Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 3/18/2025

Cymbidium | Mostly Sunny | Two Deaths | Trefil Investigation | Slave Ship | County Notes | Low Rainbow | Blacksmith Bill | Gut, Wind & Wire | Store Display | Ed Notes | Jack Marks | Earth Day | Pinot Festival | Yesterday's Catch | Cats Trapped | FAFO Land | Mr. Natcherl | Weissmann Questioned | Old Witch | Not Complicated | Lead Stories | Do Something | Song About | Staying Silent | Team Genocide | Land Reform | Growing Taller | Ulva Revival | Wynken, Blynken & Nod

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FROST ADVISORY remains in effect until 9am this morning…Drier weather today except for light rain showers and sprinkles for the North Coast. Frontal system to bring strong gusty south winds, rain and high mountain snow on Wednesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A fresh .50" today brings my March rainfall total to 4.32" & my YTD to 43.99". A cold 37F under clear skies this Tuesday morning on the coast. Dry skies until about noon tomorrow then a shot a rain comes thru ending by Thursday morning, ish. A slight chance of rain Friday then a mix of conditions for the weekend.

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GEORGE GAINES, former owner of the Highland Ranch resort (sold to the controversial Blackbird Ranch people a few years ago) outside Philo has died at the age of 95. We not have any particulars. We have not heard if there are plans for an obituary, but we would welcome one.

SILVANO QUEZADA, age 70, of Philo, has also died. Again we have no particulars and await an obituary if one is produced or available.

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GALINA TREFIL COMFORTS HER FATHER, WHO SHE SAYS IS A SERIAL KILLER (from Galina Trefil’s faeebook post about her father)

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NO EVIDENCE THAT DR. JON TREFIL WAS A SERIAL KILLER

On Friday, March 14, 2025, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office learned about social media posts where the subject alleged her father is a serial killer. The social media posts state the alleged serial killer is Jon Charles Trefil.

This situation was reported to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office in January of 2023 after Trefil’s daughter reported to other local and regional law enforcement of her suspicions that her father is a serial killer.

Based on the referrals from other law enforcement agencies, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Detectives spoke with an advocate of Trefil’s daughter, who also assisted in interviewing Jon Trefil about his alleged crimes. Recordings, scanned journals, and other investigative materials were shared with the Sheriff’s Office who conducted investigations into the claims. Investigators met with Trefil’s daughter in February of 2023, who said her father spoke about murdering several people from the 1970s trough the 1990s. Trefil’s daughter also provided a lengthy written statement to Detectives, which was retained as evidence.

As Trefil, his daughter, and the advocate spent time together, Trefil’s daughter said her father spoke about these killings and the daughter began researching unsolved murders in Mendocino County. Trefil’s daughter suspected her father was responsible for a murder in the 1970s in Mendocino County, which she specifically questioned her father about. Per Trefil’s daughter, Jon Trefil ultimately admitted to the unsolved murder in Mendocino County in the 1970s. Detectives also obtained pictures, copies of journal entries, and recordings from the meetings between Trefil, his daughter, and the advocate.

To further investigate the unsolved murder from the 1970s in Mendocino County, Detectives researched that case and compared the information provided by Trefil’s daughter to the facts of the case. Detectives learned there were numerous evidentiary items that were submitted for DNA analysis in 2006 to the Department of Justice, which resulted in an unknown male DNA source from the analyzed evidence. Detectives determined there were some consistencies in the information provided by Trefil’s daughter and the unsolved homicide case from the 1970s so they sought a warrant to obtain Trefil’s DNA for comparison to the evidentiary items sent for testing.

In May of 2023, the search warrant was authorized by a Judge in Mendocino County to obtain a DNA sample from Trefil for comparison to the DNA profile from the evidence items in the unsolved homicide from the 1970s. The DNA sample from Trefil was submitted to the California Department of Justice Bureau of Forensic Services and ultimately uploaded to the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).

In 2023, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office received reports from the California Department of Justice regarding the comparison of Trefil’s DNA profile to the evidence in the unsolved murder case from the 1970s. Trefil’s DNA did not match the unknown male contributor DNA profile from the unsolved 1970s murder investigation. The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office was also informed by DOJ that Trefil’s DNA profile was uploaded into CODIS for routine and regular comparisons to DNA profiles uploaded from unsolved cases. As of the publication of this press release, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office has never been informed of Trefil’s DNA profile being a match or potential match to any evidentiary items submitted to CODIS.

Information from Trefil’s daughter also alleged her father buried numerous people he murdered at a cabin in Comptche. The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office searched the property and cabin and were unable to locate any evidence to substantiate these claims or of possible human remains or burial sites on the property in Comptche.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office is aware that Trefil’s daughter referenced other serial killers identified by her father, but these inferences were not substantiated by Detectives. The Sheriff’s Office has been unable to substantiate the claims of the other individuals alleged to be serial killers or their involvement with homicides in Mendocino County.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office has examined the scanned copies of Trefil’s diaries and journals, but did not locate any expressed confessions to any murders.

Trefil’s daughter informed the Sheriff’s Office she submitted her DNA and Trefil’s DNA to genealogical/ancestry sites, but the Sheriff’s Office has never been informed of any investigative leads from these efforts or from other agencies investigating these claims.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office has and will continue to investigate crimes associated with Trefil or allegations that he was a serial killer in Mendocino County. The Sheriff’s Office has not interviewed Trefil directly regarding these allegations due to his fragile medical state and information provided by his family that he will not cooperate with law enforcement. When legally justified and supported by probable cause, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office will continue to investigate this matter.

Anyone with information regarding this investigation is requested to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office at 707-463-4086 (option 1). Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the non-emergency tip line at 707-234-2100.

(Sheriff’s Office Press Release)

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MENDOCINO COUNTY WOMAN’S VIRAL CLAIM THAT HER FATHER IS A SERIAL KILLER DISPUTED BY AUTHORITIES

by Colin Atagi

A Mendocino County woman took to Facebook with explosive claims that her elderly father is a prolific serial killer responsible for murders worldwide since the 1950s.

But after more than a year of investigation, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said Monday it found no evidence linking him to any homicides.

“We’re spending a lot of time trying to keep up with this social media post,” Sheriff Matthew Kendall told The Press Democrat.

Viral allegations

The woman, who identified herself as Maria “Galina” Trefil, shared multiple posts beginning with: “I am Galina. I’m the daughter of a serial killer and need your help.”

She said she lived with her father on an 18.5-acre property in Albion in the late 1980s and began uncovering details about the alleged killings in 2012.

