Thursday, November 4, 2010

Fear the Skipper: Paul 'Skip' Stam

Posted By on Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 2:34 PM

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.

Taliban Stam: he knows if you've been bad or good (or at least wants to know)
  • Taliban Stam: he knows if you've been bad or good (or at least wants to know)

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