The city council of Greensboro has  voted to transfer $1.75 million from local taxpayers to private ‘investors” who will be building a luxury Wyndham Hotel in the city’s downtown. The “investors,” aka crony capitalists, will be on the public dole for 5 years, receiving $395,000 annually, according to the Greensboro News and Record. One might think that the argument for this massive wealth transfer, the largest such grant for Greensboro in over a decade, would be that it will pay for itself in new property taxes. But again, according to the News and Record, “unlike other incentives, this project won’t pay for itself by the new property taxes it generates.” So I guess that leaves the justification offered by a gleeful Mayor Nancy Vaughn, “I am excited to be able to say we are going to have a crane downtown for the first time in a long time…I hope it will be the first of many cranes.”