In a Facebook post from Thursday that was shared more than 13,000 times, she alleged that her father, now 86, admitted to killing at least one person per month from 1965 to 1999, spanning California, Idaho, Illinois, Oregon and Virginia, as well as Canada, France, the Netherlands and the Mexican border.

She also wrote that her father was willing to cooperate with law enforcement and lead them to burial sites — a claim the Sheriff’s Office disputed.

“The Sheriff’s Office has not interviewed (the father) directly regarding these allegations due to his fragile medical state and information provided by his family that he will not cooperate with law enforcement,” officials said in a statement.

Trefil did not return requests for comment from The Press Democrat.

Investigation yields no evidence

Sheriff’s officials said their investigation began in January 2023, focusing in part on a Mendocino County homicide from the 1970s after Trefil told investigators her father had confessed. She provided photos, journal entries and recordings, but detectives could not substantiate her claims.

Investigators obtained a DNA sample from her father in May 2023, but it did not match evidence from the crime scene. They also searched a remote cabin in Comptche, where she alleged victims were buried, but found no evidence.

Authorities said they also could not verify her claims about other serial killers she said her father identified, nor did they find confessions in the journals she provided.

Sheriff’s Capt. Quincy Cromer said detectives reviewed recordings she submitted, but her father’s voice was inaudible.

“It was very clear that leading questions were provided to him and then when he would make a sounds, she would say, ‘Oh, he confesses to this,’” Kendall said. “But my detectives could not hear him say yes, no or anything else. A lot of it was just strange moans.”

Officials: No credible leads so far

The Sheriff’s Office said it would continue investigating any potential links between the man and unsolved cases but maintained that no evidence had been found to support the allegations.

“When everything that is brought before us, we run it to the ground and it doesn’t turn out to be as reported, eventually we are going to get to the point where we are kind of stomping on some civil rights here, as well,” Kendall said.

(pressdemocrat.com)

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STEVE DERWINSKI send along this photo of a local poster and asks: “WTF?”

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COUNTY NOTES: IGNORING THE VOTERS. AGAIN.

by Mark Scaramella

At last Tuesday’s Supervisors meeting in Ukiah. Third District Supervisor John Haschak made a couple of noteworthy but easily overlooked remarks in his “Supervisors Report.”

First, Haschak said, “At the last Measure B Committee meeting we talked about updating the RFP for substance misuse and treatment and so I look forward to using Measure B funds in those realms of… Because that was part of the initial goals of Measure B was to deal with substance abuse, misuse.”

It was not a “goal,” it was a requirement of the voter-approved measure that at least 25% of the revenues (now well over $51 million since it was passed in 2017).

The language of the voter-approved measure said:

“Section 5.180.040. Specific Purpose. … D. For a period of five (5) years a maximum of 75% of the revenue deposited into the Mental Health Treatment Fund may be used for facilities, with not less than 25% dedicated to services and treatment; thereafter 100% of all revenue deposited into the Mental Health Treatment Fund shall be used for ongoing operations, services and [substance abuse] treatment.”

In over eight years, not one nickel has been spent on “dealing with substance abuse, misuse,” unless you count the few hundred thou spent on the crisis van (which we do not).

Our last analysis of Measure B spending was last December: https://theava.com/archives/257367

Yet, here’s Haschak, whimsically acknowledging that substance abuse/misuse treatment “was part of the initial goals” and he’s “looking forward” to using Measure B funds “in those realms,” after having “talked about” updating an RFP that has been talked about for several years now to no effect. As was obvious at the last Measure B Committee on February 26, it’s been eight years and nobody involved, including Mendo’s PhD Mental Health Director, seems to have the slightest idea what “substance misuse” treatment is. The “talk” about the RFP wasn’t about the RFP, but about who should be on an ad hoc committee to talk about the RFP and bring back some ideas, someday. Nobody in the room had any ideas other than “filling gaps.” Nobody had any idea what those “gaps” were either.

Referring to mental health treatment for the non-insured and substance abuse treatment, Behavioral Health Director Dr. Jenine Miller even admitted at that last Measure B meeting that “We’ve made promises over and over and we have not done that.”

None of Haschak’s colleagues commented on his remarks on Tuesday or mentioned the specific requirement of the voter-approved measure.

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Haschak also casually mentioned that “When we met [State] Senator McGuire [date unspecified, but recently], he was talking about $14 billion in Medicaid cuts through the state which would certainly impact the County and $6 to $7 billion in education cuts. I know that he was talking about in Mississippi like 55% of the people are Medic-Aid eligible and those cuts would certainly hurt places like that. But here in Mendocino County with 47% [on some kind of aid], we’re up there too. Those cuts will be very hard for residents in Mendocino County.”

Again, despite the cuts being “very hard for residents of Mendocino County,” nobody else in the room commented on this or asked for more particulars, like how much the cuts would be, when they’d occur, who’d be most affected, what might be done if the cuts occurred, or what was being done to resist them. Like his fellow Democrats, the depth of their fatalistic off-handedness is startling.

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LEW CHICHESTER (Covelo)

Very sweet tribute to the late Bill Heil in yesterday’s announcements. And he was a very sweet guy, smart, talented, dedicated, consistent and an unassuming role model. We knew Bill from a connection with the Whale School. We had a little hippie kid school out in Round Valley all through the late 70s through most of the 80s. At least one time Bill came over from Albion with his portable forge and some various pieces of scrap steel and a sack of coal and with the complete fascination, attention and participation of the ten and twelve year old kids they fashioned all kinds of age appropriate items of metal. Like swords, and spears, and fire place pokers of twisted and ornamental metal work. We still find once in awhile one of these items, almost like its some form of cultural artifact, which perhaps it actually is.

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MINDY!

Mindy Rosenfeld Performs in Mendocino

Opus Chamber Music Concerts is proud to present Wood, Wind and Wire this Sunday at 3 PM, Preston Hall, Mendocino.

An instrumental trio formed by founding members of the Baltimore Consort, features Ronn McFarlane on lute (Gut), Mindy Rosenfeld on wooden flutes, fifes, and pipes (Wind), and Mark Cudek on cittern (Wire), bass viol, and percussion. Gut, Wind, and Wire performs popular music of the Renaissance from England, Scotland, Italy, and France, as well as traditional Celtic music and Grammy-nominated original music by Ronn McFarlane.

Full program and tickets online at symphonyoftheredwoods.org and in person at Out of this World in Mendocino.

Doors open at 2:30 PM.

