The Mirage and the Chicago Sun-Times

Thirty five years ago the Chicago Sun-Times ran a 25 part story about graft and corruption in Chicago. It uncovered shakedowns by city and state inspectors who let flagrant violations pass if they were sufficiently paid off, accountants and accounting schemes acting to defraud the State and city of enormous amounts of sales taxes, misuse of government property and demand for payment for routine government services, and criminal shakedowns by a jukebox and gaming vendor. The scene for the story was the aptly named Mirage Tavern:

It looked like any neighborhood tavern in Chicago. The beer was cold, the bratwursts hot.

But the Mirage, 731 N. Wells St., was never quite what it seemed.

It was a tavern operated by the Sun-Times and the Better Government Assn.

The bartenders were reporters and investigators. The repairmen were photographers headed for a hidden loft.

All were investigating years of complaints from small businesses about the day-to-day corruption they face in Chicago, the city that works if you know how to work it.

The Sun-Times will tell the Mirage's story -- with names, dates and amounts -- in the days to come.

The Sun-Times is running the story again. It's an interesting tale, and I wonder if they'd find the same thing today. I suspect the graft is less rampant, and the sales tax fraud is still widespread.