What's The Best Way For Obamacare To Die?

Call me crazy, but I think it's just a matter of time until Obamacare dies.  I'm sure there are many who disagree with me.  Why anyone thinks this enormously complicated Rube Goldberg contraption is worth preserving is another question, but it certainly has its fierce defenders.  As with any socialist scheme, it is plagued with rapidly increasing costs and benefits that somehow don't materialize.  The believers believe that this time that cycle can be broken, but it's never happened with prior socialist schemes.  Sooner or later the death spiral ends in death.

But how?  And when?  A potential trigger is the King v. Burwell case, now fully briefed and argued before the Supreme Court with a decision expected within weeks at most.  The petitioners in that case challenge the legality under the Act of subsidies going to those who purchase policies on the federally-established exchange.  Some 34 states did not establish their own exchanges, and therefore a victory for petitioners will mean that federal subsidies go away for the majority of those now receiving them.  That could be a serious blow to Obamacare.  But will it be fatal?

Don't underestimate the creativity of the bureaucrats and their academic facilitators in coming up with ways to continue to spend billions not authorized by Congress.  In the current issue of Engage, Josh Blackman of South Texas Law School considers some schemes that have already been proposed to keep Obamacare going after a defeat in King.  First among these is something called the "administrative fix," an idea attributed by Blackman to Nicholas Bagley and David Jones in a Yale Law Journal forum:

 HHS could revise its regulations and the Blueprint to provide that some states should be understood as having established an exchange, even if they never formally elected to do so. . . .   In other words, HHS would look to past actions as tacit evidence that the state in fact established an exchange, even in states that did not submit the declaration and application. Bagley and Jones query whether "the regular performance of essential and substantial exchange functions, over time, [could] constitute the establishment of an exchange."

The basic idea here is that some of the 34 states without exchanges have co-operated with the feds to some degree in the operation of the federal exchange, and that would then be deemed by regulation to be the equivalent of "establishing" an exchange under the words of the statute. 

Then there's another idea, suggested by law professor William Baude of the University of Chicago in a New York Times op-ed and picked up by the Justice Department in a letter submitted to the D.C. Circuit.  This idea is that every recipient of subsidies under Obamacare has a due process right to a hearing before his/her benefits can be cut off.  And therefore any ruling by the Supreme Court should be limited to only the four plaintiffs in the King case itself:

The week before oral arguments in Halbig v. Burwell ”which raises the same issues as King” the Justice Department submitted a letter to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, taking the position that the government was constitutionally prohibited from denying subsidies to millions of Americans. In short, the government argued that people who were not parties to the suit had a due-process right to be heard before their subsidies were extinguished.

Blackman presents some rather cogent reasons why neither of these gambits would be likely to succeed after the King case has been lost.  Still, they could require another round of litigation, which could take years.  If a lower court ruled against the government, would it grant a stay pending appeals all the way to the top this time around?  Personally I find it hard to believe that the government would try either of these gambits; but I have been repeatedly surprised by the chutzpah of this administration.

Meanwhile, should we check in on how it is going on the overall Obamacare death spiral front?  Data are trickling out with frustrating slowness, which I take as a sure indication that the government doesn't want us to know how bad it is.  A website called Obamacarefacts.com, which claims no affiliation with the government, is nevertheless the site with the official best administration spin on any and all Obamacare data.  They report that as of the end of Q1 2015 the percent "uninsured" in the U.S. was down to 11.9% from 15.7% at the time Obamacare was enacted in 2009.   By the way, they use Gallup data for the 11.9%.  Isn't the government collecting this information?  OK, that's about a 4% "improvement," which is about 12 million people.  But it still leaves close to 40 million in the "uninsured" category.  Somehow, I was remembering that the whole idea here is that everyone was going to get "covered."  Five years ago it was the world's greatest crisis that 48 million or so were uninsured.  Today it's no crisis at all and indeed a great triumph that 38 million or so are still uninsured.  Go figure.

And of the 12 million or so newly "insured," how many are as a result of all the mandates and the exchanges, and how many are just the Medicaid expansion?  The answer from Obamacarefacts is: 10.8 million as of March 31, and estimated at 11.7 million by May 31 are new Medicaid enrollees.  In other words, almost all of the 12 million are from the Medicaid expansion.  So essentially all of the enrollment through the exchanges has been equally offset by the decline in employer-based insurance.  Why again did they bother with this enormously complicated Rube Goldberg thing?