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ED NOTES

THE CUBBISON AFFAIR, besides providing lots of big pay days for lawyers, should teach the supervisors that it’s better to hire a CEO from outside the Mendo viper’s nest. The famously ill-tempered CEO Angelo is an ongoing disaster. She put all this turmoil in motion by going along with the Eyster scheme to combine the Auditor's and the Tax Collector's two separate functions and then being allowed to name her own CEO successor. Subpoena CEO Darcie Antle's phone records and I'll bet you'll find a regular hotline between Antle and Angelo’s lush retirement lair in San Diego. There are still endlessly-pending illegal firing cases launched by Angelo's arbitrary dismissals. All of this could have been avoided by a competent board of supervisors who, at a minimum, understood their responsibilities.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS:

Some background:

Carmel Angelo retired after about 15 years as Mendocino County CEO in March of 2022. (She was head of the mis-consolidated Health & Human Services department before that, since un-consolidated as unworkable.) She was promoted to CEO with the express task of major budget cuts across the board to balance the County’s tight budget in the wake of the Great Recession. Angelo even imposed significant cuts on the Sheriff’s office and got the Board to approve and pay $28k for an “efficiency audit” of the Sheriff’s office in 2011.)

“The Efficiency Audit That Wasn’t.”

Eyster went public with his complaints about Cubbison’s appointment and her questioning of the Broiler reimbursement requests (et al) in August of 2021 — before Angelo retired. Eyster said at that time that the CEO had already approved of his spending. Eyster said he had a special “exemption” from CEO Angelo.

From Eyster's complaint about Cubbison to the Board in late August of 2021:

”The CEO's office, since 2008, has had an exemption on those because they understand the documentation we [the District Attorney] provide is always legitimate, good, and it covers the IRS responsibilities. …”

And here was Cubbison questioning his expenditures? The gall! After Angelo had given Eyster an “exemption”? How dare she?! If Cubbison had not been an independently elected official, Angelo would have fired her long ago.

I suspect that Eyster's plot to get the Supes to get rid of Cubbison, or anyone else who didn't abide by his “exemption,” by eliminating an independent office with an elected official began when Cubbison first started asking questions, asking for back-up, not rubber-stamping them as the CEO arrangement with Eyster had called for.

In addition, we were once informed that Eyster and Angelo used to enjoy after-hours wine drinking at Darcie Antle's wine bar “Enoteca,” in Ukiah before Angelo hired Antle as her “deputy CEO/budget officer.” (“Enoteca” — from the Greek for wine closet — closed last year. But for years it provided wine and food for downtown Ukiah and the courthouse, just over a block from the DA’s office). However, within days after we posted that report, DA Eyster immediately and emphatically denied it, saying “I have NEVER scheduled a meeting or had an adult beverage with Ms. Antle at the Church Street wine bar (or anywhere else for that matter). I think the last time I was at Enoteca was in 2012 or 2013 with former Assistant DA Paul Sequeira. Likewise, any meeting I have had with CEO Angelo has always been held either at her office at the County Admin Center or at my office in the courthouse sans adult beverages, the latter location being the same place where I have had meetings (again sans adult beverages) with the AVA Editor.”

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STATEMENT of the obvious, but I truly don't get television ads that aren't funny the first time and painfully unfunny from then on. I'm sure they offend millions, so if you're using unamusing visuals to sell stuff, isn't it self-defeating to repeatedly annoy would-be customers? Or am I being naive, missing the point if the point is to imprint the product on one's mind?

THE CROOKEDEST TV ADS these days, predictably, are the work of lawyers, my fave being the one where a couple, presumably lawyers, introduce themselves by their first names — the woman adding that the male is “a television personality,” against a background shot of about fifty alleged attorneys busily answering telephones from a non-existent legion of wounded citizens phoning in to see what their beef might be worth.

TRUMP is forever claiming he's in mortal combat against “radical left lunatics.” He often amends the meaningless boogeyman term to “radical Marxist lunatics,” a redundant and self-canceling phrase but essential to the orange lunatic's campaign to conflate liberals and the non-existent American left. And at the mo, Trump has the lunatics pretty much confined to his side.

BUT TRUMP'S RAMPAGE may revive the left as an organized opposition, and he's already, in two short months, managed to alienate whole sectors of our previously slumbering population, now denouncing him, and massing for a Spring Offensive. How incompetent does an aspirational fascist like Trump have to be to estrange veterans? He's done it. (Schicklgruber, a veteran himself, depended on vets as his base supporters.)

FROM AN OCTOBER 1886 edition of the Mendocino Beacon: “…We are informed that a fine large lobster was caught in the bay at Noyo last week. A large number of Maine lobsters were planted in San Francisco Bay some years ago and this one is probably an offspring from them. We believe this is the first Maine lobster caught on the coast." And the last?

ALSO FROM AN ANCIENT Beacon of October 1911: “Dwight Kent, the expert mill fisherman, succeeded in landing a large salmon near the mill one day last week. In cleaning the fish Mr. Kent found about four pounds of junk composed of bolts, set screws, etc. He says he thinks the fish must have been hanging around an Oregon foundry, or possibly the Union Iron Works in San Francisco. However, others who claim to know, say this was one of the salmon trained as carriers from the blacksmith shop at the mill who can make emergency trips up-river to the Boom whenever mechanical apparatus is needed up there in a hurry. The hardware is on exhibit at the Beacon office.”

IN ENGLAND you can go to jail for wasting police time, and judging from the Sheriff's press release on the Trefil case, Dr. Trefil's malicious daughter, Galina Trefil, has wasted many hours of police time. It's all reminiscent of the Recovered Memory phenomenon when neurotic young women all over the country suddenly remembered that Dad was a major pervert. As in the present case, there were thousands of sympathetic women who said that even if their fathers weren't pedos they believed the patriarchy was capable of anything!

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RANDY ROBBINS WRITES:

Digitizing old negatives of my grandma's (she was a newspaper photographer in Fort Bragg in the 50's and 60's), I gravitated to this photo because I think it's just a fantastic portrait.

I was curious about who it might be (there are a bunch like this… probably a shot of someone for a write-up in the paper). The only clue was the name noted on the sleeve that the negative was in: "Jack Marks." I went on a little internet quest and found only one Jack Marks that had any ties to Fort Bragg, and who's dates lined up with someone who would be about this age in the late 50's. Turns out he had quite a story. The third photo here is a screenshot of an obituary for Jack Marks.

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EARTH DAY FESTIVAL IS COMING SATURDAY, APRIL 19!

Noyo Food Forest’s 16th Annual Earth Day Festival.

