dmackintosh,
Thanks for your post!
You can decrease the amount of data you distribute by only including the necessary RenderUSA data. In your example you could only include the California data and remove every other state. By removing these extra state layers you should decrease your footprint from 22GB to 8GB.
As for the USA folder, it's inclusion depends on how you are going to setup your full extent and if you will allow the users to zoom out past California. You can try experimenting with removing/keeping these layers to get the look you want.
I would not recommend paring down the data for Geocode USA.
ThinkGeo Support