The highly stage-managed "guerilla transit theater" also known as the SMART Board of Directors meeting featured a devastating bombshell on Wednesday. It was the horrible news of impending insolvency, cutbacks, and eventual demise of the SMART service by 2024 if they can't get this new sales tax re-approval done in November.

The heavy-handed manipulation of the public via theatrical script-reading by the "consultant" to the "Board" was basically business as usual for the SMART, which has proven to be among the most skillful manipulator of the public imagination since Donald Trump rode down the golden elevator to the applause of the paid actors paid to applaud for his announcement of his presidential bid.

Commentators are debating whether the latest misdirection effort by SMART is meant to distract from the devastating and apparently permanent failure to provide commute service as promised or to obscure the failure to build to build to Cloverdale. Some see this as an effort to confuse the southern end of the line to prevent them from getting upset about a huge costly extension to the tiny burg of Cloverdale which has like 5000 people total but is going to receive a publicly-funded 19 mile extension from Healdsburg.

Others are saying that this is just a scare tactic to generate a sense of urgency and is only related to the funding issue. But sophisticated SMART observers scoff at this simplistic view. These cynical types say that SMART always puts the spotlight on one controversy in order to hide or avoid discussion of another one, much like Donald Trump does.

Either way, all agree that this is some messed up s#2t.

[www.marinij.com]