimist was when each thought Social Security would go bankrupt. (The FA has a contemporary who started working at the Social Security Administration out of college and successfully surfed that wave into pensioned retirement.) Being an optimist, The FA […]
What’s a Free Agent to do when she needs health care? Being between engagements and insured only against disaster (she has the kind of insurance everyone used to have—the kind you hope you never have to use—not the kind that feels like a ticket for an all-you-can-eat buffet), The Free Agent has seen a side
The Free Agent Has an Ear Ache Read More »
Charismatic, populist leader, pretty blonde first lady, intractable financial crisis masked by a cavalcade of cash, before it happened to Andrew Cuomo and Sandra Lee here in New York, it happened in Argentina. Following the suicidal Falkland Islands invasion, reform of Argentina’s long cycle of borrowing and hyper-inflation seemed assured by the late 90s. With
Don’t Cry for Me, Albany Read More »
A beautiful woman, abandoned by a man she counted on, near the end of her strength, the fires of perdition burning in the background, collapses at a split rail fence. Before it happened at the end of the new “Atlas Shrugged” movie, it happened to Scarlett O’Hara. The Free Agent cannot really argue with the
“The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. Saying that the country is broke is repeating a Big Lie.” While The Free Agent certainly doesn’t count herself among Michael Moore’s friends, she cannot help but be intrigued by the speech he gave in Madison supporting intractable state workers and their enablers in
As she has said before, The Free Agent may number few among her peers, but is catholic in her associations. An ex-colleague and native of America’s Dairyland, posted this joke on Facebook: This joke is too good not to share… A unionized public employee, a teabagger, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In
Like most decent people, The Free Agent was brought up never to deface property. One cannot, however, live in New York without appreciating a certain frisson of anarchistic thrill at the sight of a particularly subversive graffito. It is a tradition that goes back at least to ancient Rome, when frenzied fan girls were known
Let’s Not Go All Denmark Here Read More »
The Free Agent has observed that the frequency of the nostalgia wave is about twenty years. In particular, Generation-Whatevers look upon twenty years before whatever year it is as a time when people wore funny clothes and didn’t have real problems like we do nowadays. (When The Free Agent was a toddler, the rage was
The Danielle Steel Decade * Read More »
The Free Agent holidayed in the Greater DC area, her home of fifteen years. Along with gift-opening and turkey-consuming, she was on a reconnaissance mission to see how her beloved capital has changed over the last four years. The city got snow on Christmas Day, which is when it looks the prettiest. But as Robert
Notes from the DC Underground Read More »
It’s well-known that The Free Agent is catholic in her affections and radical in her opinions, so in celebration of the end of the Awful Aughts decade, she offers her Top Ten Reasons to Love Rich People: 10) They’re recession-proof. The New Yorker reports that someone in this world ordered an $87,000 custom-made purse last
Hooray for Rich People! Read More »