How the American west coast has declined

End Of The American Dream reports:

Almost everyone that goes out to visit one of our major cities on the west coast has a similar reaction. Those that must live among the escalating decay are often numb to it, but most of those that are just in town for a visit are absolutely shocked by all of the trash, human defecation, crime and public drug use that they encounter. Once upon a time, our beautiful western cities were the envy of the rest of the world, but now they serve as shining examples of America’s accelerating decline. The worst parts of our major western cities literally look like post-apocalyptic wastelands, and the hordes of zombified homeless people that live in those areas are too drugged-out to care. The ironic thing is that these cities are not poor. In fact, San Francisco and Seattle are among the wealthiest cities in the entire nation. So if things are falling apart this dramatically now, how bad will things get when economic conditions really start to deteriorate?

But tax revenue from Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Neflix, etc. have supplied billions of dollars for the govt to what it wants, right? Nope, it can't really do anything:

According to this Wikipeda article, in just six years, between 1863 and 1869, a 1,912-mile railroad line was built to connect the east-coast rail network to California. And they had to deal with stuff that we don’t have to deal with today, like massive buffalo herds and hostile Indian tribes.

Not that I’m saying that California needs a high-speed rail line (they probably don’t), but if they wanted to build one, then it’s pretty pathetic that it took 11 years to study a 450-mile-long line, less than one-quarter of what was built in the 1860s, and then scrap the project.

We used to be a nation that got stuff done, but today we can’t do anything despite having huge technological advantages compared to the 1860s.

Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since declined.

Law professor Peter H. Schuck writes in the NY Times:

President Trump is verging on a declaration of national emergency — purely in order to fund his wall. And if he does, the courts may — or may not — reject his gambit.

But the fact that he may actually possess the legal authority to require agencies to waste billions of dollars simply to fulfill a foolish campaign promise he thinks won him the election is itself scandalous. ...

In Mr. Trump’s case, it has handed an unguided missile to an ignorant, impetuous man-child.

If so, Trump got a huge arsenal of unguided missiles two years ago. We are just over halfway thru his term. Where is the damage from this "man-child"? It appears that the Presidency has too little power if such a person cannot even do any damage when he tries.