Saturday, April 19 from 12-5pm

Fort Bragg High School, 300 Dana Street

This is a free, fun family event.

This year’s Earth Day Festival festival features:

• Live Music with headliners The Runabout and Bella Rayne, plus 2nd Hand Grass with Gene Parsons
• Performances by Circus Mecca
• Thriving Ecosystems- a panel moderated by Cornelia Reynolds
• Local Vendors & Artisans selling earth-friendly goods
• Giant Plant Sale
• Hands-On Environmental Activities for all ages
• Delicious Food & Bicycle-Powered Smoothies
• Local Nonprofit Booths showcasing their powerful work
• Upcycled T-Shirt Press, bring a shirt for a fresh design!
• Natural Dying Egg Station, bring your own hard boiled eggs!
• Bike Rack Station, ride and park your bike safely with Mendocino Coast Cyclists.

This free event is open to all (adult donations encouraged).

Please observe school campus rules: no dogs, alcohol, drugs, or smoking.

More information: NoyoFoodForest.org

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, March 17, 2025

WARREN BECK II, 39, Ukiah. Burglary, vandalism, petty theft with priors, concealed dirk-dagger, probation revocation.

NICHOLAS BJORKLUND, 30, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%, concealed firearm in vehicle with prior, loaded firearm in public.

MARIA CARLOS, 38, Ukiah. Suspended license for DUI.

RYAN CRANFORD, 38, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

RANDY GIBNEY, 55, Fort Bragg. Corporal injury to spouse-battery with prior, domestic violence court order violation.

RICHARD HODGE JR., 27, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation, resisting.

ALEJANDRO JACOME, 21, Covelo. Failure to appear.

ABEL LANDA-CASTANEDA, 38, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DEBORAH LAWRENCE, 58, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-under influence.

LUIS LIMA, 27, Ukiah. Domestic battery, domestic violence court order violation.

CYNTHIA MENDIETA, 49, Ukiah. Domestic abuse, battery, burglary, grand theft, damaging communications device, vandalism, witness intimidation.

SAMUEL NAVARRO, 34, Windsor/Ukiah. DUI.

COLE PARKIN, 35, Ukiah. County parole violation.

STEVEN RICH SR., 37, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation.

MEGAN ROBERTS, 29, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

RYAN ROYDOWNEY, 35, Covelo. Vehicle theft, probation revocation.

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WELCOME TO FAFO-LAND

by James Kunstler

"Well, now the other shoe drops" — Auron MacIntyre

It’s as simple as this: the orgy of judicial lawfare put on by blob-adjacent Democratic Party seditionists trying to make the USA ungovernable is looking to get swatted. Hubris is a harsh mistress, but Nemesis is more like the gods’ re-po man, and he comes to the door with attitude, meaning bidness. Blob judges will get flushed out of their humid conclaves naked and find themselves, astoundingly, in the FO zone of FAFO-land.

Do you think AG Bondi is playing tiddlywinks in Main Justice or that Kash Patel is just sitting there buffing his nails over at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW? Where did we get the idea that federal judges can just act with impunity, jerking around the public interest like some show-off with a yoyo?

Case in point: Judge James Boasberg, head honcho of the DC federal district court stepped into the FAFO waiting room over the weekend when he ordered two planeloads of deported toxic human trash known as Tren de Aragua, bound for jail in El Salvador, to return to the USA. Mr. Trump’s White House refused, saying the planes were already over international waters, outside the judge’s jurisdiction. Dem-blob lawyer Mark Zaid made the predictable next move, claiming that the matter will be grounds for Impeachment No. 3 against Mr. Trump post the 2026 midterm election. But, of course: strategery!

The general purpose in this latest phase of lawfare is to choke the federal courts with so many restraining orders and injunctions that the White House lawyers find themselves locked into an endless Chinese fire drill of counter-filings, motions, writs, and appearances. It’s all that the so-called “resistance” has left, what with DOGE breaking up the racketeering operation that has funded the Dem’s defense of the blob for a decade. By which I mean the government funding of non-governmental orgs (ha!) to distribute payola to Dem foot-soldiers who do all the dirty work of protecting the rogue bureaucracy in a circle-jerk of power and payoffs. This includes the dirty work of Dem-blob lawyers such as Marl Zaid, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Marc Elias, Barbara McQuade, Joanna Lydgate et al.

The history of Judge Boasberg in particular presents a disturbing picture of a tool covering-up every act of the shadowy blob’s war against American citizens. Boasberg presided in the FISA court that fraudulently enabled the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane operation to attempt ousting newly-elected Donald Trump in 2017, and the many RussiaGate pranks that followed. As chief judge of the DC District, he oversaw the Jack Smith Special Counsel op and all the cases associated with it, including the Mar-a-Lago raid and the J-6 case in Tanya Chutkan’s crooked court. Boasberg allowed the prosecution of J-6ers under the unlawful use of the corporate fraud obstruction statute, 18USC§1512c2, a.k.a. the Enron law. He presided over the trial of Ray Epps, the shady character recorded on video repeatedly urging J-6 protestors to “go into the Capitol.” Boasberg gave Epps a suspended sentence while grandmothers who merely “paraded” through the rotunda between velvet ropes that day got sent to jail.

What can be done about judges like Boasberg? The prevailing view is: not much. I’m not so sure that’s true. While Rep. Brandon Gill (D-TX) announced last week that he will file articles of impeachment against Boasberg, a two-thirds majority would be required to convict him in any eventual Senate trial, so fuggeddabowdit. But federal judges are not immune from criminal investigation and prosecution, which is where AG Bondi and FBI Director Patel ought to come in. What’s probably standing in plain sight is a RICO conspiracy involving the aforesaid lawfare artists — Norm Eisen & Co — and the federal judiciary to deliberately bury the executive branch under burdensome fraudulent process, impede the executive branch’s ability to carry out its constitutional duties, and to obstruct justice.

Would you like to know if correspondence exists between these parties? Mr. Patel can ask them to produce it, and if they fail to, there’s a strong possibility that DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard can root it out of the NSA’s server farm. Depositions can be demanded. The lawfare lawyers will have to hire lawyers — just as all the targets of “Joe Biden” and Merrick Garland were obliged to lawyer-up when they were systematically persecuted from January, 2021 to January, 2025. The meters will run, ka-ching, ka-ching. It will be interesting to see who is footing the bill for that. You can be sure that it will be found out. Reid Hoffman? George and Alex Soros? Note: Dan Bongino was sword in as Deputy Director of the FBIat 8:00 o’clock this morning. Nemesis is open for bidness.

