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Local Government, Politics

Stakeholder’s Just Another Word for Special Interest

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local In a small town like Whitewater, there’s much emphasis on finding and listening to stakeholders. In fact, local policymaking is mostly stakeholder policymaking.

As stakeholders aren’t merely and exclusively residents, but are more often influential residents and local special interests (business groups, business people, etc.) there’s a double-counting of connected residents, as though one gets a vote as a resident and again as a resident business person, for example. Stakeholders are mostly longstanding incumbents. A stakeholder politics is like nepotism, with longstanding, cozy connections instead of blood ties.

Officials in Whitewater will complain about a same-ten-people problem, but stakeholder politics rests on the same ten people, not as problem, but as a cardinal feature.

The benefit to officials is that the same ten people are well-known, and unlikely to present surprises. The disadvantage is that the same ten people exercise authority under conditions of dirigisme and so of stagnation. Familiarity brings a price tag of insularity, stagnation, and relative decline. See, along these lines, The People in the Room.

To get a sense of how addled stakeholder politics is, consider an account of a meeting two years ago to find a new chancellor for UW-Whitewater. (See, from a local newspaper, UW-Whitewater chancellor session held.)   The story – written not by a reporter but a ‘correspondent’ with university ties – describes a search consultant’s question to the assembled town notables:

[Search Consultant] Kozloff stated, “We really want to get a sense from all the various stakeholders of what you’re looking for in this new leader.”

“Many of you have known Dick Telfer for a number of years,” Bellman said. “We’re also interested in characteristics, attributes, strengths and skills that Dick has displayed over the years … things that you felt were particularly positive in integrating and understanding what is important in the community.”

….Much of the discussion focused on characteristics of Telfer that the group believes would be essential in a new chancellor, including high energy, being approachable and a good listener, understanding that the university is one of the major economic anchors in the community, and being a visible and active member of community life.

[Whitewater City Manager] Clapper said he hoped that the new chancellor would, like Telfer, “think about not just what’s going on in the office — not just what’s going on on campus — but how those those are going to impact the community that surrounds it.”

If one read only the story, and believed it as written, one wouldn’t guess that Telfer was passed over as chancellor more than once, pushed state capitalist schemes in opposition to any evident understanding of economics or entrepreneurship, presided over a campus with a large number of sexual assaults, two of which led to federal complaints against the university, and would later find himself a defendant in a federal lawsuit from a coach who would claim defamation and that the coach’s firing was the result of reporting a sexual assault to the police.  (I’ve a link to a long list of posts describing Telfer’s disappointing career.)

It’s wholly possible that every stakeholder in the room that day believed everything that he or she said. Meaning, of course, that it’s wholly possible that every stakeholder in the room that day lacked the discernment and judgment expected of an ordinary person.

The truth of stakeholder politics is special interest politics, and the result of special interest politics is weak judgment that produces inferior results. more >>

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.6.16

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Good morning.

Here in Whitewater, we’ll have a partly sunny Tuesday with a high of thirty-five.  Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset is 4:20 PM, for 9h 08m 42s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 40.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s city government will hold a public meeting on street reconstruction from 4:30 – 6 PM, and the city’s common council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1923, Pres. Coolidge delivers the first formal presidential address over the radio. On this day in 1821, Wisconsin’s first post office is established.

Worth reading in full —

Craig Whitlock and Bob Woodward report on how the Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste:

“The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post. Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results. The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.”

Patrick Marley writes that Wisconsin’s Republicans crank up highway dispute: “Madison– Wisconsin Republicans amped up the debate over road funding Monday, with one side releasing a video to highlight the poor condition of highways and the other warning that drivers could be hit with a big tax increase. Monday’s positioning underscored the deep divisions among Republicans who control Wisconsin’s government when it comes to spending on highways. The state faces a road funding gap of about $1 billion over the next two years. Gov. Scott Walker says he won’t raise gas taxes or vehicle fees unless an equivalent cut is made in other taxes. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) argues a tax or fee hike may be necessary.”

