Undersheriff Dan Perea, who by law and custom should have been the natural interim leader, was dismissed from serious consideration

by Marvin Ramírez –

November 14, 2025 – San Mateo County has crossed a line it cannot uncross. With the appointment of Ken Binder as sheriff — installed through a process controlled entirely by the Board of Supervisors — the county has replaced the will of the voters with the will of five elected officials. The Board may call the process “transparent” and “participatory,” but no amount of community forums or multilingual outreach can erase the reality: the public was invited to speak, not to choose.

This appointment does more than fill a vacancy. It rewrites the meaning of the sheriff’s office itself. In California, the sheriff is intentionally not a political appointee. The office exists outside the control of boards and mayors so that no law-enforcement chief becomes an extension of political power. That safeguard has now been breached.

Binder — a seasoned law-enforcement leader from Santa Clara County — may very well bring order, but he arrives without the mandate that gives a sheriff legitimacy: the people’s vote. The Board’s decision ensures that the county will go nearly five years without a sheriff chosen by its own residents. That is not stability. It is disenfranchisement dressed up as reform.

Supervisors congratulated themselves as they appointed Binder. They spoke of “a new spring,” “a new beginning,” and “a moment of unity.” They applauded the public forums, the questions submitted, the meetings held in multiple languages. But one truth remains unspoken: the community was never given the power to decide.

Public comment is not democracy. A multilingual website is not democracy. A forum streamed on Zoom is not democracy.

Democracy is the ballot box — and the ballot box was bypassed.

The Board emphasizes that Binder’s qualifications justify their decision. But qualifications are not the issue. Legitimacy is. Even the most qualified sheriff must derive authority from the governed, not from political appointment.

Equally concerning is the unmistakable effort to wipe clean any continuity with the prior administration. Undersheriff Dan Perea, who by law and custom should have been the natural interim leader, was dismissed from serious consideration. Now, under Binder, his future is uncertain. That exclusion reveals something deeper: a deliberate clearing of the deck, a reshuffling of power, and a restoration of the same internal alliances that Sheriff Corpus once challenged.

Independence — the cornerstone of the sheriff’s office — has been replaced with dependency. Binder begins his term tied not to the electorate but to the Board that appointed him, the same Board he will one day be expected to scrutinize or resist when circumstances demand it. That structural tension is exactly what the Constitution sought to avoid. Now, it has been locked into place.

Supporters of the process insist that the public was engaged at every step: 7,600 website visits, hundreds of questions, dozens of speakers. Yet none of it was binding. None of it replaced the power of the vote. And none of it restores the principle the Board has now severed — that the sheriff belongs to the people, not to politicians.

San Mateo County now faces a sobering reality: the shield of constitutional independence around the sheriff’s office has been pierced. A precedent has been set that future boards may use whenever an elected sheriff becomes inconvenient or politically undesirable.

This editorial is not about Ken Binder the man. It is about the method that installed him. The county’s democratic order has been weakened, not strengthened, by a process that may have been open to the eye but closed to the will of the people.

And so we pose a question that every resident of San Mateo County must confront:
If the people cannot choose their own sheriff, what other offices will soon be declared too important, too urgent, or too “crisis-ridden” to trust to voters?

This is not the restoration of faith that the Board promises. It is the quiet erosion of electoral power — the beginning of a new political norm in which democratic inconvenience justifies democratic override.

Let us be clear: The sheriff is not an administrative hire. The sheriff is the people’s guardian of justice. And when the people are denied the right to choose that guardian, something far more important than a single office is lost.

What has been wounded is not simply a process.
What has been violated is not only a tradition.
What has been ignored is not merely a vote.

What has been broken is the very foundation of local democracy.

If San Mateo County is to repair that foundation, the path is unmistakable: return the sheriff’s office to the ballot and restore the people’s authority. Public comment cannot replace public consent. And no amount of applause in the Board chambers will drown out this truth:

Democracy begins with the voter — and it dies when the voter is replaced.

by Marvin Ramírez

The mass replacements have begun. Amazon recently announced it will eliminate 30,000 management jobs. UPS, according to The Wall Street Journal, is cutting 48,000 positions. Target, General Motors, and other corporate giants are following the same trend — replacing humans with artificial intelligence and automation at a pace few could have imagined just a few years ago.

