The Fourth Option (A Centrist Perspective) Blog

       Corporate America, you got the tax cuts, which resulted in boat loads of profits!   So where are the American jobs you claimed the tax cuts would produce? The citizens of the United States kept their end of the bargain: They gave you the tax cuts, you claimed, that were badly needed to create jobs. How come you are not keeping your end of the bargain? How come you are blaming the state of the economy on President Obama for the promises you made.      It was you, Corporate America, who said, “Cut taxes and it will create jobs!” It was you, Corporate America, who said, “Cutting taxes will save the future for our children.” The Republican/Tea Party argued your case, bullied the Democrats, held important economic legislations hostage until you received huge tax cuts. Why aren’t you keeping your end of the bargain? Where are the jobs that you should be creating with the enormous profits you made? Your profits are at an all- time high...

     A few days ago Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas partially overturned Governor Scott Walker’s (R-WI) Act 10 – which destroyed collective bargaining rights for, public employees a year ago. However, the real story, in my judgment, begins with Judge Colas justification for doing so: The judge made it quite clear in his ruling that Act 10, which destroyed collective bargaining for some public employees while allowing other public employees to keep their collective bargaining intact, was a clear-cut violation of the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) – No state shall “ deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (words underlined for emphasis).      It is clear that Walker’s Act 10, protects those who were allowed to keep their collective bargaining powers, while failing to protect those whose collec...

          Everywhere we turn today, we hear discussions about the United States economy. Emotionally charged words, like unemployment, taxes, entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, national debt, deficit spending, welfare, unskilled workers . . . are used to scare, anger, and manipulate American citizens from paying attention to several very important negative facts about our economy.   These negative facts, which resulted from the Republican Party's economic policies for the past 31 years, will continue after Mitt Romney is elected The President of the United States. The negative facts are as follows: 1.       Despite the cries by American corporations that lower taxes is needed in order to reduce unemployment, the fact of the matter is corporates profits have steadily grown from 1981 to the present. Currently, corporate profits are the highest in history! Yet, unemployment remains high througho...

Fear and ignorance rules the airwaves. They are the central strategies of the Republican Party. “Obama care is bad for the country,” they tell us. “It is going to cost billions of dollars, which is going to drive up the national debt,” they argue. “In addition,” they continued, “Obama policies have made the unemployment situation worst than it was before. And moreover, he is moving the country in the wrong direction . . .”        These arguments are grossly wrong. Yet, unfortunately they have been very successful in convincing many of us that they are telling the truth. The reason they are able to do so is simply this: Most of us are socially and political uneducated; and we are doing very little to improve our understanding of the issues. Furthermore, when we hear these types of charges, like the ones leveled above about President Obama, very few of us take the time to conduct our own independent research to determine if the republicans are telling ...