People are leaving California in droves so the State keeps trying to figure out how to pay for the expensive large (and growing) central government.
From Reason:
Forget Justice: Cops Just Want Money
The justice system is supposed to be about, well, justice. It's why district attorneys are ethically obliged to pursue convictions only against people they believe to have committed the crime. They are not supposed to pursue convictions at all costs to bolster their careers.
Likewise, when police agencies use "civil asset forfeiture" to take private property, they are not allowed to build their budgets around such takings. The funds are supposed to support extra programs – not supplant current dollars. That's so agencies don't replace the pursuit of justice with the pursuit of cash.
Unfortunately, forfeiture has become a widely abused practice. Instead of targeting drug kingpins as intended, police often target average citizens who haven't been convicted or even accused of a crime. For instance, officials tried to take a $1.5 million Anaheim office building because one of the owners' tenants was accused of illegally selling $37 in marijuana. Reports show that more than 80 percent of targets haven't even been indicted for anything.
More:
SB 443 was a bipartisan effort to rein in the abuses. Mainly, it would have required a conviction before police can take property. It also was designed to stop police from bringing in the feds to circumvent state law as well as make it easier for people to contest a taking. It tried to force police to use this fearsome tool as intended – to target criminal enterprises – rather than to grab the cars of people caught in a minor offense.
The bill was defeated on its final vote on Thursday after law-enforcement lobbies swarmed the Capitol. Police chiefs were calling legislators. Legislators from both parties went wobbly. That's so – even though the bill already has been severely watered down to mainly require a conviction. At the last moment, some past supporters of reform started claiming it needed yet another amendment. California Republicans constantly blather about the Constitution, but only four GOP Assembly members backed this bill. And so much for Democratic concerns about police abuse.
Much more at the site and all of the links point to source and corrborating data. The Californian government is outstripping its revenue stream and is seeking any and all aditional sources of money to stuff into its gaping maw.
A wonderful metric of a given location's popularity can be found in the cost of renting a moving truck. Here is the price of a 10' truck going from San Francisco, CA to Dallas, TX and one going from Dallas to San Francisco. Click to embiggen:
Note the $1,000 price difference. U-Haul has a lot of trucks in Dallas and not many Texans wanting to move to San Francisco. San Francisco has a shortage of trucks.
This is pure capitalism at work - the price the market will bear.
