In the name of some unspecified public good, taxpayer money is being handed as a gift to selected people in Chicago with incomes up to $137,775 to buy houses.  This is a program that Mayor Rahm Emanuel set up two years ago, which has already handed out a total of $1.6 million to 218 lucky households, under a program run by something called "The Chicago Infrastructure Trust."  They don't even have to be first-time home-buyers. It sounds like something a bit like winning the lottery, except that you don't have to buy a ticket; you just have to be selected by the program as worthy of a gift from taxpayers. Mayor Emanuel (via Wikipedia). I have no clue what criteria could lead one to receive such a boon from the public fisc, but since this is Chicago, I have a few guesses. Tim Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times, which now bills itself as "America's hardest-working newspaper," has the shocking story: A...(Read Full Post)