Alissa Rubin reports that A New Wave of Popular Fury Could Hit Europe in 2017: “PARIS — For Europe, 2016 has brought a series of political shocks: near-record numbers of immigrants arriving from the Middle East and Africa; a vote by Britain to leave the European Union and renewed threats by Russia to meddle on the continent. But 2017 could be even bumpier. There will be at least three elections in Europe next year: in Germany, France and the Netherlands for sure, and now perhaps in Italy, too. Just about everywhere, political establishments are being blamed for tepid growth, for too few jobs and for favoring global financial markets over the common citizen. The latest indicator of popular discontent was Italy’s referendum on Sunday, when voters rejected constitutional changes proposed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. That result was a stinging blow to Mr. Renzi, who said he would resign.”

Lawrence Freedman (@LawDavF), now emeritus professor of War Studies at King’s College London, finds himself (as do so many others) needing to defend the nature of historical fact (in response to the claim that “history is a matter of opinion and every player writes his own version):

One reads that “deep in the forest of Overland Park, Kan., little gnomes made a home. But how did they get there? This is the story of paying it forward, one little house at a time….”

The Gnomist: A Great Big Beautiful Act Of Kindness from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

 

Mendacity, Politics, Reasoning, Twitter

The Post-Truth Crowd

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Scottie Nell Hughes, a CNN political commentator and the political editor of Right Alerts, blithely declares that we’re in a post-truth era, where facts don’t exist apart from opinion:

“It is an idea of an opinion. On one hand I hear half the media saying that these are lies but on the other half there are many people who say, no, it’s true….

One thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts – they’re not really facts….

Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. There are no such things, unfortunately, as facts.

So Mr Trump’s tweets, amongst a certain crowd, a large part of the population, are truth.”

One encounters this on Twitter frequently.  Consider the following exchange I had there recently:

Adams: Inner monologue replaces epistemology: Claims, With No Evidence, That ‘Millions of People’ Voted Illegally http://nyti.ms/2gvxNOi

Chutzpah (Deplorable) [his handle, not my description]: Quoting NYT defeats your purpose and makes it fiction. Journalists should prove #trump wrong not just yell falsehoods.

One sees three things here: (1) Chutzpah (Deplorable) believes that although Trump can assert what he wants, it’s not Trump’s burden of proof to confirm Trump’s own statements, (2) nothing in the New York Times can be right, and (3) it’s supposedly clever to defend Trump (whose most rabid Twitter followers include a cadre of anti-Semites) while using a Yiddish term and describing oneself as deplorable.

The big issue is that ‘Chutzpah (Deplorable)’ and his ilk (Russian trolls, nativists, etc.) think that those who assert have no obligation to prove their own contentions – it’s others who have to disprove them.  This is convenient, because by that standard if they spew twenty baseless claims per hour, they’ll tie up the discourse with no greater effort than the time it takes to make up stories.

This is an attempt to overturn millennia of reasoning by shifting the philosophical burden of proof.

Likewise, although the frequency of baseless claims during the national campaign seems new (and cumulatively vast), it’s not new at the local level, where many communities have listened to glad-handing excuse-makers for years, even as conditions decline.  See Fake News Was a Local Problem Before It Was a National One.

Locally, it’s often a choice between whether one believes small-town officials & their sycophantic defenders or one’s own lying eyes.

A fact-free perspective is now a national problem, one that its defenders present as fact that there are no facts, the truth that there is no truth.

We’ll be years fighting this, but better to fight now for a few hard years, rather than many lost decades.

Liberty, Politics, Trump

Saletan’s Faint Hope of Manipulating an Autocrat

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Somewhere, there’s sure to be someone insisting that a hooligan who beat someone unconscious only did so from insecurity, envy, or bad toilet training.  That explanation should be of no comfort to a victim (should the victim even recover). The one thing of which one can be sure is that someone attacked another, causing severe injury.

In a similar way, William Saletan, writing at Slate, finds it reassuring to declare that Trump’s many whims and insecurities can be manipulated, in an essay entitled, Here’s how to manipulate Trump. On this reading, Trump’s a character defective man whose worst tendencies are manageable.

