Minister of Toilet Management Mark Geary joins me for a romp into the world of non-profit arts organizations! He is the founder of The Lincoln Lodge, which is where I record my podcast and is also my place of full time employment. Do two standup comedy philistines have any right to judge Shen Yun? NOPE, but we saw the show anyways on a strange, beautiful Thursday afternoon. Parking took 17 minutes by the way. Mark has a long and storied history in the Chicago comedy scene and it is actually a huge score that he agreed to be on my podcast, so please forgive how nervous I was during the recording.

Anywhoozles, Shen Yun is a non-profit arts organization AKA it is in the same line of business as The Lincoln Lodge - so that's the expertise we're bringing to the table. Other podcasts have dutifully covered the....strange and religious background origins of Shen Yun and its parent organization the Falun Dafa. I'm honestly not sure if I did a great job explaining the Falun Gong stuff because 1) you sound crazy when you try to summarize it 2) it's out of scope for the podcast 3) i was a little drunk and 4) i made a concerted effort to not be too hard on religious people because it's a smug lefty podcast trend that I find gauche. Sorry TrueAnon people, I am just a better person than you <3

I wish I'd remembered to say this on mic, but Mark did lean over during the piece of the performance that was meant to be set in the modern day. The actors all wore khakis and blue shirts and he, brow furrowed with the gravitas of a 60 minutes interview, leaned over and went "why are they all dressed like they work at Best Buy?" and to me that made Shen Yun worth the price of admission 100%.

SOURCES:

1) The article I need to attribute the most credit to (though the content comes super late in the episode) is "How Shen Yun Tapped Religious Fervor to Make $266 Million" by New York Times reporters Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld linked here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250106190435/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/nyregion/shen-yun-money-falun-gong.html

2) Shen Yun's 2023 Form 990: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/208812402/202421039349300917/full

3) IRS Whistleblower website link: https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/whistleblower-office-at-a-glance#:~:text=The%20IRS%20Whistleblower%20Office%2C%20which,else%20they%20may%20be%20encountered.

4) "California Man Sentenced for Acting as an Illegal Agent of the People’s Republic of China Government and Bribery," DOJ press release linked here: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/california-man-sentenced-acting-illegal-agent-peoples-republic-china-government-and-bribery

5) "US: Chinese agents paid bribes in plot to disrupt anti-communist Falun Gong movement," CBS News May 6 2023 linked here: https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/us-chinese-agents-paid-bribes-in-plot-to-disrupt-anti-communist-falun-gong-movement/

6) "Federal lawsuit accuses Dragon Springs compound of sewage contamination of stream," Times Herald-Record, Chris McKenna, January 2022 linked here:

Weiner's Circle crusader Danaka joins me on the most Chicago-ey episode ever recorded in BBB history! Do you feel unbridled rage at the sight of another person taking YOUR parking spot? Are YOU still looking for parking in the loop at this moment? Does the show Seinfeld resonate a little too much with you? This is the perfect episode to turn on while you look for a fire hydrant to park in front of. Throughout this episode, I was double fisting a whiskey ginger ale and a hot matcha latte. That's kind of the energy we brought to the booth.

Anyways, come with us on a journey behind the worst business deal anybody has ever made. Not to be too one-sided or anything, it's just that no one with any defensible journalistic or business credentials has sided with Mayor Daley on this one. Have no idea what I'm talking about? Tap in to this all-Chicago episode of complete and utter buffoonery, replete with a book that completely changed my worldview! I'm serious!

Thanks for listening, and be sure to follow Danaka's writing on Substack! Linked here: https://danaka.substack.com/

Patreon is as always patreon.com/bustedbizbureau - I turned off payments for a buncha months in a row, but am finally on the creative horse again. Yippeee!!!

SOURCES:

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, was (as mentioned many times!) the main source of information throughout this episode. I bought it at Unabridged Bookstore :) Link here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634461/paved-paradise-by-henry-grabar/

2. Chicago's parking drama is covered in chapter 8 of Paved Paradise, which itself owes a lot of sourcing to Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke's reporting in the Chicago Reader over the alderman-ey drama. "FAIL, Part One: Chicago’s Parking Meter Lease Deal" linked here: https://chicagoreader.com/news/fail-part-one-chicagos-parking-meter-lease-deal/

3. Propublica Illinois and Mother Jones collab'ed on an article about poor Chicagoans saddling the main burden of traffic ticket debt. "How Does Chicago Make $200 Million A Year On Parking Tickets? By Bankrupting Thousands of Drivers." I accidentally said this was from 2023 in the podcast, but it is actually 2018. Don't ever listen to a word I say. Linked here: https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2018/02/how-does-chicago-make-200-million-a-year-on-parking-tickets-by-bankrupting-thousands-of-drivers/

4. Uelricht v Chicago Parking Meters LLC as very thoroughly documented on Clime Case Chart, linked here: https://climatecasechart.com/case/uetricht-v-chicago-parking-meters-llc/. Most of the complaints/motions/etc live here

5. Judge Diane Pamela Wood's opinion on the matter, quoted in the pod, linked here: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/22-1166/22-1166-2023-04-07.html

Drama alert! Time to become a gossip channel! Two HR tech firms are beefing, diva! In a very rare Busted Business Bureau about a current topic, I invited my dear cherished lovely friend Alex to come gab about classic corporate espionage gone awry. This easy, breezy beautiful episode was sponsored by two espresso martinis and Linkedin dot com.

The meat of the episode is from this court complaint lodged by Rippling against Deel, found at this link: https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf

Snage Game (if it's still up...): https://www.rippling.com/en-GB/snake-game

There are references to beefs from Twitter, but I'm not linkin' that man.