The lawfare gang would love all of this to ramp into a king-hell constitutional crisis. Could happen. Let them try. They don’t hold any of the levers of power the way they used to. A lot could go wrong for them. Welcome to FAFO-land.

(kunstler.com)

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ANDREW WEISSMANN IN CROSSHAIRS AS WAR ON BIG LAW CONTINUES

Longtime deputy to Robert Mueller and key Trump-Russia investigator Andrew Weissmann is in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors

by Matt Taibbi

For years, Andrew Weissmann was one of the most visible and vociferous critics of Donald Trump, as a former deputy to Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and MSNBC legal analyst who wrote a book wondering if the president “paid bribes to foreign officials,” or had “Russian business deals in the works” when he ran for president.

Now Weissmann is facing hard questions of his own, about eerily similar themes.

In a pair of letters obtained by Racket, District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Ed Martin demanded to know why Weissmann ignored an alleged “conflict of interest” in signing off on a $4.5 billion settlement involving the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht in 2016, the largest such case in history. Weissmann had been (and is now) a partner at Jenner & Block, which represented a reputed key player in the story, a Canadian private equity firm called Brookfield Asset Management that until January was chaired by that country’s new Prime Minister, Mark Carney.

From Martin’s letter to Weissmann:

“Under your leadership, the Fraud Section participated in investigations concerning Brookfield — your office called one case, the federal investigation of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, “the largest bribery case in history.” Somehow, Brookfield and its proven corrupt subsidiary, Rutas de Lima, were excluded from sanctions. After you ordered investigations into Brookfield closed, you then returned to Jenner & Block in 2020 as co-chairman of its investigations, compliance, and defense practice.”

Neither Weissmann nor Bhabha has responded to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Brookfield said the firm hadn’t heard of the letter, and asked for more information. We’ll update when any of these parties comment. Weissmann, it should be noted, over the years frequwently implied Trump was a coward for failing to sit for interviews under oath or “even for an interview.”

The country’s biggest law firms, the politically active and highly compensated defenders of banks and takeover artists and weapons makers, look like the Trump administration’s next PR meal. Last Friday, Trump gave a speech at the Justice Department before Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI head Kash Patel announcing a sweeping campaign against various “wrongs and abuses.” When he brought up lawyers and law firms, Weissmann’s was the first name he mentioned.

“The same scum you have been dealing with for years. Guys like Andrew Weissmann,” he said. “Deranged Jack Smith. There’s a guy named Norm Eisen, I don’t even know what he looks like. His name is Norm Eisen of CREW; he’s been after me for nine years… These are bad people.”

Trump’s personal feelings toward the lawyers who gamed the Steele letter or tried to jail him on various theories notwithstanding, the new letters should be understood as part of a broader Trump campaign to investigate the legal sector, which is suddenly under heavy fire. A March 6th Executive Order targeting the Clinton-aligned firm Perkins Coie for its role in promulgating the Steele Dossier raised eyebrows, and was criticized by theNational Review for moving too far in the direction of mere “payback.”

Still, despite Weissmann’s status as a ferocious Trump critic and symbol of Russiagate, the Jenner & Block letters hint at wider institutional issues. “The problem is, all of Washington does this,” says an administration spokesperson. “The revolving door has turned into something completely corrupt, and that the weaponization of government is often coordinated from K Street. The administration wants it stopped.” Odebrecht is a giant construction conglomerate, a Brazilian analog to the Dick Cheney-connected KBR/Halliburton, ironically also implicated in a global bribery scheme. The Odeberecht case was exponentially bigger, involving at least $788 million in illegal payments to officials all over the world, as a means of rigging bids and securing contracts.

Weissmann’s firm Jenner & Block has long represented Brookfield, which jumped into a Peru deal at an odd time. Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht was arrested in 2015, sentenced in March, 2016 in Brazil on bribery, money laundering, and organized crime charges, and rolled up in history’s biggest-ever bribery settlement in December, 2016, in a deal signed by Weissmann. In between, Brookfield in June 2016 bought from Odebrecht a 57% stake in Rutas de Lima, a Peruvian toll road authority. The settlement bearing Weissmann’s name did not mention Brookfield or Rutas de Lima.

With Odebrecht’s legal troubles it was able to buy a controlling stake in Rutas de Lima for an advantageous price $430 million, a seemingly risky gamble given that the U.S. could have named Odebrecht’s Lima project in its settlement. Instead the settlement offered little detail about the specific contracts at issue, which one lawyer connected to the case believes offered “unusual” protection to Brookfield’s investment. “When a plea agreement fails to specify which projects were tainted by bribes, it creates massive obstacles for victims like the City of Lima,” says Martin De Luca, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York who now represents the City of Lima in its dispute with Brookfield. “The vague and incomplete terms of the Odebrecht plea deal have not only hindered Lima’s ability to seek restitution but have also allowed Brookfield to exploit the ambiguity—profiting from a toxic asset acquired for pennies on the dollar.”

It’s important to note that the U.S. District Court in DC just last year denied an application by the municipality of Lima to void the Rutas deal on corruption grounds, given that it would be “difficult… putting it mildly” to prove misconduct given the failure of prior inquiries like the American investigation to point a finger at the group.

However, public records inside and outside the U.S. are full of allegations tying Rutas or Brookfield to Odebrech’s practices, making it difficult for any lawyer to claim there could be no perception of a conflict. Odebrecht won the Lima toll road contract in 2012 in a process that supposedly included “steps to attract bidders,” but was awarded without competition. The deal was one of many elements that spurred a recall vote against Villarán in 2013, which she survived. She would later be indicted for allegedly taking money from Odebrecht to help her win that recall vote.

In 2017, shortly after the American Justice Department finished its Odebrecht settlement, Rutas/Brookfield announced a rate hike for the privatized road, moving the price to 10 soles, about $3 a day roundtrip, or about two and a half times the hourly minimum wage at the time. The deal, in which private equity conquistadors pull two-and-twenty fees from investors chasing Peruvian workers for overpriced tolls, appears a textbook case of privatized exploitation from afar. It’s a strange endeavor for ostensible progressives like Carney or Weissmann to be involved with, and exactly the sort of thing American progressives howled about when the Abu Dhabi investment authority bought 75 years of Chicago parking meter revenue and not only raised prices, but canceled free parking on Lincoln’s birthday.

The price hikes, in addition to alleged efforts to block alternative methods of entry to the city, spurred violent street protests: “This case underscores how opaque plea agreements can shield financial beneficiaries of corruption while leaving actual victims to fend for themselves,” says De Luca.