This is a false, silly reassurance: even if  Trump were easily manipulated, that task will only fall to a few schemers near him, not the tens of millions who will experience economic and personal loss as Trump tramples liberties and rejects sound policies.

Worse, of course, is the truth that an inner weakling who breaks another’s nose is still someone who broke another’s nose.  That he did these things from ignorance or disorder matters less than that one is covered in crimson.   The common person who suffers injury will not be able to manipulate anyone in power, shouldn’t have to do so, and would be a fool to think there’s consolation in the belief that he was injured only from another’s supposed emotional weakness.

Saletan can save his silly psychological analysis; the work of defending personal liberty will fall to those who resist transgressions without speculating about whether the transgressors are weak.

America, Liberty, Politics

Evan McMullin’s Ten Points for Principled Opposition to Authoritarianism

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On Twitter, conservative @Evan_McMullin lists ten principles for political opposition under a Trump Administration. Libertarians would do well to embrace, and live each day, all ten. McMullin’s ten tweets began on December 4th at 12:08 PM and concluded at 12:12 PM.

(Points Six and Seven are especially important: it’s a grand coalition that we’ll need, and so we should and must embrace people of all walks of life in our common political endeavor. Libertarians have much to contribute through our resolute defense of free markets, individual liberty, and peace; we will find that we have much to gain in alliances and with the support of others, ideologically different from us, who yet share a commitment to a free society.)

Listed below are all ten of McMullin’s points, useful for reviewing often to assure one stays on the right path.

1. Read and learn the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Know that our basic rights are inalienable.

2. Identify and follow many credible sources of news. Be very well informed and learn to discern truth from untruth.

3. Watch every word, decision and action of Trump and his administration extremely closely, like we have never done before in America.

4. Be very vocal in every forum available to us when we observe Trump’s violations of our rights and our democracy. Write, speak, act.

5. Support journalists, artists, academics, clergy and others who speak truth and who inform, inspire and unite us.

6. Build bridges with Americans from the other side of the traditional political spectrum and with members of diverse American communities.

7. Defend others who may be threatened by Trump even if they don’t look, think or believe like us. An attack on one is an attack on all.

8. Organize online and in person with other Americans who understand the danger Trump poses and who are also willing to speak up.

9. Hold members of Congress accountable for protecting our rights and democracy through elections and by making public demands of them now.

10. And finally, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, have “malice toward none, with charity for all” and never ever lose hope!

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.5.16

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s week begins with cloudy skies and a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 7:11 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 09m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 30.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1933, national Prohibition comes to an end when Utah becomes the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution. On this day in 1879, Wisconsin’s humane society is organized.

Worth reading in full —

Italy’s Premier, Matteo Renzi, Says He’ll Resign After Reform Is Rejected: “ROME — Italy plunged into political and economic uncertainty early Monday as Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign after voters decisively rejected constitutional changes, a step certain to reverberate across a European Union already buffeted by anti-establishment anger. “The ‘no’ won in an incredibly clear way,” Mr. Renzi said from the Chigi Palace. Holding back tears as he spoke in front of Italian and European Union flags, the usually brash and confident 41-year-old said, “I assume all the responsibility of the defeat,” adding that “my experience of government ends here.” He said he would go later on Monday to the country’s president, Sergio Mattarella, and “tender my resignation.”

Austria Rejects Far-Right Presidential Candidate Norbert Hofer: “VIENNA — In rejecting a far-right candidate for president on Sunday, voters in Austria showed the limitations of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s tailwinds on a continent where extremist politics have traditionally brought cataclysm. Call it the other Trump effect, one that may sow caution among some European voters suspicious of the advances of populist politicians. Populist forces have unsettled politics in Europe and the United States, frequently by using fake news and fanning fears of globalization and migration. The British vote to leave the European Union this year was complicated by such anxieties. The rejection of constitutional changes in Italy on Sunday hinged on a variety of issues. But the choice before Austrians was perhaps the starkest. The bitter yearlong campaign for the presidency pitted Norbert Hofer, a leader of the far-right Freedom Party, founded in the 1950s by former Nazis, against a mild-mannered 72-year-old former Green Party leader, Alexander Van der Bellen.”