And finally, how is the idea faring that you could greatly increase the demand for medical care while at the same time the cost would go down?  Really, did anyone believe that?  In just the past few days many insurers have announced their premiums for the 2016 year, and the picture is not pretty.  Here's an article from today in Forbes by Robert Laszewski.  Average proposed premium increases are well in the double digits, and Laszewski cites numerous examples in the 30 - 50% and even higher.  Here's his take:

You might recall that I have said we wouldn’t see the real Obamacare rates until the 2017 prices are published in mid-2016. By then health plans will finally have had a couple of years of credible claim data and two of the three “3 Rs” reinsurance provisions subsidizing the insurance companies will have gone away. . . .   Instead of moderate rate increases for one more year, the big rate increases have begun. They are particularly large among the health insurers with the most enrollment—the carriers with the most data.

So they put in a lot of subsidies to hide the obvious problems for a couple of years, but the disaster is making itself apparent already.  There are a lot of ways that Obamacare can die.

The Joke Of Criminalizing Money Laundering

It's hard to keep up with all the "money laundering" criminality going on all around us.  Just days ago former House Speaker Denny Hastert got indicted for the "crime" of repeatedly withdrawing amounts of less than $10,000 at a time from his bank account in order to pay off a blackmailer.  Then it was revealed that Citigroup is expecting to close its Banamex subsidiary because of inability to comply with government demands to control money laundering in the Mexican affiliate.  Then on Friday it emerges that the U.S. Justice Department is accusing international bank HSBC of "serious deficiencies" in its money laundering controls.

The HSBC revelation arises out of a prior settlement between the bank and U.S. authorities back in 2012.  HSBC paid some $1.9 billion to settle the money laundering allegations at the time, and as part of the settlement entered into something called a "deferred prosecution agreement" by which it agreed to have a government-appointed monitor snooping around it all the time and auditing and reporting back to the government on anything deemed to be a weakness.  The monitor has recently produced a report of some 1000 pages or so, and we learn of its existence because the government has made a motion to keep it secret.  According to June 5 article in the Guardian linked above:

HSBC’s procedures to prevent money laundering, sanction-breaking and criminal activity still have deficiencies so serious that to publicly disclose them would risk serious crime, the US Department of Justice has said.  The embarrassing disclosure of continuing issues with HSBC’s processes is contained in a 16-page motion filed to a US court this week by the DoJ, which is seeking to keep confidential a report on the bank that is more than 1,000 pages long.

Of course, notable about all of these government efforts, and all the others that you will read about in the area of money laundering, is that none of them involve prosecution of the actual bad guys.  Hastert's actions in paying blackmail may be unsavory, but nobody says they were illegal.  The blackmailer?  Hey, he's the cooperating witness -- of course he goes free.  Citigroup and HSBC?  They're involuntarily deputized law enforcement agents who supposedly can stop money transfers by the Mexican drug cartels if only they put in place enough "controls," whatever that may mean.  What is the control that is supposed to stop depositing small amounts of cash at ATMs on one end and withdrawing same on the other end?  I guess that deep secret is what the government is trying to hide by keeping this HSBC report confidential.

All of these guys should read the article in today's Wall Street Journal titled "Money Isn't Free, but Moving It Is Now Cheaper," by Christopher Mims.  This is about lots of new money transfer systems, from Venmo to Apple to Square Cash to Google Pay.  Oh, and then there's Bitcoin.  Bitcoin doesn't involve banks, and they're not the only one.  How about MoneyGram:

Alex Holmes, chief financial officer of MoneyGram, points out that 90% of the remittances his company handles are cash to cash, and they are between people who don’t even have bank accounts.

Really, how much loss of privacy and phony prosecutions of non-criminals do we need to go through in this exercise in total futility?

The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time -- Part V

Scientific fraud has been all over the news this past week.  The latest example is an article titled "When contact changes minds: An experiment on transmission of support for gay equality," by  Michael LaCour and Donald Green, that appeared in Science back in December.  The LaCour/Green article reported on a study in which it was claimed that people's attitudes toward gay marriage were significantly changed following discussions of about 20 minutes in length with door-to-door canvassers.  When the article came out, it created a mini media sensation, with discussion in outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Economist, and others.  Really, it's just remarkable how all BS radar gets turned off when a new study reports what the right people want to hear.