The broader issue has to do with the enormous volume of settlements and cases that run through the American justice system, often managed by titantic defense firms that almost by design have deep ties to the world’s largest corporate clients. The revolving door phenomenon, in which lawyers from hotshot defense firms take brief sojourns in the public sector before returning to their same spots as corporate defenders — think Eric Holder, whose firm Covington & Burling literally kept his office for him while he served as Obama’s Attorney General. Covington, along with the fellow white shoe big-timers at Paul, Weiss, are now facing scrutiny because of Covington vet Jack Smith’s prosecutions and a J6 case, respectively.

The Trump administration’s moves against Covington & Burling, Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie, and now Jenner & Block will all likely be criticized as overreaches that threaten “the ability of private citizens to obtain lawyers,” as the New York Times put it. “Trump’s retribution is that he won the presidency,” added the National Review. “It is not turning the presidency into lawfare on steroids.”

Whatever one thinks of these criticisms, most of them leave out the context that broad-scale attacks on law firms and lawyers who represented Trump began under the previous administration, notably through efforts like the 65 Project, which sought to punish lawyers and firms who represented Trump.

It may be extreme to indict a whole firm based on the behavior of a few lawyers, but Sixth Amendment disrespect cuts both ways.

Still, what if the accusations are right? What if financial conflicts are built into every level of the system, in the same way abuses appear to have been built into federal contracting? Either way, the era of self-congratulatory cultural portraits for Big Law along the lines of The Good Wife or The Good Fight appears over, as the trend of previously unimaginable glimpses into the underbelly of institutional America continues. Is it ugly, personal, and maybe also true?

(racket.news)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

It’s not complicated: Everywhere, but particularly in the United States, wealth translates to political power and control over the public discourse. Billionaires don’t care about you and me; they care about accumulating more money and more power. Obviously they’ll do whatever it takes to accumulate more of both, unless or until mechanisms are enforced that give some degree of countervailing power, and a meaningful voice, to regular people — those who are not billionaires, or multimillionaires, or close friends of the 0.1% U.S. wealth has continued to concentrate into the hands of the 0.1% for as long as I can remember. It’s not complicated. The billionaires have been winning, and yet we keep handing them more power over our elections, our tax structures, our news media, and our national priorities. Most of this is in happening broad daylight, not in some mysterious secret backroom club.

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LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT

Drones Will Do Some Schlepping for Sherpas on Mount Everest

Israel Carries Out Deadly Strikes in Gaza and Warns of More Attacks

Justice Department Stonewalls Federal Judge Over Deportation Flights

Trump and Putin to Hold Call About Ukraine: What to Know

Trump Pulls Secret Service Protection From Hunter and Ashley Biden

Trump Promises, Again, to Release ‘All’ Kennedy Assassination Files

Texas Arrests Midwife and Associate on Charges of Providing Abortions

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BRUCE MCEWEN:

Field Marshall Beckett rallies the troops:

Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come —

— Samuel Beckett, ‘Waiting For Godot’

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STAY SILENT & POWERLESS AGAINST TRUMP’S TYRANNY?

by Ralph Nader

There are reasons why influential or knowledgeable Americans are staying silent as the worsening fascist dictatorship of the Trumpsters and Musketeers gets more entrenched by the day. Most of these reasons are simple cover for cowardice.

Start with the once-powerful Bush family dynasty. They despise Trump as he does them. Rich and comfortable George W. Bush is very proud of his Administration’s funding of AIDS medicines saving lives in Africa and elsewhere. Trump, driven by vengeance and megalomania, moved immediately to dismantle this program. Immediate harm commenced to millions of victims in Africa and elsewhere who are reliant on this U.S. assistance (including programs to lessen the health toll on people afflicted by tuberculosis and malaria).

Not a peep from George W. Bush, preoccupied with his landscape painting and perhaps occasional pangs of guilt from his butchery in Iraq. His signal program is going down in flames and he keeps his mouth shut, as he has largely done since the upstart loudmouth Trump ended the Bush family’s power over the Republican Party.

Then there are the Clintons and Obama. They are very rich, and have no political aspirations. Yet, though horrified by what they see Trump doing to the government and its domestic social safety net services they once ruled, mum’s the word.

What are these politicians afraid of as they watch the overthrow of our government and the oncoming police state? Trump, after all, was not elected to become a dictator—declaring war on the American people with his firings and smashing of critical “people’s programs” that benefit liberals and conservatives, red state and blue state residents alike.

Do they fear being discomforted by Trump/Musk unleashing hate and threats against them, and getting tarred by Trump’s tirades and violent incitations? No excuses. Regard for our country must take precedence to help galvanize their own constituencies to resist tyranny and fight for Democracy.

What about Kamala Harris — the hapless loser to Trump in November’s presidential election? She must think she has something to say on behalf of the 75 million people who voted for her or against Trump. Silence! She is perfect bait for Trump’s intimidation tactics. She is afraid to tangle with Trump despite his declining polls, rising inflation, the falling stock market and anti-people budget slashing which is harming her supporters and Trump voters’ economic wellbeing, health and safety.

This phenomenon of going dark is widespread. Regulators and prosecutors who were either fired or quit in advance have not risen to defend their own agencies and departments, if only to elevate the morale of those civil servants remaining behind and under siege.

Why aren’t we hearing from Gary Gensler, former head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), now being dismantled, especially since the SEC is dropping his cases against alleged cryptocurrency crooks?

Why aren’t we hearing much more (she wrote one op-ed) from Samantha Power, the former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under Biden, whose life-saving agency is literally being illegally closed down, but for pending court challenges?

Why aren’t we hearing from Michael Regan, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under Biden about saboteur Lee Zeldin, Trump’s head of EPA, who is now giving green lights to lethal polluters and other environmental destructions?

These and many other former government officials all have their own circles – in some cases, millions of people – who need to hear from them.

They can take some courage of the seven former I.R.S. Commissioners — from Republican and Democratic Administrations — who condemned slicing the I.R.S staff in half and aiding and abetting big time tax evasion by the undertaxed super-rich and giant corporations. I am told that they would be eager to testify, should the Democrats in Congress have the energy to hold unofficial hearings as ranking members of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees.

Banding together is one way of reducing the fear factor. After Trump purged the career military at the Pentagon to put his own “yes men” at the top, five former Secretaries of Defense, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, sent a letter to Congress denouncing Trump’s firing of senior military officers and requesting “immediate” House and Senate hearings to “assess the national security implications of Mr. Trump’s dismissals.” Not a chance by the GOP majority there. But they could ask the Democrats to hold UNOFFICIAL HEARINGS as ranking members of the Armed Services Committees!