Trump’s Taiwan phone call was long planned, say people who were involved: “Donald Trump’s protocol-breaking telephone call with Taiwan’s leader was an intentionally provocative move that establishes the incoming president as a break with the past, according to interviews with people involved in the planning. The historic communication — the first between leaders of the United States and Taiwan since 1979 — was the product of months of quiet preparations and deliberations among Trump’s advisers about a new strategy for engagement with Taiwan that began even before he became the Republican presidential nominee, according to people involved in or briefed on the talks. The call also reflects the views of hard-line advisers urging Trump to take a tough opening line with China, said others familiar with the months of discussion about Taiwan and China.”

You Heard It Here First: Trump May Not Propose A Budget Next Year: “The Trump administration is seriously thinking about not submitting a budget to Congress next year. Although the Congressional Budget Act requires the president to submit the fiscal 2018 budget to Congress between January 2 and February 6, Trump could easily say that it was the responsibility of the outgoing Obama administration to comply with the law before the new president was sworn in on January 20. But while the new president not sending a budget to Congress might not be illegal, it would clearly be unprecedented….So why might the Trump administration want to punt on this major opportunity by not submitting a budget? First, it would allow Trump to avoid the complaints that always come from those the budget proposals would harm by denying them a platform to criticize the White House. No proposals on paper would mean nothing to disparage.”

We should thank Carmela Vitale for her clever invention, the reason that pizzas come with that plastic table in the center:

Film

When Pro Surfers Learn to Farm

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What happens when a group of professional surfers get tired of the global surfing circuit? This charming short documentary tells the story of how three friends abandoned their sports careers for the whimsical calling of growing organic vegetables on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way. “Surfing’s quite similar to farming in the way that you can do what you can to have a productive crop, but sometimes nature has different ideas,” says Matt Smith, one of the founders of Moy Hill CSA Farm. This film comes to us from the world-traveling web series The Perennial Plate. To learn more about this series, visit its Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages.

Via The Atlantic.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.4.16

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Good morning.

We’ll have snow this Sunday in Whitewater, with a modest accumulation, and a daytime high of thirty-two. Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 10m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1783, at Fraunces Tavern, George Washington says farewell to his officers. On this day in 1945, on a vote of 65-7, the U.S. Senate approves participation in the United Nations.

Worth reading in full —

Steve Inskeep sees a difference between Donald Trump and the Legacy of Andrew Jackson: “For all the similarities, there’s a big difference between Jackson’s victory and Trump’s: Jackson’s greatest political achievement was the widening of democratic space. He brought new groups of voters into the political system. Expanding voting rights and a growing media perfectly coincided with his attention-grabbing campaigns, and the popular vote total tripled—tripled—between Jackson’s loss in 1824 and his victory in 1828. Trump, too, aspired to widen the electorate, but with less success. It’s true that he attracted some former Democrats, and received more votes than any Republican candidate in history, slightly more than George W. Bush in 2004. But in key states his party made it harder to vote. Among those who did participate, as of this writing, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 2.3 million. While the national popular vote has no legal significance, it matters politically, as Jackson grasped in the 1820’s. It matters enough to Trump that he volunteered a conspiracy theory to explain his failure to win it.”

Nathan Pilkington debunks Five myths about the decline and fall of Rome: “The rise of Donald Trump supposedly heralds the decline of the American idea, according to many of his critics, who’ve taken the opportunity to compare this moment to the fall of Rome’s republic in 31 B.C. or its empire in the 5th century A.D. Any historian is happy when their period of study comes into vogue, but these requiems leave a false impression of Roman antiquity and the causes of its greatest crises. MYTH NO. 1. America is going throughwhat republican Rome did….”

Gary D’Amato writes that in the Big Ten title game, UW’s collapse [was] swift, severe: “Indianapolis– In one half of uncharacteristically bad football Saturday, the Wisconsin Badgers went from sniffing the College Football Playoff to, well, OK, a great consolation prize in Pasadena to, ugh, a likely date with Western Michigan in the Cotton Bowl.”

