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Bay Area Transit (BART) a San Francisco institution is at risk of big cuts in service closing 15 stations, closing at 9 pm,  as work from home pandemic period changes cut ridership from 389000 in Jan 2020 to 170000 in Jan 2024. It now has a $400 million structural deficit. BART management proposes a half percentage point additional sales tax on counties in the San Francisco area- Alameda, Contra Costa, Mateo, Santa Clara, 1 percentage point addition in San Francisco. This may not address the problem fully as the ridership is declining not only because of the keyboard post pandemic economy, the fact that downtown San Francisco has a 30% vacancy rate in buildings and the lifestyles have changed from before, but also because it is less safe, reported use of crack, and a less clean friendly ride on BART. This shows how life in the San Francisco area has changed decades after Silicon Valley took over the city, and how the state of California has changed. Silicon Valley and Wall Street though it had changed America and the World when right in its own backyard institutions such as BART are falling apart, and downtowns are less safe. New York City home of Wall Street has a subway system also in bad shape, and infrastructure badly in need of repair right in the backyard of Wall Street, decades behind in quality of experience from anything found in China or Japan- and now even India. ...

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In the flight from San Francisco this lawyer couple in the Bay Area moves to Sonoma working with telecommute several days a week. Exchanging 900 square feet for 1800 square feet and with life in a small town in the middle of nature.

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Missing 8th grade algebra in San Francisco school curriculum is the subject of this editorial in the WSJ. The Department of Education calls algebra a gatekeeper course to future success. Taking Algebra 1 before high school can set students up for a foundation of STEM education and open the door for various career options. Yet San Francisco dropped 8th grade Algebra in the name of reducing inequities in 2014, says WSJ.

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Democrats continue to believe they lost in 2024 because they did not attack DJT enough. This fails to cite issues such as cost of living- surge in the third year of the Biden administration with 20% increase in prices and Biden failing to take notice and address this quickly. A wave of illegal immigration- the failure of Mayorkas, himself a Cuban immigrant in 1960, put in charge of Homeland Security and ICE, and Harris who was an attorney helping indigents in inner city San Francisco, to grasp the fears of border states and southern states. The failure to understand that the border was open and inviting waves of illegal immigrants, some with questionable backgrounds. This issue created a sense of unease in the fabric of society and American people. Other issues simply showed how Harris could not relate to the conservative people and average people in the country in the cultural aspect such as transgender, rural America. Biden pulling out suddenly, loss of rural vote- failure of Democrats since Obama to pay attention to rural voters, Harris not appealing to the white male vote in the US, are other factors that hurt Democrats. DJT gained with the shooting incident in Pennsylvania in which he survived, and the perception raised during a garbage truck and DJT photo that the Democrats derided, seen by the public as looking down on working class people. Democrats never really grasped how the political system had gone in reverse- the Republicans had put cultural aspect first and conservative now meant working class voters and white voters in rural areas/small towns, big cities, ( the Archie Bunker type of an earlier era who was now a Democrat, not the college educated and Ivy league Harvard type that had taken over the Democratic party). This continues to this day with some paradox as the business class and the billionaire class sit alongside the working class person in the Republican party DJT created. DJT did this in 2016 by pulling together workers hurt by Bush and Obama's policies favoring the educated classes and affluent, ignoring rural areas and farmers, and committing US to wars in the Middle East that squandered the Nations' resources and human lives. This was aggravated in the Biden/Harris/Mayorkas years by letting in migrants across the border by the millions that created a great deal of unease in the working classes. In this way labor unions or their rank and file left the Democratic party- a problem that plagues Democrats to this day, that Biden tried but failed to fix. The border issues had become complex by the latter part of the Biden administration because of the complete collapse of Venezuelan economy and the drug cartels in Mexico smuggling people and drugs across the border, for which the Biden administration or Harris had no answer.  It was the failure of administrations to continue the Monroe Doctrine in the form given by FDR as "Good Neigbor Policy," and JFK as the Alliance for Progress, allowing drug cartels and foreign European powers to intervene in the western hemisphere, desorying good governance in Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and other nations in Latin America. By the second year of the DJT administration Venezuela, and the border were brought under control, and the situation in Mexico put in a new direction. ...

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The San Francisco Bay Area region is blanketed by smoke so thick that it is dark at noon on September 9, 2020. The haze was so bad drivers had to keep headlights on. Fires fueled by strong winds are a huge problem. Smoke from the fires is blocking out the sun.

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The same trends hollowing out San Francisco downtown are hurting the hotel business in San Francisco says this report in WSJ. The lodging business is hurt by crime and quality of life issues even as New York and Los Angeles hotels recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

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David Talbot in this NYT guest essay looks at Dianne Feinstein as the mayor of San Francisco, which he calls a tough city to run and the mayor resolute.

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With occupancy declining to below 76% on many of the downtown San Francisco buildings the value of this is decliining fast. The Embarcadero Center that once defined the downtown area is now on sale for $90 million, according to the WSJ report, down from $245 million that was paid for it in 2018. Owners of these office buildings in San Francisco are liable for payments on $12 billion in bonds, according to S&P Global. Half of the stores in the Union shopping district have closed and Amtrak ridership is down 61% over 2019.

