Not to get political on HN, but, well, California is now in the grips of a truly demented ideology. Due to having overwhelming majority everywhere, they can pretty much do as they wish. It's as close to a corrupt third world government as I hope we are ever going to get.
For example, our roads are in terrible shape. They have squandered or diverted funds that were specifically allocated to road maintenance. By that I mean: We voted to pass measures to collect additional taxes to fix the roads and they stole the money.
Another interesting one: They pushed and passed a law taxing any square foot of land that does not allow a drop of rain water to directly make contact with dirt. The tax is $0.025 per square foot. This means that your home, driveway, patio, patio cover, etc. are counted as part of this. Think of places like your local mall, Home Depot or strip malls, where 95% of the dirt is covered. This is huge.
I could go on. Like the high speed train to nowhere that we approved at a cost of $10 billion that is now near or past $100 billion. It goes nowhere, it isn't finished and nobody is gong to use it. And yet they don't stop. I would not be surprised if this becomes a half billion dollar project. The ROI on these things is so upside-down a fifth-grader could figure out it's a bad deal.
And, of course, there's this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2019/10/10/califo...
And this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2019/10/22/now-calif...