Molly Beck writes that for the Lincoln Hills and Cooper Lake facilities, there’s No resolution to youth prison investigation one year after raid: “State officials and lawmakers say they haven’t been briefed on the timetable for the completion of the investigation, which has been headed by federal authorities for nearly a year. “I don’t know what they’re doing or what their schedule is,” said John Paquin, administrator for the state Department of Correction’s division of juvenile corrections. And a DOC spokesman said the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is handling a review of the allegations, hasn’t told department officials where the investigation stands. “They haven’t really shared much with us,” said DOC spokesman Tristan Cook. Wisconsin Department of Justice spokesman Johnny Koremenos also said state investigators haven’t been involved in the investigation since the FBI took over in February. The state had launched its own investigation in early 2015.”

So how would someone brew mead? Here’s how —

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.3.16

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 7:09 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 11m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1967, the  20th Century Limited makes its final run from New York to Chicago.  On this day in 1947, Wisconsin’s first television station, WTMJ-TV, is established.

Worth reading in full —

Bill Glauber writes that an Embattled Tomah VA dentist resigns: “Officials at the troubled Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center said Friday that the dentist responsible for possibly infecting nearly 600 veterans has resigned. The dentist has not been named. The announcement came after House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson expressed outrage that the dentist was still working at the facility. On Tuesday, Victoria Brahm, acting medical director at the center, announced that the VA was in the process of notifying 592 veterans treated by the dentist that they may be infected with hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or HIV because he did not follow proper sterilization procedures.”

Patrick Marley and Jason Stein report that a Federal judge denies quick halt to recount: “Madison — A federal judge Friday denied an emergency halt to the recount of the presidential vote in Wisconsin, allowing the process to continue until a Dec. 9 court hearing at least. There is no need to halt the recount just yet because it will not do any immediate harm to Republican President-elect Donald Trump or his supporters, U.S. District Judge James Peterson wrote in a three-page order that called for both sides in the case to lay out written arguments before he takes any action.”

Russ Choma exclaims Holy Conflict of Interest! The Firm Holding Much of Trump’s Debt May Be Up for Sale: “Coming to an auction block near you: Donald Trump’s $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower? As Mother Jones has detailed for months, Trump owes hundreds of millions of dollars to a variety of lenders, giving his bankers a huge amount of potential leverage over the man who will soon occupy the most powerful office in the world. Already there are concerns about Trump’s biggest lender, the troubled Deutsche Bank, which he owes at least $364 million. On Friday, Reuters reported that his second-biggest lender, a small Wall Street firm called Ladder Capital Strategies, may be putting itself up for sale to the highest bidder. Public records show Trump owes the firm at least $282 million, on four lines of credit. This means that other big money players—Wall Street firms, American banks, overseas banks, financial institutions partly owned by foreign governments—could move to buy up the debts of a US president and create a host of conflicts of interest.”

The Wisconsin State Journal reports that Donations top $87,700 for children’s Christmas toys: “Since 1918, the Empty Stocking Club has provided Christmas toys to needy children in the greater Madison area. You can help again this year. Send your gift online at emptystockingclub.com or mail it to: The Empty Stocking Club, Wisconsin State Journal, Box 8056 Madison, WI 53708″

A big holiday sometimes brings frustration as well as happiness. That was true in Maryland, after a beaver trashes dollar store after finding only artificial Christmas trees:  “A beaver in Maryland apparently tried to get into the Christmas spirit at a dollar store in Charlotte Hall. But after discovering the store only offered artificial trees, it made like a crazed Black Friday shopper and trashed the place….The St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office joked that the “suspect attempted to flee the area,” but it was safely rescued by animal control. The office tweeted that the beaver was released to wildlife rehabilitation, and it included an adorable GIF for proof.”


Federal Government, Foreign Affairs, Government Spending, Military

How Much, and What Kind, of Military Spending?

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Analysts from five Washington policy institutes[1] have published a joint report asking (1) what should American defense strategy be? (2) what capabilities, investments, and force structure might that strategy require? and (3) what would such a military cost?  (The five institutes are not of the same views, with the Cato Institute’s Benjamin H. Friedman notable for advocating fiscal and strategic restraint.)