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker can be one of the prime witnesses at these hearings – he has no fear of speaking his mind against the Trumpsters.

On March 6, 2025, the Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller, put her rare byline on an urgent report titled, “‘People Are Going Silent’: Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves.”

She writes: “The silence grows louder every day. Fired federal workers who are worried about losing their homes ask not to be quoted by name. University presidents [one exception is Wesleyan University President Michael Roth] fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute.”

To be sure, government employees and other unions are speaking out and suing in federal court. So are national citizen groups like Public Citizen and the Center for Constitutional Rights, though hampered in alerting large audiences by newspapers like the Times rarely reporting their initiatives.

Yes, Ms. Bumiller, pay attention to that aspect of your responsibility. Moreover, the Times’ editorial page (op-ed and editorials) are not adequately reflecting the urgency of her reporting. Nor are her reporters covering the informed outspokenness and actions of civic organizations.

Don’t self-censoring people know that they are helping the Trumpian dread, threat and fear machine get worse? Study Germany and Italy in the nineteen thirties.

The Trump/Musk lawless, cruel, arrogant, dictatorial regime is in our White House. Their police state infrastructure is in place. Silence is complicity!

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WHY IS THE WORLD BANK ATTACKING LAND REFORM IN THE PHILIPPINES?

by David Bacon

When the Peoples' Power movement brought down Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, land reform was one of its most important demands. But even after Corazon Aquino had been elected President in the midst of great hopes for change, land reform was still only won at the cost of bloody struggle. Frustrated at waiting for Aquino to act, ten thousand farmers marched on the Malacañang Palace, and twelve were shot down on the Mendiola Bridge.

In the tense months that followed, a new constitution was adopted. Article 13 stated that the purpose of land reform was the "just distribution" of agricultural lands "founded on the right of farmers and regular farmworkers, who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till…" Aquino proclaimed Executive Order 229, a first step,, and Congress then passed the Republic Act No. 6657, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

In the years that followed, workers on the big plantations of bananas, pineapples, oil palms, sugar cane and rubber trees sought to become owners of the land where they'd been wage workers. They transformed into cooperatives the militant unions they'd organized to wrest a decent living from foreign corporations or wealthy landowning families. Workers were transformed into collective farmers on the plantations where they'd labored for generations.

Today, however, land reform is in danger, from a proposal called SPLIT - Support to Parcelization of Land for Individual Titling. Parcelization means that commonly-held and collectively farmed lands are divided into individual tiny plots, which can then be sold. It would make the operation of a large farm impossible. "Selling of parcelized agrarian lands has been overtly or covertly taking place in many plantations," reports Koronado Apuzen, who helped organize banana coops in Mindanao in the early 1990s, and then established the Foundation for Agrarian Reform Cooperatives in Mindanao (FARMCOOP). "Agrarian lands have been become the commodity of the realty market."

Support for SPLIT comes from the World Bank, which finances it. Its proposed budget is $473 million, 78% of which comes from the Bank and 22% from the Philippine government. The World Bank portion, $370 million, is a loan payable in 29-39.5 years. This adds to the country's foreign debt of $139.64 billion. The Philippines is the fifth largest borrower from the Bank, and in 2023 owed it $2.33 billion.

Given that SPLIT represents a relatively small portion of the money lent by the Bank to the Philippines, its motivation seems more ideological than financial. The Bank has a long history of pushing market-based proposals for land ownership and development. Its statement on land policy says "Making land rights transferable allows the landless to access land through sales and rental markets or through public transfers, and further increases investment incentives." It has provided financing, training and technical help to this end since the late 1960s. Requests to the Bank for comment and interviews for this article were not answered.

The Philippine government seems equally committed to this market orientation. "The President wants it done immediately," according to a recent press statement. Current president Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, son of overthrown dictator Ferdinand Marcos, attended SPLIT land privatization ceremonies in four provinces, and according to DAR Undersecretary and SPLIT Project Implementation Officer Jesry T. Palmares, "he wants to feel and know that the agrarian reform that his father started succeed and be in place." Last May the World Bank extended the implementation period to 2027.…

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2025/03/why-is-world-bank-attacking-land-reform.html

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WHAT A SMALL ISLAND OFF THE COAST OF SCOTLAND COULD TEACH AMERICA

by Ken Ilgunnas

The remains of stone houses were slowly crumbling into a rocky beach. Where there had once been thatched roofs, peat fires and people speaking Gaelic, there were now only ferns bobbing in the wind.

I was walking along stone walls, looking for signs of recent habitation. Finding none, I hopped down and marched across the moor. Four startled herons beat their wings. The animals, empty hills and crumbling stone houses all felt postapocalyptic, as if the countryside were being reclaimed by nature. And yet on Ulva, a small island off the coast of Scotland, it’s the people who are doing the reclaiming.

In 2025, the idea of settling anyplace other than Mars might seem anachronistic, but the people on Ulva are pioneers of a different kind. They are giving new life to places left behind by the industrial and agricultural revolutions, imagining a 21st-century settlement built not on extraction but on connection — to nature, vegetable gardens, art, community and a life away from screens.

I came to Ulva wondering if, by establishing something new by resurrecting something old — small, self-governing communities — we might find an antidote to the atomization, disempowerment and environmental degradation of modern life. What I found was messy, incomplete and inspiring. If places like Ulva succeed, they could offer a model for reversing rural flight, re-establishing local democracy and revitalizing local economies not just in Scotland but anywhere.

In 2017, Jamie Howard, whose family had owned the island for several generations, put all roughly 4,500 acres of Ulva up for sale. With the help of land reform laws and Scottish government funds, a community group from the neighboring Isle of Mull (population: less than 3,000) bought the island for around £4.5 million, or about $6 million. The goal was ambitious: to repopulate Ulva and rebuild its economy.

On the 200-yard ferry voyage from Mull this summer, I told the ferryman Rhuri Munro that I had first visited Ulva in 2018, right after the purchase. “Things are a wee bit better,” he replied.

In a little over six years, the islanders’ homes have been renovated with double-glazed windows and heat pumps. The pier has been upgraded, the old hunting lodge transformed into a busy hostel, and the population has more than tripled, rising from five to 16 — still tiny, but a significant move in the right direction in a place where the trend is usually one toward loss.