The public has been told this is “progress,” the natural evolution of technology. But beneath that glossy promise lies a much darker truth — one that raises fundamental questions about the survival of human work, identity, and freedom. The age of AI is not simply a story of innovation; it is also a story of displacement, dependency, and the concentration of power in the hands of a small technocratic elite.

At first, artificial intelligence seemed like a tool to make life easier — digital assistants, chatbots, self-driving cars, and algorithms that could recommend what to watch or buy. But now it is something far more pervasive. Every job sector, from logistics to journalism, healthcare, and education, is being quietly restructured around machines that never sleep, never demand a raise, and never unionize.

In the name of “efficiency,” companies are dismantling entire layers of human management. AI systems now schedule workers, evaluate their performance, and even decide who gets fired. White-collar workers who once believed they were safe from automation are discovering that AI can do their jobs faster and cheaper.

Meanwhile, millions of people who lost their jobs during and after the pandemic are now talking to AI chatbots — like ChatGPT — not only for work support but for emotional comfort. They are seeking advice, consolation, and even friendship from algorithms that simulate empathy but have no soul. Psychologists are warning about what some are calling “AI psychosis,” a condition in which users become trapped in obsessive digital relationships with machines, losing their sense of reality and human connection.

We are entering a dangerous psychological and social experiment, one never approved by the public. The same corporations that are replacing human workers are also offering digital “companionship” to the unemployed and lonely — creating a feedback loop of dependence that benefits the very forces responsible for their suffering.

Bit by bit, we are being enclosed in a digital bubble. Many people, especially the younger generation, believe this is normal — that learning to coexist with AI is simply “the future.” But few understand the economic and political dimensions behind this transformation. The so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” promoted by institutions like the World Economic Forum, envisions a world where every human action is tracked, analyzed, and managed through digital systems — a form of technocratic governance that could erase the last remnants of personal freedom.

And it’s not just the office jobs that are disappearing. Automation is advancing rapidly in agriculture, transportation, and retail. Robots can already plant seeds, harvest crops, pack goods, and deliver them to your door. Self-driving taxis are being tested in major cities. In a few years, we may see planes flown almost entirely by AI. What happens then to the millions of drivers, pilots, cashiers, and factory workers whose livelihoods vanish overnight?

Some policymakers claim that “universal basic income” will solve the problem — that governments will simply pay citizens a small monthly stipend once the jobs are gone. But this idea, while seductive, carries its own risks. If your survival depends on a digital payment controlled by the state, your freedom to dissent evaporates. What happens if your political opinions, or even your social behavior, are deemed “inappropriate”? A digital system can cut off your access to money instantly.

The disappearance of physical cash, already being pushed in some countries, could mark the final stage of this transition. A cashless world means every transaction is traceable, every purchase monitored, every citizen categorized by algorithms. It would be the end of anonymity — and with it, the end of true liberty.

Behind all this technological upheaval, there is an uncomfortable question few dare to ask: Who benefits from replacing humanity with machines? The rhetoric of “innovation” hides an economic reality — automation increases profits for shareholders and consolidates control among global corporations while leaving millions of people disposable. Some thinkers warn that what is emerging is not a future of abundance but one of managed scarcity, where a small elite controls the means of production — and, by extension, the rest of society.

So, what can be done to save ourselves from this accelerating transformation?

First, we must resist blind acceptance of AI as inevitable. Technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. Governments must enforce laws that protect human labor, demand transparency from corporations using AI, and ensure that technology complements — rather than replaces — human intelligence.

Second, society must revive the value of human connection and creativity. Education should focus less on teaching people to adapt to machines and more on nurturing what machines can never replicate — empathy, ethics, and the imagination that drives real progress.

Finally, we need to reassert the principle of human sovereignty in the digital age. That means preserving physical money, protecting privacy, and ensuring that no government or corporation can control individuals through data or algorithms.

The dark side of AI is not only about job loss — it is about the redefinition of what it means to be human. The choice before us is stark: either we become passive spectators in a machine-run world, or we reclaim our right to shape the future on our own terms. The time to decide is now, before the last human switch is turned off.