Here’s the report:

[1] The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), The Cato Institute, The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Cats

Friday Catblogging: ‘Semi-Domesticated’

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 Unlike dogs, domestic cats exhibit traits expected of wild animals, raising a question about what their level of domestication:

Dog lovers will find it baffling that cats are the world’s most popular pet. After all, they’re passive-aggressive, emotionally unavailable, and known for their chilly independence—traits that at most qualify felines for the role of “man’s best frenemy.”

It turns out, though, there’s an evolutionary reason for this tense relationship. That is, cats are in many ways still wild.

“Cats, unlike dogs, are really only semi-domesticated,” says Wes Warren, professor of genetics Washington University and co-author of the first complete mapping (paywall) of the house cat genome—specifically, that of an Abyssinian named Cinnamon….

So why have kitties stayed wilder? The genome-mappers theorize it’s because house cat populations have continued to interbreed with wild cats. Also, humans’ “cat fancy”—meaning, our fanaticism about creating weird cat breeds—only began in the last 200 or so years.

Via Why You Shouldn’t Trust Your Cat @ The Atlantic.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.2.16

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Good  morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 13m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater will hold holiday events, including a parade, this evening in her downtown.  The events begin at 5 PM, and the parade at 6 PM.

On this day in 1942, at Chicago Pile-1, first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place under Enrico Fermi‘s supervision; Fermi described the reactor as “a crude pile of black bricks and wooden timbers”.  On December 2, 1804, Napoleon crowns himself emperor of France.

Worth reading in full — 

Milwaukee’s medical examiner contends that the county sheriff, David Clarke, threatened him in a tantrum: “Brian Peterson, Milwaukee County chief medical examiner, said Thursday that the sheriff called him on Oct. 28 and “verbally pummeled” and “threatened” him over information that Peterson’s office made public regarding the deaths of two inmates at the jail earlier this year. Peterson said his office followed appropriate protocol in the cases cited by the sheriff….Clarke, who is under consideration for a high-level post in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, declined to comment on his conversation with Peterson or to make available a copy of his recording of the conversation. “No, thanks,” Clarke said via email.”

Jason Horowitz writes that With Populist Anger Rising, Italy May Be Next Domino to Fall: “TURIN, Italy — Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, only 41, once seemed to have solved the riddle of how to survive Europe’s populist, anti-establishment tempest. But with a critical national referendum on Sunday, the populist wave is now threatening to crush him and plunge Italy into a political crisis when the European Union is already reeling.From Washington to Brussels to Berlin, fears are rising that Italy may be stumbling into its own “Brexit” moment. What should be an inward-looking referendum on whether to overhaul Italy’s ossified political and electoral system has taken on much broader import. Financial analysts warn of a potential banking crisis, and pro-Europe supporters fear that a “no” vote in the referendum could accelerate the populist movement across the European bloc.”

Matt Turner considers The state of the US consumer: “A large chunk of Americans report that their income falls below or barely covers their expenses. There has been a hollowing out of middle-skill jobs, which has disproportionately affected men lacking a four-year college degree. Those with only a high-school diploma or less are much more likely to say their financial position is deteriorating. Close to half (46%) of Americans would struggle to cover an unexpected $400 expense. Real wages are stagnating, especially for those who are 40 or over. Healthcare costs, which have been increasing, are a key concern for many Americans. One in five has had to go without a trip to the dentist, and one in nine a visit to the doctor.”

Karla Adam writes that overseas, Child sex abuse allegations widen against British soccer clubs: “LONDON — An investigation into claims of child sexual abuse involving British soccer clubs has grown to about 350 alleged cases, a police group said Thursday, as the sport’s overseer opened its own inquiry into possible coverups spanning decades. The widening investigations have rocked Britain’s most popular sport and its affiliated clubs, including systems of youth camps. Over the past two weeks, several former professional soccer players have come forward to recount harrowing tales of abuse that they said they suffered as children and had been kept secret for decades. The publicity brought a “significant number of calls” to authorities, “both reporting further allegations and offering information,” the organization said in a statement.”

Here’s a look at the new campus Apple’s building: