Pennsylvania’s Gov. Ed Rendell insists he had no idea the state’s Homeland Security department was paying a third-party company to track activists in the state, ranging from animal rights supporters to, yes, the queers. Not that he’s going to fire James Powers, the guy in charge.
Something called the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response earned $125,000 in taxpayer funds to go all big brother on you, without the Showtime behind-the-scenes feed. And while it may have violated your constitutional rights, it’s not like it even helped keep the state safer.
Rendell, who claimed he’d just learned about the practice, said Tuesday that the information was useless to law enforcement agencies and that distributing it was tantamount to trampling on constitutional rights. In recent weeks, several acts of vandalism at drilling sites spurred the inclusion of events likely to be attended by environmentalists and the bulletins began going to representatives of Pennsylvania’s booming natural gas industry.
A Philadelphia rally organized by a nonprofit group to support Rendell’s push for higher spending on public schools even made a bulletin, as did drilling protests at a couple of Rendell’s news conferences this month as he toured the state to boost support for a tax on the natural gas industry.
“I am deeply embarrassed and I apologize to any of the groups who had this information disseminated on their right to peacefully protest,” Rendell said at an evening Capitol news conference. Rendell called the practice “ludicrous” and said the fact that the state was paying for such rudimentary information was “stunning.”
So what the heck was this company charged with doing?
[T]he company passed on alerts about legitimate protests – and the state Homeland Security Office then disseminated them in an intelligence bulletin that it publishes three times a week. The bulletin included information about a PrideFest by gays and lesbians; a rally that supported his administration’s education policy; and an anti-BP candlelight vigil. “Tell me, what critical infrastructure does the gay and lesbian PrideFest threaten?” Rendell asked. “How in the Lord’s name can we consider them to be terrorists?”
Well some of them are radical homosexuals.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Joy
I heard in city council today that this “company” is a mysterious nonprofit with a big name, but only one employee. If that’s true, then we ought to have even more questions–Like, who got scammed into believing that this was a legitimate operation in the first place? Maybe they grabbed lists of movie and protest and council meeting attendees because it was about all they were qualified to do.
Also, who, exactly, is on the board of that company / nonprofit?
Doug Shields wants to know, and so do I.
Ted B.
It’s not terribly surprising, Pennsylvania’s always been Philly and Pittsburgh and Alabama in the middle. And to this day you still have no gay-rights what-so-ever in Transylvania once you set-foot outside of the Philadelphia or Pittsburgh city-limits. And long into the 1980’s you could be arrested for felony-sodomy, or involuntarily-committed on the suspicion of homosexual conduct.
Of all the Northeastern States, gays and lesbians have the least legal protections in Pennsylvania.
JAW
Ed Rendell has always been one of our earliest and biggest supporters. He has been with us for over 20 years. Starting from his days In Philly as The DA then as Mayor and now as The Governor.
There is a long list of groups that were being tracked… and as Ed said… He was pissed off that they would even consider spying at Pride Fest,
Ed has supported and been coming to Pride Fest, Our Gay Pride, and Out Fest for many years. I am glad to see that he singled out Pride Fest, to show how stupid the tracking was, that the company was doing.
Please do not try and drag his good name through the mud If only he had run for, and had been elected President
Baxter
Animal rights supporters should be monitored. Gays, not so much.
Samuel
In the days after 9/11 “security” companies and “specialists” came out of the woodwork in droves. It was all about which agency needed to get bigger – the FBI, CIA, etc. Congress had the checkbook wide open to all comers. Many of these entities are still around doing virtually nothing, and I doubt the government has a good handle on who’s still on the payroll. Naturally, some of these groups crank out meaningless reports to justify their pay, and it looks like this is one of those stories showing your tax dollars hard at work.
JohnnyTrue
The Governor has been and continues to be one of the staunchest supporters of LGBT rigts. Unfortunately – the Republicans control one chamber and the Democrats barely control the other – so it is legislatively very difficult to pass anything pro-gay.
(having a bunch or rural conservative Dems there doesn’t help either).
This might be hard to believe, but a contract for $125K isn’t that big for a state with a $29 billion budget – and can be easily overlooked. But ultimately, the Gov still did the right thing – and took responsibility and apologized.
But it’s hardly the type of state Ted B (ax to grind?) pronounces – most bigger towns and cities have their own legal protections and we enjoy many open judges, city council members, supervisors and many many appointed officials (second most in the nation – according to the Victory Fund!!).
Brian Miller
God all the apologia makes me sick.
Rendell has done nothing significant as governor for LGBT people or anybody else.
As for the “company” distributing the “bulletins,” chances are rather high that this is good old Pennsylvania corruption. Dig deeply, and you’ll probably find the guy running the company is friends of a big campaign contributor or big politician in Philly or Pittsburgh. That’s how local politics here has always worked.