If you’re of an age with The Free Agent, you’ll remember a post-“All in the Family” Sally Struthers’ commercials for Christian Children’s Fund. Accessorized by a barefoot child playing in a mud puddle, Struthers explained how a minimal monthly stipend would change not only this child’s life, but “combined with other funds” (yep, The Free […]
Austerity be damned, for his “America’s future” pilot program, President Obama increased the 2010 federal budget 6.8%, with bumps for police, education, renewable energy and climate change research. Only one of which is actually needed on Indian reservations. In addition to focusing her lorgnette on the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget, The Free Agent has
No Reservations (!) Read More »
A common misconception of libertarians is that we are ingrates. “You want all the good things governments give you,” a self-proclaimed progressive will say, “but you don’t want to pay for them.” The Free Agent would like to correct that misapprehension—it is illogical to be grateful to the brute who lifts a dollar from her
The Free Agent Gives Thanks Read More »
In The Free Agent’s last job, she alternately amused and shocked her coworkers with statements like, “if it were up to me, there would be no employment laws”. A large part of her duties, after all, was to keep Hippy Week on the right side of labor laws. By the end of her eight-year tenure,
The Free Agent wonders how naughty New Yorkers were before she moved here that in the political equivalent of dialing Nanny 911, they elected Michael Bloomberg as mayor. In almost nine years since he established Flowertown (term limits, schmerm limits!), the tentacles of governance have crept up to Floweridians’ every conceivable orifice. Prepare for uncharacteristic
From Stem to Stern Read More »
You would think that speaking to a ballroom full of libertarians about ending the war on drugs would be like trying to talk the AARP into senior discounts. Even as she dipped into her pear-cinnamon-chocolate mousse parfait, The Free Agent mentally donned her choir robe and prepared to be preached to. But the speaker, The
deLISH® Brand Heroin Read More »
Where she grew up in the Midwest, The Free Agent knows many people who have lived out their natural life spans without ever having been called to jury duty. Because she chose to settle in Coastopolis, however, the FA gets a summons about as often as she does birthday cards. Well, as often as she
The Free Agent would like to argue her confederates, especially those seeking office, out of using “socialist” as shorthand when discussing issues with the not-yet-enlightened. She hears it all the time—in the late lamented political health care debate, for example, but the pros and cons of various economic models are not understood by even a
We Are All Socialists Read More »
Once in a while, The Free Agent’s president gives her a gift. Not a big gift such as he’s given the United Auto Workers or new federal employees. But the gift of saying something so preposterous that it remains merely for her to lay her fingertips upon the keyboard in order for her blog to
If You’ve Made Enough Money, Raise Your Hand Read More »
The Free Agent was perusing this Obama fan site when she happened upon a list of recent triumphs under the heading “Spike in Mass Struggles”. Skeptical, but open-minded as always, she probed deeper into the story of a Hugo Boss clothing factory in Brooklyn, Ohio, which was supposedly rescued from closure by members of the