Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration was accused Tuesday of illegally assessing fines and penalties against “hundreds of thousands” of Chicago motorists by exceeding a $250 maximum established by state law. The Illinois General Assembly established the $250 ceiling for both fines and late fees in exchange for shifting vehicle violations from the courts to city hearing officers, where the burden of proof is lower. But a lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the city of ignoring that cap for years on more than a dozen vehicle-related violations.

Rahm: “You know, in the intelligence world there’s a term called case officer. I think we met Donald Trump’s case officer: President Putin. We all saw it,” the mayor said. “You can play that tape fast, you can play that tape slow. We just saw what we needed to see.”

To give Chicago’s entire population of 2.7 million a check for $500 per month would cost $1.35 Billion per month, or $16.2 billion per year. Considering the city’s $71 billion debt load – of which around $40 billion is pension debt, UBI would add nearly 23% per year to that ticking time bombs.

In the first half of 2018, the Chicago area had the second-highest number of properties in some stage of foreclosure among the 20 biggest U.S. metro areas, according to Attom Data Solutions. Chicago also was second in the bigger group of 219 cities.

Which leads to some peculiar outcomes, such as that reported at Wirepoints, in which the pension plan for the city of Chicago almost-magically is in a better financial position this year than last, not because of an increase in contributions or a decrease in benefits owed, but because o a new schedule of contributions which intends, by means of increases each year in the future — which may or may not actually happen — to arrive at a funding level sufficient to shed the lower discount rate requirement.

Does this sort of manipulation sound

Comment: It won’t happen, but the level of support within the city council for a pilot program shows how wacko today’s left has become.