The unraveling began on May 19 when a critique of LaCour/Green titled "Irregularities in LaCour (2014)" appeared on the website of Stanford University, written by David Broockman and others. Trying to replicate and extend LaCour's results, Broockman and his co-authors uncovered serious irregularities in the LaCour data.  They presented the information to Green, who then asked that the article be retracted.  LaCour claims to stand by his data, but -- oops -- it has been deleted.  And thus this past week we are treated to long philosophical essays on scientific fraud from the likes of NYT and WSJ.

I have to admit that in the world of scientific frauds, this is a pretty good one.  Then again, compared to the Big One, this is pretty small time.  By the Big One, I am of course referring to the world temperature data tampering fraud, by which 50 and 100 year old temperature records are systematically altered to make them cooler, thus exaggerating the extent of warming and keeping the "global warming" narrative going.  Anything new on that one this week?

As a matter of fact, there is.  On Thursday June 4, Science came out with an article by Thomas Karl and multiple co-authors titled "Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus."   Yes, it's the same Science that also published the discredited LaCour article.  This article is an attempt to deal with the now-famous global warming "pause" or "hiatus," in which world temperatures, as measured by multiple data sets including the highly accurate satellites, have refused to increase for a period now exceeding 18 years, in the face of predictions of disaster coming out of the UN IPCC and others.  Tom Karl, for those who don't recognize the name, is a high-ranking bureaucrat at NOAA and a serious global warming alarmist.  Here's the abstract of the article from Science:

Much study has been devoted to the possible causes of an apparent decrease in the upward trend of global surface temperatures since 1998, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the global warming “hiatus.” Here we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than reported by the IPCC, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature.

You see, we have just "updated" the "global surface temperature analysis."  No big deal in that.  And of course the updating "reveals" that temperatures are increasing faster than anyone thought!

Needless to say, the New York Times immediately picked up the story and reported it as fed to them by Karl, without any critical thinking of any kind.  The article on June 4 is by climate-activist-masquerading-as-reporter Justin Gillis, and titled  "Global Warming 'Hiatus' Challenged By NOAA Research."   Excerpt:

Scientists have long labored to explain what appeared to be a slowdown in global warming that began at the start of this century as, at the same time, heat-trapping emissions of carbon dioxide were soaring. The slowdown, sometimes inaccurately described as a halt or hiatus, became a major talking point for people critical of climate science.  Now, new research suggests the whole thing may have been based on incorrect data.  When adjustments are made to compensate for recently discovered problems in the way global temperatures were measured, the slowdown largely disappears, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared in a scientific paper published Thursday.

So, Tom and Justin, can you kindly explain how you have managed to make temperatures of the past get cooler in order to make it appear that there is a warming trend where none previously existed in multiple data sets?  The problem they have is that now lots of credible scientists are immediately all over their work, and before the week was out everybody who follows this knew how the trend got altered.  By the end of the week we had  "A First Look at ‘Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus’ by Karl et al., Science 4 June 2015," by Ross McKitrick;  "Has NOAA ‘busted’ the pause in global warming?" by Judith Curry; "@NOAA ‘s desperate new paper: Is there no global warming ‘hiatus’ after all?" by Patrick Michaels, Richard Lindzen and Paul Knappenberger; and "Reports of the death of the global warming pause are greatly exaggerated," from the Global Warming Policy Foundation.  The last is the least technical, so I'll quote from their list of obvious points:

* The authors have produced adjustments that are at odds with all other surface temperature datasets, as well as those compiled via satellite.

* They do not include any data from the Argo array that is the world’s best coherent data set on ocean temperatures.

* Adjustments are largely to sea surface temperatures (SST) and appear to align ship measurements of SST with night marine air temperature (NMAT) estimates, which have their own data bias problems.

* The extent of the largest SST adjustment made over the hiatus period, supposedly to reflect  a continuing change in ship observations (from buckets to engine intake thermometers) is not justified by any evidence as to the magnitude of the appropriate adjustment, which appears to be far smaller.

And by the way guys, how about the data from the satellites?  Anyway, for Karl, Gillis, et al., it's all very simple:  pick one data set that you like, even though everyone knows it has big gaps and inaccuracies, and adjust all other and better data to that one to fit your narrative.  The President will be proud!

