The Fourth Option (A Centrist Perspective) Blog

           I read the headlines in USATODAY.com News: Occupy movement faces challenges from violent fringe , and I immediately had a flashback to the protest movements in the 60’s. More specifically, I immediately had a flashback to the underhanded, sleazy tricks the republicans, like President Richard Nixon, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and their covert operatives orchestrated to make peaceful demonstrators appear violent and destructive.          Their most popular strategy was to infiltrate the movements with highly skilled operatives, who were present or former members of the CIA, FBI, and the military Special Forces. The job of these operatives were (1) gather information that would allow the republicans to harass, miscast, and destroy the leaders of the movement; (2)create violent fringes that prevent the movements from gaining greater public support. Keep the movements from appearing peaceful and purpose...

The Red Sea has drowned our nation’s consciousness. We float on its surface, our lifeless bodies controlled by its currents. We drifting stares face down beyond its bottom depths, down into its evil, sinful hue of Hell, and the Devil’s Playground, rapidly becoming the place where we increasingly go to conduct business. Once upon a time we understood that “red” was the color Satan loaned to oppressive states, like the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, North Korea, and China, and others who tilted their heads downwards, during all physical actions requiring movements, looking downwards to the scarlet kingdom of sinful blood, furnace boiling in Lucifer’s inferno. Once upon a time we understood that “red” was the color of patriots’ blood at Valley Forge, gore of the Minute Men at Trenton, and oppressive cloaks worn by the forces of evil during the American Revolution. Blue was our national color, during those times, those prosperous, glorious, industrial times, when we soared, and gazed...

     Yesterday the United States conducted a drill of our new, national alert system; it tested our country’s ability to alert the entire nation on a moment's notice.   Gone is the old system that encouraged states, counties, cities and municipalities to independently and randomly test their sectors of the national alert system . A new and improve method to simultaneously alert all states has arrived. Its arrival, however, leads to the next question, “Once we are alerted (Step 1 ), are we prepare to effectively and efficiently transition and mobilize (Step 2) in such a manner that social and economic damages, and human harm and lost of lives are minimized?” The current answer is “yes.” But with each passing day, the social and economic policies in the United States make its citizens less prepared and more unable to respond to its national crises.         At first glance, however, the growing inability of American citizens to...

         It is today’s story that will get less coverage than it deserves ― especially in states like Wisconsin, Indiana, Florida, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and New Jersey. These are states where “balanced news coverage” ― especially in recent years, have come to mean “the republican views on the issues are going to be favorably exaggerated, while the democratic views are going to be marginalized and down-played: Ohio voters by a 2 to 1 margin repealed the state’s collective bargaining law (Senate Bill 5).           Finally the citizens are beginning to say, “ We’ve had enough of your empty promises. We’ve had enough of your unsupported claim that lowering corporate taxes create new jobs. And most importantly, we’ve had enough of your deliberate attempt to infringe on our constitutional rights to assemble and act in concert with each other for our common good. Hear ye, hear ye, enough is enough!”  ...

           Most often the events that will have the greatest impacts in our lives are similar to cancer: They start small and appear so insignificant that we tend to be unaware of them, or make light of them, or simply ignore them. Barely visible to our eyes and un-alarming to our touch, few of us are able to recognize the significance of the small little mole on the skin, or the teensy- weensy lump in a breast, during their early stages.      However, unawareness of an impending disaster doesn’t minimize its inevitability. Tsunami, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes will come into our lives despite our level of preparation or stage of awareness; and so will cancer that begins as a miniscule mole or little lump. And so will many of the events that will have the greatest impact in our lives.      Most events in Wisconsin education, in this post-collective bargaining era, are in the early stages of the canc...

          Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me umpteen times, and you can call me “stupid” ― especially, if the trick you used to fool me the umpteenth time is the same trick you used to fool me every previous time. Yet, that’s exactly what Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), the other republican governors, and the republican leaders in Washington are doing: They are fooling us again and again and again with the same sequence of shenanigans.   Actually, what they are doing goes beyond deception or deceit; their dishonesty is fraudulent and down-right abusive.      Consider, for example, the economic policy that Scott Walker and the republicans implemented in Wisconsin at the beginning of this year.   First and foremost it was grossly unfair because it placed the burden of balancing Wisconsin’s budget on the backs of the middle class. All revenues, particularly money from the richest Americans with tax shelters in Wisconsin, ...