Ulva, like much of the Scottish Hebrides, has been inhabited for millenniums. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of human life that dates back to the Mesolithic period, and the population peaked in the early 1800s, when there was huge demand for kelp, which was used in the manufacture of soap and glass.

Francis William Clark, a lawyer from Stirling, bought Ulva in the 1830s, but his timing was not propitious. The kelp industry was collapsing and Mr. Clark, like many Scottish lairds, or landowners, demonstrated ruthless indifference toward the islanders, displacing many of them in favor of more profitable tenants: sheep. By the time of his death, the human population of the island was around 50, with many of the remaining elderly islanders apparently confined to Starvation Terrace, the crumbling homes that now house only fern fronds and blackberry vines.

Today, Scotland’s legacy of wealthy lairds persists in one of the most unequal patterns of land ownership in the Western world. In 2019, a report from the Scottish Land Commission stated that about 400 landowners control nearly half of rural Scotland. (In America, the 100 biggest landowners own about 42 million acres, twice the size of Scotland and close to 2 percent of the United States’ landmass.)

In 2003, the Scottish government, in an attempt to address this imbalance, passed land reform laws that gave rural communities the right to register an interest in buying land and the right of first refusal should the land come up for sale. Subsequent laws created the Scottish Land Fund to help communities buy land, extended the right of purchase to urban communities and, quite radically, gave communities the power to force a sale under special circumstances.

Today around 500 communities own over 500,000 acres of Scottish land. Some of them — the Isle of Eigg off the west coast in particular — have become a model of what’s possible. Under community ownership, the islanders of Eigg built a renewable energy system that now powers the island 24/7, with about 90 percent of the energy coming from renewable sources. They rent out affordable community housing and almost doubled the population, from 65 to 115.

“Community purchases unleash creativity,” Ian Cooke, the former director of Development Trusts Association Scotland, told me. “For the last 60 to 70 years, you’ve had top-down regeneration, invariably in the poorest communities,” Mr. Cooke said. These same communities “are still the poorest communities despite all the top-down intervention,” he said. “Community needs to be at the center of this, not agencies or local authorities or governments.”

Ulva has not avoided growing pains. The North West Mull Community Woodland Company, a charity, was largely responsible for the purchase. At the time, there was just a handful of people living on Ulva, one of whom was Barry George, a retired laborer who said he’d moved there 28 years ago to work at a nearby fish farm.

I took a roundabout route from the hostel to Mr. George’s house, around the Beinn Chreagach mountain, past a Neolithic standing stone and through a broad-leaved forest of rowan and hazel, which sat next to columnar basalt cliffs that descended into a frothy sea. Arriving at a pebble dash cottage, I felt like I’d traveled through an entire continent’s worth of landforms in about 20 minutes.

Mr. George relishes Ulva’s solitude and its history. His cottage walls were lined with rows of history books. “There’s a lot of weird on this island,” he said. “Not modern-day weird, but Norse weird.” Ulva means “wolf” in Norse, and Ulva, like many islands in the Inner Hebrides, may have been raided and settled by Vikings. Mr. George, who said he had Nordic heritage, feels a mystic connection to the land. He told me of finding bipedal hoof prints in his garden, and of feeling a ghostly hand pressing between his shoulder blades as a warning to leave a meadow.

Mr. George has had his struggles with the community trust board that governs Ulva. He remembered the last laird’s family fondly, and told me that Mr. Howard’s mother, known as Lady Howard, would often come to his door during the winter to check if he had enough firewood.

Although Mr. George used stronger language than other islanders, some expressed frustrations. People on other community-purchased sites often remark on how governance is slow, decisions are mired in bureaucracy and, as is often the case in small communities, local politics can be pretty fractious. But, as Anne Cleave, a 77-year-old volunteer who serves as chair of the North West Mull Community Woodland Company, said, “You would not be a member of this board if you did not want everything to succeed.”

And life for all the islanders can be tough: the ferry commutes, the slow deliveries, the difficulty of getting to the mainland, the lack of a local dentist and the weather — parts of the west highlands of Scotland get around 200 inches of rain annually. Andy Primrose, who lives on the nearby island of Gometra and, with his wife, Yvette, has renovated a hunting lodge on Ulva into a hostel, put it this way: “We do it because it’s hard.”

As an American who lived for years in North Carolina, I saw firsthand the decline of rural communities. The boarded-up shops, political disengagement and “No Trespassing” signs of rural America may be less picturesque, but in important ways they’re not so different from the stone ruins and abandoned fields of Scotland’s Highlands and islands. Could community ownership let people reclaim control over their land and their futures in rural America?

Some think it might. In the United States, federal and state governments can claim land using eminent domain, but we rarely see communities take control to provide affordable housing, let alone empower local residents to make it happen themselves. “It is impressive,” said John Lovett, a law professor at Louisiana State University, who studies Scotland’s land reform laws. Scotland is “trying to achieve something that we just don’t even think about in the U.S. It’s creating a way for the government to enable or facilitate the disassembly or the decentralization of landownership. We’ve never tried that in the U.S.”

If funds were provided to communities to make purchases, as they are in Scotland, perhaps small American communities could develop affordable housing or communally run stores. Urban communities could buy abandoned or derelict property and repurpose it, preventing speculators from sitting on it waiting for values to rise.

Critics might argue that experiments such as Ulva’s are too small and too remote to be replicated in the United States. But in an age where we’ve grown used to tackling issues with sweeping infrastructure bills and large-scale projects, there’s something refreshing — and also quintessentially American — about small-scale, community-led development.

These tiny Scottish democracies are not so different from the self-governing communities established by the people who created the blueprint for much of American settlement, blending private property with communal spaces like schools, libraries, churches and parks. Recreating these experiments in the United States could give something back to Americans that we’ve lost. They might help us reimagine growth: how to build slowly, grow sustainably, reestablish local democracy and deepen our relationship with the land. And in our atomized, secularized and screen-addled age, they could help address our modern-day yearnings for connectivity, spirituality and nature.

I couldn’t find any memorials for the villagers who were once forced off Ulva, but there is one for William Francis Clark — a marble gravestone on a hilltop. When I climbed that hill in 2018, I looked over the island and saw nothing but remnants of a vanished civilization. But on this visit I could see Highland cattle grazing and cozy-looking homes. I heard a farmer’s A.T.V. rumbling across the land to help a tenant with her water problem.

A “wee bit better,” indeed. There is hope in small but meaningful improvements — not just for Ulva, but for communities everywhere.

(Ken Ilgunas is the author of “Walden on Wheels” and “Trespassing Across America.” He lives in Scotland.)

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