And in other climate-related news, President Obama wanted to talk to famed environmental documentary-maker Richard Attenborough, so on the spur of the moment he had Attenborough flown over from London to "chat" about climate change.  According to this report at Slate, Attenborough said he was "baffled" about why the President wanted to talk to him.  And don't worry, the carbon footprint of that trans-Atlantic roundtrip doesn't count, because it was for Obama.  Also, by the way, the carbon footprint of that flight was teensy compared to the one laid down by John Kerry.  That's the guy who has declared global warming to be the biggest security risk to the United States, bigger than Iran and ISIS.  After breaking his leg riding his bicycle in France, Kerry was flown home from Geneva.  Here's a picture of the plane he flew home in -- a C17.  Hey, it's smaller than a 747!

Denny Hastert: Can You Top This Phony Prosecution?

The game of "Can you top this?" in the world of phony prosecutions continues with the indictment of former House Speaker Denny Hastert at the behest of prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois.  Here's the indictment.  I like the lead line of today's Washington Post story by Janell Ross:

In journalism, there's a time-worn saying: It's not the crime but the coverup that gets them every time.

OK, Janell, but is it a crime to cover up something that is not itself a crime?  Can you explain why?

Seems like Hastert was being blackmailed over some alleged misconduct dating from a time 30 or so years ago when he was a high school wrestling coach.  He was paying the blackmailer in cash, and withdrew the money in multiple increments from several banks each month, each withdrawal under $10,000.

Now as far as I know, blackmailing someone is a crime, but paying blackmail is not.  So what has Hastert been indicted for?  There are two charges in the indictment.  One is for the crime of "structuring."  The other is for lying to the FBI.

You haven't heard of "structuring"?  You may have heard that if you deposit or withdraw an amount of $10,000 in a bank they are required to file something called a "currency transaction report" and report you to the government.  Of course people caught on to that, and started dividing up their deposits into amounts under $10,000.  So in 1986 Congress in its wisdom made a crime out of intentionally dividing up your deposits to avoid reporting to the government.  It's 31 U.S.C. Section 5324.

This is all part of the government's crackdown on what it calls "money laundering."  I have previously referred to this as "the most insidious area of government regulation."  Supposedly the idea is to catch drug dealers and terrorists -- or at least that's how it's sold to the gullible public -- but money laundering regulation is completely useless in dealing with those things.  An article by Charles Kenny in Bloomberg News back in February could not identify one single terrorism prosecution that had come out of anti-money laundering regulation.  I can't find one either.  And if anti-money laundering regulation was of any use against drug kingpins, then why hasn't the drug war been won instead of lost?  Kenny cites a recent study by Levi, Reuter and Halliday for the IMF that finds "no demonstration of [the] benefits" of AML regulation.  Nada, zip, zilch.

By the way, the administrative bureaucracies at banks to deal with this AML stuff cost tens of billions of dollars per year in the aggregate.  And no matter how much they spend, the banks have no practical way of cracking down on money laundering.  It's obvious to everyone that literally all drug money finds its way somehow into the banking system, and in a world where almost all deposits and withdrawals involve no human interaction, the possibilities for identifying which ones are "drug money" are just about nil.  But the feds endlessly torture banks for supposedly not having sufficient "controls" to stop the money laundering.  Just today the Wall Street Journal front page has a story that Citigroup plans to close its Banamex subsidiary because of government allegations that its money laundering "controls" are weak.  Believe me, the Mexican drug lords will still figure out a way to move their money.

If you really want to get your blood boiling, troll around a little for some articles on what "anti-money laundering" prosecutions are actually about.  The answer is, this is how the predatory government steals money from hard-working small business people under the color of the law.  Here's an article from Radley Balko in the Washington Post in 2014 reporting on a few cases that have gotten some notoriety:  a young immigrant woman from Russia who wanted to make a down payment on a house and had difficulty getting money wired from her bank account in Russia so she withdrew cash in several increments from ATMs and deposited the money in her U.S. account; one seasonal produce market in Frederick, Maryland, and another one in Maryland on the Eastern Shore; a small grocery store in Fraser, Michigan.  Or check out this story about the small Mexican restaurant in Iowa that had its entire bank account seized by the feds.  And so forth.  In each case the government steals the money first and then puts you through endless and expensive legal process to get it back.  Their game plan is to "settle" for keeping most but maybe not quite all of the money for themselves, while you, if you are lucky, just barely survive being put out of business.

