Gay Liberal Democratic group crows that it gets instant IRS approval of its 501c3 status

Groups critical of the Obama regime get IRS harassment and delays, but those supportive crow they get instant approval.  Here’s Sean Bugg on LinkedIn!

Sean Bugg It’s official: the Next Generation Leadership Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, charitable organization. Honestly, this came back from the IRS much, much sooner than I ever expected so I am ecstatic. Many, many people helped to make this happen — my thanks to all of them.

The mission statement of the Foundation is:

The Next Generation Leadership Foundation (NGLF) is dedicated to inspiring, nurturing and mentoring LGBT youth and young adults, creating spaces for them to lead in a variety of fields, from business to politics to activism to arts.

NGLF achieves these goals through directly honoring achievements of LGBT people under 30, building a network of Next Generation Award winners to mentor and teach others, and organizing leadership-training events for interested and qualified applicants.

Find out more at www.facebook.com/NextGenLGBT

Mr. Bugg is a publisher of the leftist Democratic magazine and website Metroweekly, in which one will have great difficulty finding any significant criticism of any Democrat, or anything other than attacks on anyone from any other political party.  Indeed, if memory serves, if you go through the archives of Mr. Bugg’s own columns you will find him rationalizing, excusing and defending President Obama when he fails to deliver on gay issues.

I attended the awards ceremony for the Foundation last year.  It was a room full of people who work for the government and Democratic Party groups and allied non-profits.  I would suspect about 3 people there were something other than Democrats.  The award winners were diverse by race and sex but all basically worked for the kind of government funded non-profits Democratic campaign workers are parked in to collect a salary in between campaigns.

For instance Ms. Victoria Kirby, a 2011 winner interviewed by Bugg’s own Metroweekly.  Where does she work?  Obama’s Organizing for Action:

Victoria Kirby is also doing her part to support the foundation. This 2011 Next Generation Award winner, now based in Tampa, Fla., as state coordinator of Organizing for Action, has joined on as one of Bugg’s board members.

“I’m really excited about this,” says Kirby. “I think it’s a great idea. When you look at the programs available for people in our community, it’s needed.”

While Kirby grants there are a number of organizations running programs aimed at guiding young LGBT people, she believes the Next Generation Leadership Foundation is unique with its emphasis on mentoring across a range of fields. Similarly, Bugg emphasizes that he wanted to ensure the NGLF mission would not duplicate any work already being done.

“Having programs where people can see role models is very important,” Kirby says of the foundation’s efforts. “It’s important we raise leaders who feel comfortable in their own skin.”
“I’m very proud of Sean for making this jump,” adds Kirby, 26, building up to the pitch that shows she has board-member acumen beyond her years. “I’m excited about the idea, making the camp a reality. I’d encourage readers to give, open their pocketbooks and hearts to young people being trained and empowered to truly become the leaders of the next generation of our community.”

For more about the Next Generation Leadership Foundation, visit nglf.org.

Gay DC tires of Obama duplicity

Obama, like most Democrats, has been tapping the GayTM and taking two thirds or more of the gay vote, while not delivering much more than Bush.  He didn’t campaign to stop the North Carolina anti gay marriage constitutional amendment last year, nor did he campaign against California’s Prop 8 when running for office in 2008.  The repeal of DADT was forced on him (Democrats were trying to keep the ban on gays in the military alive as long as possible as a wedge and fundraising issue), until the courts, in a law suit largely sustained by Log Cabin Republicans, was about to overturn the ban.

Now Obama is not issuing an executive order to ban discrimination among federal contractors.  Though I’m sensitive to the beliefs and rights to freedom of association of people who go into business and then find the government has so monopolized their markets it is the main customer, I still favor this executive order (for government contractors only).

Of course the gay political establishment wants the right to enforce quotas and other regulations on all private associations where employment is offered.  My suspicion, given that most Fortune 500 companies have banned employment discrimination, is that the government sector may be worse on this issue than the private sector, and that the private sector is also experiencing more change.  Making all private employers equally gay friendly of course eradicates market signals.  High tech firms and others that are particularly inclusive, and that innovate ways of being inclusive and doing outreach that their competitors and government regulators have never dreamed of, may be reaping rewards in acquiring a superior talent pool.  Government regulation will prevent that, ending salutary evolution of better business practices.

Here’s Sean Bugg in MetroWeekly, both the stereotypes of off the shelf gay mainstream so called “progressivism”:

————

We all have our rhetorical tics and tricks. For example, mine include the excessive use of clauses such as ”however,” ”actually” and ”for example.” I also tend to spend the first couple paragraphs of any column making jokes and references that are only tangentially related to the subject I’m writing about.

However, that’s no guarantee the jokes will be funny.

President Obama speaks at LGBT Pride reception

(Photo by Todd Franson/Metro Weekly)

I was reminded of this last week when President Obama spoke at the White House’s annualLGBT Pride reception. The president’s verbal tics are as well known as old Saturday Night Live catchphrases — every time he says ”Let me be clear,” someone might as well call out, ”More cowbell!”

But Obama’s particular rhetorical trick with the LGBT community is his repeated urging for us not to be patient, followed by declaring that he won’t do the thing we’ve been impatiently asking him to do — in this case, to sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to have nondiscrimination policies that include LGBT employees. This is not a big ask for our community. The president clearly has the authority. He has explicitly said that executive action is an important and necessary part of advancing LGBT and other civil rights issues. He promised to do so when he was running for his first term.

Yet here were are in 2013 and he simply refuses to do it.

The official White House line is that he wants to pursue a legislative strategy, which is why Obama mentioned the legislative repeal of ”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” back at the end of 2010. Of course, that molasses-paced legislative process resulted in a lame-duck nail-biter that barely squeaked through before Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) got enough votes to recklessly abuse the filibuster.

The idea that we should be putting our sole hope in a legislative strategy for a transgender-inclusive ENDA – in a Senate that threatened to scuttle immigration reform that even Republicans admit is crucial to their long-term survival as a political party over the inclusion of gay couples – is simply ludicrous. And that’s even before we get to the Republican mad dog caucus in the House.

There is a two-pronged approach to take here: an executive order that reinforces and grows protections for thousands of LGBT employees across the nation, while helping to build increased support for ENDA by demonstrating the positive effect (or lack of negative effect) in the many, many congressional districts that represent federal contractors.

Yet the president insists on pursuing a one-pronged approach, even as that one-prong is the least likely to succeed given the Republican recalcitrance and control on the Hill. It really makes no sense. If there is a logical reason for Obama to not sign an executive order that he previously promised to sign and that fits within his own stated approach to civil rights, someone at the White House needs to explain it. Brushing off inquiries by referring to the ”hypothetical executive order,” as spokesmen have done, doesn’t cut it. Jay Carney rotely repeating that the president believes in pursuing a legislative strategy on ENDA has become insulting.

And President Obama standing before a roomful of LGBT people, telling them not to be patient and then citing DADT repeal as a model for ENDA is, frankly, a finger in the eye.

For a president who has undeniably done so much for LGBT equality, these rhetorical tics and tricks are maddening, and the political strategy on ENDA indecipherable. He needs to explain why he’s chosen only one option when he can pursue two. Or he needs to bite the bullet and sign the executive order.

Actually, I’m getting awfully damn impatient.

Sean Bugg is the co-publisher of Metro Weekly. He can be reached at sbugg@MetroWeekly.com. Follow him on Twitter @seanbugg.