Executives climbing the corporate ladder to the top seem to lose IQ the higher up they get.

That may explain why John Deere's top corporate bosses imposed a strikingly restrictive policy on America's farmers. For years, they have maintained that while a farmer "technically owns" a tractor or other John Deere product, the owner is barred from making repairs when the machinery breaks down or stalls. Instead, owners must call an authorized Deere dealer to do the work that many farmers could handle themselves.

The company refuses to make repair manuals available to customers or local repair shops, leaving owners with little choice when equipment fails.

In 2020, Walther Schweitzer joined other frustrated farmers and ranchers in pushing back. The Montana rancher's tractor broke down during hay baling season, but a Deere dealer told him that a technician was not available and that he could not access the diagnostic computer to repair it himself. He waited weeks before Deere finally got the tractor running again. The job was worth about $600, but Deere billed him nearly $4,000.

That is what Schweitzer called a "monopoly fix." But Deere had taken on the wrong farmer. Schweitzer, president of the Montana Farmers Union, mobilized grassroots pressure from five states, forcing federal officials to sue Deere. This month, Deere's executives settled the suit and agreed to let farm customers take charge of the equipment they own, a notable step in a broader fight over repair access that has also drawn attention in other industries.

Schweitzer said the victory is only one step toward a right-to-repair law for all products. To support that effort, go to repair.org.

IGNORANCE + ARROGANCE + POWER = LUNACY

Some presidents are known as uplifting orators; the current president is known for petulant putdowns.

Trump periodically latches onto a new insult that he thinks is clever and repeats it against his long list of enemies. His current favorite is "lunatic," which he has used against women reporters, most foreign leaders, Democrats, protesters, and others who offend him.

If he wants to single out actual lunatics, the article suggests he should look at the officials he has appointed to top government positions, including Brendan Carr, Trump's FCC attack dog, who continues to say he will abolish NPR.

After failing at that, Carr has moved from silly to ridiculous by advancing what the article calls a phantasmagoric scheme. It comes from Elon Musk proteges who apparently noticed that Earth gets dark when night falls and decided that the world needs to "light the night."

They say the idea would help illuminate city streets and rural roads and even make crops grow faster. Their proposed method is mirrors.

The plan calls for government support to deploy a global network of orbiting space mirrors that would reflect sunlight onto Earth's rotating dark areas. The schemers want to place 50,000 mirrors in the sky by 2030, with the largest ones reportedly shining as brightly as 100 full moons.

The article says Carr did not object. Instead, with no public input, he approved an initial launch of the "novel technology" and said that "harms are unlikely to occur."

To oppose the plan, the article directs readers to the American Astronomical Society: aas.org.