In none of these cases was there any allegation by the government that the activity that earned the money was in any way illegal.  Could it really be that "structuring" is a crime even if both your source and use of the money are completely legal?  Absolutely, or at least that's the government's position.

So sorry, Denny, but the fact that you were using the money for a legal purpose is not going to help you.  And in fact, I might even have had some sympathy for you myself, except for one small thing:  although you weren't in Congress when the "structuring" thing was initially passed in 1986, you were there for several increments to the criminal money laundering regime, including that you were the Speaker in 2001 when the USA PATRIOT Act hugely expanded the whole thing.  Do you mean it never occurred to you that they wouldn't ever catch a single terrorist with this regime and instead would turn their guns on you?  Too bad, my friend.

The other "crime" that Hastert is charged with is "lying to the FBI."  (18 U.S.C. 1001)  Again, does it surprise you that that is a crime?  Here they have all these elaborate rituals of making people raise their right hand and administering oaths and calling people before grand juries.  You fully understand that lying after you have gone through all of that is a crime, known as perjury.  But if they skip all the ritual it's still a crime?  Yup.  In fact, a perfectly reasonable way of looking at it is that the ritual is all just a trick to con people into thinking it's not a crime to lie when you are not under oath.

UPDATED, June 15, 2015.  Previous version incorrectly stated that Hastert was in Congress when the "structuring" law was originally enacted.  It was enacted in 1986; he entered Congress in 1987.

Climate Theater Of The Absurd

Everything about the "climate change" political circus is completely absurd.  There's a big climate confab coming up at the end of the year in Paris, and lots of unproductive parasites are looking to that event as their last best chance to solidify a permanent life sinecure for themselves in some U.N. bureaucracy before a critical mass of the general public catches on to the scam.  Right now it may only be May, but the drumbeat of climate scares is getting louder every day.  So today I'm just going to put a few recent developments next to each other, and you can try to figure out for yourself how any sane person thinks that any of this makes sense.

First up is President Obama's commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy last week.  It was classic global warming evangelism.  Global warming is a terrible and immediate crisis.  The U.S. is to be committed to rapid reduction of "carbon pollution," and to revamping its electric power industry without any concern about costs.  A few choice excerpts:

As men and women in uniform, you know that it can be just as important, if not more important, to prevent threats before they can cause catastrophic harm.  And only way -- the only way -- the world is going to prevent the worst effects of climate change is to slow down the warming of the planet. . . .  So, going forward, I’ve committed to doubling the pace at which we cut carbon pollution.  And that means we all have to step up.  And it will not be easy.  It will require sacrifice, and the politics will be tough.  But there is no other way. . . .  We have to move ahead with standards to cut the amount of carbon pollution in our power plants.

Seems like the word still hasn't gotten to Obama that we've just gone through more than 18 years of no global warming whatsoever.   And turning our gaze for the moment from predictions of a disastrous future to the immediate past, we find that the government has just reported revised numbers for Q1 2015 GDP, and the result is -- shrinkage of 0.7%.  As reported today at Breitbart, reason number one given for the decline by Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jason Furman was -- you guessed it -- "harsh winter weather."  Where had I just gotten the idea that warming was bad and cooling must be better?  Is that no longer operative?

So we're on to Paris for a grand global deal to "cut emissions" and save the world.  Has anybody checked in with India on that?  Here's what recent Indian Minister of Environment and Forests (2009 - 2011) has to say about that (quoted in the Guardian on May 27):

The idea that India can set targets in Paris is completely ridiculous and unrealistic. It will not happen. This is a difficult concept for eco-fundamentalists, and I say this as a guy who is considered in India to be very green. Copenhagen failed because of climate evangelism. I was sitting for days with Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband, Angela Merkel, Barack Obama and Sarkozy. It was absolutely bizarre. It failed because of an excess of evangelical zeal, of which Brown was the chief proponent. Even with the most aggressive strategy on nuclear, wind, hydro and solar, coal will still provide 55% of electricity consumption by 2030, which means coal consumption will be 2.5 or three times higher than at present.     

"Ridiculous," "unrealistic," and "bizarre," and sorry, we're about to triple our coal consumption whether you like it or not -- yes, Barack, that's what India thinks of your "climate" plans for them.  And by the way, this guy was part of the previous government over there that was considerably more left wing than the new guys.

