We mentioned yesterday that some results from Tuesday’s elections are pretty scary. No results, though, should frighten North Carolinians more than the GOP’s takeover of the state legislature. The reason? To be blunt, outside of Oklahoma, S.C. and Florida, it would be hard to find a group of legislators in America that is more dominated by right-wing ideologues, bigots, and corporate bootlicks. Republicans in Raleigh haven’t picked a new Speaker of the House, and Mecklenburg Rep. Thom Tillis is the early favorite, but one strong possibility for the post is current Minority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam of Wake County. Even if Stam doesn’t get the post, he will still be a formidable influence in the General Assembly.
Stam has a couple of ideas we could easily go along with: not allowing legislators to redraw district boundaries, and stopping the endless handover of money to individual corporations to get them to set up shop in N.C. If Stam isn’t the next Speaker, those two positions could be the reasons why. Otherwise, Stam is a textbook ill-tempered Bible-thumper, dedicated to quashing the rights of anyone who isn’t a straight male. (There’s a reason the BlueNC website refers to ol’ Skip as “Taliban Stam.”) If you want to check out Stam’s ideas for governance, go to his website. In the meantime, we’ll just remind you of a couple of Stam’s classic moments:
Stam spouted all kinds of goofball things while opposing the School Violence Prevention Act, also known as the “anti-bullying bill,” which you can fully expect the GOP to overturn (thank God Perdue has veto power). Stam at first said the bill would encourage pedophilia, which was stupid enough. Then he thought it would lead to same-sex marriages in North Carolina. (The horror! The horror!) He took the prize, though, when he argued in the House chambers that same-sex parents are actually more dangerous to children than second-hand smoke. That’s bad enough, but standing at the podium at the time was Sen. Julia Boseman, the legislature’s only openly gay member, and who happened to be involved in a child custody case at the time. It’s going to be an interesting two years.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2010.
There is a real problem with the state of N.C., when our citizens who took the time and effort to go to the polls to vote, felt that Skip Stam, was a viable choice for ANY elected position! People… when… if ever, are you going to wake up? Thru articles such as this, you have ALL of the information that you need, available at your fingertips, to read the ignorant quotes made by idiots such as Skip Stam! The ‘Good Ol’ Boy” politics are a thing of the past. Potential future voters…. PLEASE wake up! If you feel that Skip Stam is worthy of ANY public office, please just stay home, and do not vote. If you cast your vote for Stam… SHAME ON YOU ! You did EVERYONE a disservice.
First off, Grooms can’t add. A veto override requires a 3/5 super-majority. The GOP has such a super-majority in the Senate (31 out of 50). They hold a 67-52 lead in the House, plus one independent who caucuses with them. For a 3/5 super-majority to override, they need only four additional votes.
Eight Democrats in the House voted against the Act, and four of them (Brisson, Crawford, Hill, Spear) were re-elected. Add those four to the 68 in the Republican caucus and you get the 72 votes required to override.
Secondly, you might want to ask US Rep. Alan Grayson how well it worked out calling HIS opponent “Taliban Dan”. Hint: Mr. Grayson will soon be EX-Representative Grayson.
Of course, when the whole of your vocabulary is invectives and ad hominems, it’s amazing that Grooms can write a coherent sentence at all.
Thanks, as always, for your insightful commentary, FrankenMort. “Invective” and “ad hominem” — wow, Frankie, did you get a thesaurus for your birthday?
And thanks for bringing up Grayson, whose situation is utterly irrelevant to the post at hand, since the last time I looked, the BlueNC website wasn’t running for public office. But then, sticking to the point has never been your specialty, has it?