Would you know a way to fix the darn "break" issues?

When I add some page breaks:

<p>
<br>
or <p>&nbsp;</p>

Wordpress will, for some reason, delete the code so I don't have any line or paragraph breaks. It seems to be a bug in the release but there must be something other then turning off wysiwyg formating.

I have the latest WP version.
All udpates. And use Mac and it has the same issue with firefox, safari, and opera. There seems to be a lot of threads about this bug but no one has posted any work around other then turning off wysiwyg.