Here's a Bloomberg News write-up from May 22 on India's coal plans over just the next few years:

India thinks of coal right primarily as a poverty-fighting tool. It's the most vocal and influential champion of the fuel these days now that China's industrial hangover has begun. . . .  Indian coal demand could jump 42 percent, or 300 million metric tons, by 2020, and India is expected to add 124 gigawatts of electricity capacity in that time, according to Bloomberg Industries. In just two years, it may surpass China as the largest importer of seaborne coal.

Shall we check in on Germany?  There the government supposedly has a plan to reduce carbon emissions some 40% (from 1990 levels) by 2020.  They're nowhere near that, and have figured out that the only way to get there is to close many coal plants and much of the coal mining industry.  Oops!  All of a sudden the labor unions are catching on that they are the targets.  Die Welt had a report on May 25 titled, "German Government in Crisis Over Escalating Cost of Climate Policy."    They have lots of pictures of big union-led demonstrations back in April.  The Economics Minister has plans for taxes on coal and coal plants to achieve the goal, but here's the response of Armin Laschet of the Christian Democratic party:

Affected power plants would be threatened by a "wave of decommissioning and structural upheaval in the regions lignite mining area and in eastern Germany would be the result." The plan threatens "tens of thousands of jobs" in the energy and heavy industries.

Surely there's a 7-year-old around here somewhere to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes?

The New York Times Comments On De Blasio's Public Housing Plan

At the time I wrote yesterday's post, I had not noticed that the New York Times' lead editorial of the day was about the exact same subject, Mayor de Blasio's plan for dealing with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).  The Times' title, "To Save New York's Public Housing," really tells you all you need to know.  As usual their way of looking at the world is just completely opposite to mine.

In essence, the Times' take is that "saving" NYCHA is a sacred duty and that de Blasio is bravely undertaking this heroic task.

Of all the monumental tasks that Mr. de Blasio has set for his administration, none may be more important than saving the New York City Housing Authority.

Needless to say, they completely steer clear of adding up the costs.  They never ask whether this could possibly make any sense compared to other things that could be done for the money, including ways of providing the same amount of housing for a fraction the cost.  And, God forbid, they certainly do not remotely consider ways of actually removing the beleaguered residents from the lifetime poverty trap in which NYCHA imprisons them.  Oh, and somehow they seem to have completely missed the fact that the big dollars of de Blasio's "rescue" plan consist of transferring large amount of costs off NYCHA's books and hiding them elsewhere in New York City's accounts.

Then I came to this one line that I thought I could agree with:

Its apartments are high-rise, brick-and-mortar insults to the very idea of a city committed to equality and dignity for the working class and poor.

Yes! thought I.  But then I realized that they meant by that the exact opposite of what I thought they meant.  I at first thought they meant that it's an insult to the idea of a city committed to equality and dignity for the working class and poor to imprison them in grim and hideous poverty traps where the only way they can collect on their supposed "good fortune" of a highly illiquid lifetime gift of deeply subsidized housing is to remain poor, show minimal measurable income, and live off government handouts.  But the next lines show that the Times has something very different in mind:

But only when tenants begin to see significant repairs made, with visible improvements in their living spaces and surroundings, and tangibly more competent and responsive management, will it be possible to say the mayor’s ambitious plan is on the right track.

So the Times thinks that if only the City taxpayers spend a few more billions on "significant repairs" and "visible improvements in their living spaces and surroundings" then NYCHA will no longer be an "insult" to "equality and dignity for the working class and poor."

Well, New York Times, I've got news for you.  After those next few billions of taxpayer cash go down the rat hole of NYCHA, these will still be the same grim and hideous buildings.  And even if the roof no longer leaks, the residents will still be in the same insulting and demeaning position of having to live the life provided to them by their overlords and masters with no ability to improve themselves unless they walk away from their multi-million dollar unsalable in-kind "gift".  They won't have any more ability to move to a different apartment that better suits their needs, because they only won this one place in the lottery.  They won't be able to sell it, rent it, borrow against it, or monetize any part of it to improve their lives.  The fundamental "insult" to the "equality and dignity of the working class and poor" is not a leaky roof or a broken window.  It's being trapped by handouts into a life of dependency on the government.