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Activity in downtown San Francisco remains at about a third of prepandemic levels, with remote work having caught on for tech companies during the pandemic employees are there for only half of the week. Office vacancy rates are 28% for downtown. In a strange twist Silicon Valley that led the shift of manufacturing to China and ignored that this led to loss of tax revenues for the towns across America, and decline of these towns that lost factories, is now facing the same situation in its own backyard. Office based industry provides three quarters of San Francisco tax revenue, and faces a $780 million deficit for the next 2 years. Mentally ill on streets near a Whole Foods, and dealers in Fentanyl, homelessness, lead to closing of a Whole Foods store in downtown San Francisco. Thomas Fuller and Sharon LaFraniere provide this report in WSJ of the situation in downtown San Francisco in 2023. Reports from California show the failure to build enough housing during the tech boom for the average American, and apartments for homeless costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and years behind schedule. The mayor is looking for tougher laws to put mentally ill off the streets. There is no consensus on action. Tech investors people hope for another Tech boom to tackle the situation, yet tech companies are retrenching and face government scrutiny even breakup. Even a speeded up effort to add 20% of the housing stock of the city of San Francisco by adding 83,000 apartments from Mayor Ms. Breed would take 8 years.  ...

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Remote work and fewer people commuting to work is leading to large vacant office space in American cities. In San Francisco about 30% of office space is vacant. One building in the financial district 350 California Street is selling for 20% of its pre-pandemic price.

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The revival of the Mid-Market part of the downtown area in San Francisco after Twitter sets up headquarters here in April 2011. Twitter signed a lease till 2021 with Shorenstein Properties for a 11 story building built in 1937, for 295,000 square feet. Other developers are moving into San Francisco. Tishman Speyer is constructing two office buildings in the area called South of Market in San Francisco. Rents are now at $53.84 per square foot in San Francisco in the fourth quarter 2013 compared to $46.12 in the third quarter, according to C.B.R.E. Vacancy levels have dropped from 9.7% in 2012 to 8.2% in October 2013, and down from 15% in 2010.

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San Francisco's newly elected Mayor Daniel Lurie says of the drug paraphernalia distribution, and the proliferation of use of fentanyl and drugs in San Francisco-

“We’ve lost our way. We are no longer going to sit by and allow people to kill themselves on the streets.”

Daniel Lurie defeated London Breed for Mayor of San Francisco on a platform of cutting the use of fentanyl and drugs in the city, with the support of the business community.

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Mission Local depends on reader donations. This and other small news operations are giving a boost to local news coverage in the Bay Area region of northern California. San Francisco chronicle has increased circulation to 150,000 as the San Francisco Examiner has declined. A more educated audience in the area conscious about climate and local issues drives the need for better coverage of local news. It is also more affluent in many areas. Issues from homelessness, governor Newsom, Kamala Harris, climate and local issues create reader interest.

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It is shocking that San Francisco spends $700 million on homelessness with a lot of the money not getting people off the streets. There are large issues of how American society in 2024 had neglected the needs of large sections of the population, and not made investments in the right places, lost jobs from deindustrialization. San Francisco's new Mayor is Daniel Lurie of the Haas Levi Strauss jeans business family. His mother Miriam Haas is the billionaire widow of Peter Haas, descendent of Levi Strauss, who was president of the company. Daniel Lurie is taking a $1 salary, and his motivation for this job is to get San Francisco hit by high homelessness and crime, drug use, and office vacancy, back on its feet again. Levis Strauss was founded like Bank of America in this city on the west coast. Lurie found it hard to explain to his two children the homelessness and the dismal condition of parts of the city. He is helping hotel workers get a decent wage in a society that has created a huge gulf between the low paid with less and less access to things essential for a healthy life and people in Tech work who have vast surplus income for such access. It also means getting the police force down to 600 back up to 2000 and with good morale and public support to clean up the city. ...

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Google parent Alphabet operates Waymo robotaxis venture with $5 billion investment. It is the only operator of robotaxis after General Motors exited the market following an accident. About 300 Waymo robotaxis operate in the city of San Francisco and some suburbs, 400 robotaxis in other cities, a first in the US and are limited to surface streets only. WSJ report looks at the experience of city residents. Other cities where Waymo plans to operate are Phoenix, Atlanta, and Rochester NY.

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Wang and Dong reporting from Beijing and Hong Kong show how Chinese government media is presenting Xi as a friend of the United States. He stayed on an Iowa farm in his younger days. He is also shown in a picture in the NYT riding a bicycle with his 6 year old daughter on the back of the bicycle from his days in Fujian province in the 1980's (Xinhua). In that NYT report yesterday by Chris Buckley Xi says "We have a thousand reasons for good relations with the US."

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Wildfires burn on 1.4 million acres in California as it seeks help from Australia and other places. These fires are the second largest in its history.

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Washington Post Editorial Board suggests cuts to transit workers as ridership declines and use of automated rail for BART the San Francisco area Rapid Transit System- alternative is taking Oakland County Sales tax to 10.75%.