We’ve long been skeptical of the overblown and self-interested claims by tech titans and their political allies that this dot-com boom changes everything and that it could never go bust, like last time. Read more »

Mayor Ed Lee today released his proposed 2013-15 city budget in the Board of Supervisors Chambers at City Hall, a $7.9 billion spending plan that he said reflects the “San Francisco values of fiscal responsibility, social responsibility, and investment in our city’s future.”Read more »

UPDATED Today I got banned from posting on Facebook and I don’t know why, but it has left me feeling very unsettled about this brave new world we find ourselves in, one where a few large technology corporations have ever more power over our lives and liberties.Read more »

When Mercury Insurance last year failed in its second attempt to fool voters into allowing the industry to raise rates on drivers that don’t maintain continuous car insurance coverage, resulting in the failure of Prop. 33, it enlisted the unlikely support of the Greenlining Institute, the Berkeley-based social and environmental justice nonprofit that had opposed Mercury’s similar effort two years earlier.Read more »

Now that a judge in New York has ruled that Airbnb is illegal there, a model that violates city tenant laws and state law, that should put pressure on the San Francisco-based company to finally stop snubbing cities and find a way to exist within local regulatory frameworks and finally start paying its taxes.   Read more »

The San Francisco Entertainment Commission last night voted to restrict the hours, sound limits, and other operating conditions for Brick & Mortar Music Hall -- the Mission Street live music venue that has received a series of noise complaints from its neighbors on Woodward Street -- until it completes soundproofing work to deal with the problem.Read more »

Are BART passengers in San Francisco being subsidized by Muni riders and by BART customers from the suburbs? Or is it the other way around? And does it really matter, or should we just be thankful that people are choosing BART over clogging the roadways in this transit-first city?Read more »

Locally focused journalism in San Francisco took another big hit today with the announcement that The Bay Citizen — which was founded by the late Warren Hellman in 2009 specifically to augment declining reporting on San Francisco and the Bay Area — is being folded into Center for Investigative Reporting [Updated below].Read more »

The unemployment rate continues to drop in San Francisco and all over California, according to new numbers released today by the California Employment Development Department, which were trumpeted by Mayor Ed Lee as vindication for his economic development policies.Read more »