Fucking Moron 2.0

Bearded git Jeff Jarvis says that the 9/11 Commission is at fault for the failed Bush Administration response to Hurricane Katrina. No, really.

The 9/11 Commission bears some responsibility for the disaster that American disaster relief has become.... [Para.] But there was no deliberation after the commission issues its report and browbeat Washington into doing what they said. So Washington did. And FEMA is a mess. And New Orleans is a mess.

And here's his proof:

I've been trying to find how exactly FEMA's reorganization plan came: Were the details laid out by the commission or by Congress? Doesn't matter, really.

The intellectual rigor of the argument astounds.

Bearded Git 2.0 might want to use the internet he's always prattling on about to school his sorry ass:

But then, as former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke explained in his recent book Against all Enemies, "the White House legislative affairs office began to take a head count on Capitol Hill." Realizing that the Lieberman Bill would likely pass both houses of Congress, with no credit given to the White House, in June 2002 the administration changed its tune, calling for a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that would be even larger than the one Lieberman had proposed.

Under the administration's plan, 22 government agencies, FEMA among them, would be merged into the DHS. Analysts in and out of government warned against subsuming the emergency agency's vital functions in a new super-department. "There are concerns of FEMA losing its identity as an agency that is quick to respond to all hazards and disasters," the agency's inspector general noted in a memo to Allbaugh. Congress' Government Accountability Office judged the merger to be a "high-risk" endeavor for FEMA, and the Brookings Institution, a leading Washington think-tank, cautioned in a report that such a move could hobble the agency's natural disaster programs. "While a merged FEMA might become highly adept at preparing for and responding to terrorism, it would likely become less effective in performing its current mission in case of natural disasters as time, effort and attention are inevitably diverted to other tasks within the larger organization."

But Bush's proposal won out, and a shift in priorities from natural disasters to counter-terrorism immediately took hold. In its 2002 budget, the White House doubled FEMA's budget to $6.6 billion, but of that sum, $3.5 billion was earmarked for equipment and training to help states and localities respond to terrorist attacks.

Michael Brown, a college friend of Allbaugh's who had served as FEMA's general counsel, was recruited to head the agency, which would now be part of the DHS's Emergency and Response Directorate. When the reorganization took effect on March 1, 2003, Brown assured skeptics that under the new arrangement, the country would be served by "FEMA on steroids"--a faster, more effective disaster agency.

The reorganization took effect March 1, 2003. The 9/11 Commission Report was issued in July 2004.

But! But! What about the 9/11 Commission? It's their fault! It is! It is! It is!

And this tossbag is "conven[ing] a meeting to bring together the best of the web -- software, hardware, infrastructure, media, money -- to start to gather around needs and solutions" for future disasters. Give it up, Jarvis. Your credibility and relevance are beyond recovery.

Stay tuned for future Jarvis installments: (1) The Old Media, which is dead and just doesn't know it, is to blame for the death of every American in the past month. And they know it; (2) Kofi Annan was raping women in the Superdome; (3) The people who named those Iraqi brothers weeks after I did have the blood of Katrina's victims on their hands too.

Update: Paragraph after large block quote edited for clarity.