skip stam

Don't hold your breath, honey. You won't get a top spot in the GOP boys club without submitting your private parts to invasive ultrasound.

A contest is emerging for the No. 2 spot in the N.C. House. Rep. Julia Howard, a 12-term veteran and committee chairwoman, said she would challenge House GOP leader Paul "Skip" Stam for the speaker pro tem job.

Howard cited her previous leadership experience as majority whip and she would use the position to help orient the large incoming freshman class. "I have no agenda," the Mocksville Republican said.

Welcome to the United States of Scam-erica. Or Griftopia, as Matt Taibbi calls it in his book on the Wall Street meltdown. "There are really two Americas," Taibbi writes. For the grifter class, government is "a tool for making  money," while "in everybody-else land, the government is something to be avoided."

Not anymore. Here is the lesson Americans gleaned from the financial meltdown on and bailout of Wall Street: If the feds won't prosecute 'em, join 'em. Corruption has trickled down.

He must have been a telemarketer in a previous life:

"It is a beginning and it will be funded by corporations that believe in educational access for everyone," Stam told several hundred people attending the rally. "It will not cost the state money; it saves the taxpayers money while at the same time providing tens of thousands of scholarships for children whose families earn, for a family of four, up to about $50,000 a year."

It most certainly will cost the state money. Right out of the revenue coffers and into the hands of private schools:

Running Against the Architect of Amendment One by Jason Wunsch Democratic Candidate N.C House District 37

Many tears have been shed over Tuesday's passage of Amendment One in North Carolina. I would argue these tears have been for a good reason. As I have posted on this site and in social media, the collateral effects of this amendment will now plague our state for years to come. All is not lost. Voters have the power to hire and fire their elected officials. The one I am running against is the co-author and co-sponsor of Amendment One. While Tuesday may have appeared to be a victory to my opponent, a certain number had to have caught his attention. 57% of Wake County voted against Amendment One.

The battle is not lost. Unfortunately, it will now be fought through petitions and court cases. However, on November 6th, voters of District 37 will have a choice whether to allow the architect of Amendment One to keep drafting Bills in the N.C House of Representatives. I believe a change in leadership in this District is long overdue.

Paul “Skip” Stam has idiosyncratic notions about case law. Encountering obstacles to the conservative agenda in established law, or a constitution, he has reached through them for obsolete iterations of dogma in archaic documents such as the Magna Carta, the Code of Justinian or more recently, as with the marriage amendment, the Acts of the Albemarle. Ignoring the lineage of precedent, he finds the future in history’s discards.

It is a curious affectation that Stam dotes on quirks in outdated pre-revolutionary law to justify assaults on post-revolutionary freedoms and liberties. His royalist tendencies bespeak an aristocratic and autocratic disdain for civil government rather than any zeal for individual freedoms. In supporting the drive to restrict the human right of individuals to form partnerships for life he has oft quoted the 1669 Acts of the Albemarle as the foundation of marriage in North Carolina. How quaint and reckless to claim a foundation on the shifting sands of history in the Albemarle Sound.

It was a routine drunk driving stop. State Trooper M. Cape saw the car swerving in and out of lanes around midnight on Feb. 13th. He pulled the car over, asked the driver, a 24-year old male, to take a blood alcohol test.

The man refused. The man was arrested. The man was given a court date.

Then the man ran for Apex Town Council, and with the help of Republican stalwarts Mayor Keith Weatherly and Rep. Skip Stam (R-Apex), he won.

Scott Lassiter, a 24-year old teacher at the Johnston Co. Schools, was been groomed by the Apex Republican establishment for years. Ironically, his mother is Ann Lassiter, a confidant of former Democrat Speaker Jim Black and recipient of several thousand taxpayer dollars to write a 20-page “book” about the General Assembly a few years back. But that didn’t stop her and Keith Weatherly from being close, or from Weatherly appointing Lassiter to the town Parks & Rec board when Lassiter was still in high school.

It's time to boycott North Carolina

"Different things can be treated differently if the things or people are in a very different relationship."

--North Carolina House Majority Leader Paul "Skip" Stam (R), referring to gay and lesbian same-sex couples and their eligiblity for civil equality, at a debate at UNC-CH Law School, 9/21/2011

Well, Skip this "thing" (a native North Carolinian, who pays her taxes and is in a legal marriage not recognized by my state already) is calling for a boycott of this great state. We have a state economy in the crapper (10.4% unemployment), a state budget in crisis, and quite a few pro-LGBT companies and institutions located here that don't deserve to be punished by a boycott.

Two events of significance are coming up this week in North Carolina's fight to beat back the discriminatory, job-killing marriage amendment measure that is going to go on the ballot next May.

Full video (31 minutes) of the press conference yesterday at the NC General Assembly where Republican Representatives Dale Folwell, Speaker Pro-Tem, and Paul "Skip" Stam, Majority Leader, announced the upcoming introduction of a state constitutional amendment to ban something that is already banned in North Carolina: gay marriage. Meanwhile President Barack Obama declared federal disasters in seven NC counties as Hurricane Irene destroyed more than 1,000 homes, decimated NC Highway 12 and croplands were flooded, with initial damage estimates of over $70 $190 $400 million. Glad to know they've got their priorities straight.