The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down for no good reason

I have to admit, I don't know much about this paper or the history behind it, but this seems a bit concerning. The article itself has a bit of a partisan slant, I tried to keep the quotes I took from it neutral, because it seems like a fairly bipartisan issue and seems to be the Pentagon itself undertaking this action.

www.usatoday.com...



In a heretofore unpublicized recent memo, the Pentagon delivered an order to shutter Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that has been a lifeline and a voice for American troops since the Civil War. The memo orders the publisher of the news organization (which now publishes online as well as in print) to present a plan that “dissolves the Stars and Stripes” by Sept. 15  including "specific timeline for vacating government owned/leased space worldwide.”

“The last newspaper publication (in all forms) will be September 30, 2020,” writes Col. Paul Haverstick Jr., the memo’s author. 

The first Stars and Stripes rolled off presses Nov. 9, 1861 in Bloomfield, Missouri

Since then Stars and Stripes has launched the careers of famous journalists such as cartoonist Bill Mauldin and TV commentator Andy Rooney. And its independence from the Pentagon brass has been guaranteed by such distinguished military leaders at Gens. John G. Pershing, George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower once reprimanded Gen. George Patton for trying to censor Mauldin cartoons he didn’t like.

As the “local paper” for the military, it provides intensive and critical coverage of issues that are important to members of the nation’s armed services and “cuts through political and military brass BS talking points,” Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., a Marine veteran, told Military.com.

It’s also arguably one of the most powerful weapons our soldiers have carried into battle with them. As a publication that’s underwritten by the military but not answerable to the brass, Stars and Stripes embodies that most American of values: the right to speak truth to power.

The rush to shutter Stars and Stripes also raises constitutional questions.

The memo ordering the publication’s dissolution claims the administration has the authority to make this move under the president’s fiscal year 2021 defense department budget request. It zeroed out the $15.5 million annual subsidy for Stars and Stripes. But Congress, which under the Constitution has the power to make decisions about how the public’s money is spent, has not yet approved the request.

So far, the Senate hasn’t acted. But in a letter released earlier this week, 15 members of the chamber, including combat veteran Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and four Republicans, called on Defense Secretary Mark Esper to “take steps to preserve the funding prerogatives of Congress before allowing any such disruption to take place.”

In a separate letter, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and Trump ally, makes a similar request. “As a veteran who has served overseas, I know the value Stars and Stripes brings to its readers,” he wrote, telling Esper that shutting down the paper before the Senate acts would be “premature.”

The eagerness to kill Stars and Stripes is hard to fathom. As the senators note in their letter to Esper, the $15.5 million saved by eliminating the newspaper’s subsidy would have a “negligible impact” on the Pentagon’s $700 billion budget.

But it would have an enormously negative impact on the paper’s more than 1.3 million readers. It would eliminate a symbol of the U.S. commitment to press freedom, flout the judgment of generations of military leaders and usurp the authority that the Constitution gives Congress to make decisions about how the government spends money.

Like I said, I don't really know enough about this paper to make too many comments, but from where I sit, this looks like another attack on free speech, targetted this time towards veterans and front line soldiers.

This doesn't seem to be a left or right, issue, despite the slant of the article. It seems both Republican and Democrat senators are concerned about this.

a reply to: dug88

This has been in the works for awhile.

November 26, 2013

Stars and Stripes forever? Pentagon may fold historic newspaper

www.foxnews.com...

Ironically, it was the paper itself which broke the news when officials said its presses could be stopped.

“In this budget environment, we’re looking at everything,” Navy Cmdr. Bill Urban, a spokesman for the cost assessment office, told Stars and Stripes.

Max Lederer, publisher of Stars and Stripes, said budget officials have made unprecedented requests for information, including hypothetical cuts, without being told why the review was under way.

Feb 14, 2020

www.military.com...

"So, we trimmed the support for Stars and Stripes because we need to invest that money, as we did with many, many other programs, into higher-priority issues," Esper said during a news conference at NATO headquarters. He listed space, nuclear programs, hypersonic missiles and "a variety of systems" as places the money -- slightly more than $15.5 million

It is kind of like PBS... why have it if it is just recycling AP news.

a reply to: dug88

Breaking

Senators are urging continued government funding of Stars and Stripes: www.stripes.com...

Why does it need government funding? The "Military Times" publications do not. (Military Times, Army Times, Navy Times, etc.)

It has been a small and kind of weak newspaper during my 28 years in the military.. I think it is a weekly and I would get it weeks late when I was in Iraq/AFG lol. With the internet it is time to shut it down and put it in a museum. Stacks of it would sit around unread... It surely can not compete with our minute by minute news reporting we all so crave today.

Budget? Seriously? Who believes this is really about balancing check books when they have so many bloated systems?

Do they not align with MSM propaganda they are ordered to push? What's the real reason?

Sure it may put a chink in the tower of gross over spending, but let's not kid ourselves, there is a different issue for why their pulling this trigger.

Some jack-holes will buy the domain name and use it for porn after they abandon it. I hope someone with good intentions gets it first.

a reply to: dug88
A bit off-topic:
I am curious, will the military personal be one of the first to receive the vaccine without being able to decline? Are vaccines mandatory for military personal? Would that not put them in great danger if a vaccine is rushed and the military personal are the guinea pigs for this rushed vaccine?

Hmmm 🤔

The office of Defense Secretary Mark Esper "decided to discontinue the publication of States and Stripes as a result of the defense-wide review as outlined in the president's budget request for fiscal year 2021," the memo said. Trump then tweeted on Friday afternoon:

twitter.com...

NPR

Bet, this has something to do with that smear article today from "The Atlantic."

originally posted by: EndtheMadnessNow
Hmmm 🤔

The office of Defense Secretary Mark Esper "decided to discontinue the publication of States and Stripes as a result of the defense-wide review as outlined in the president's budget request for fiscal year 2021," the memo said. Trump then tweeted on Friday afternoon:

twitter.com...

NPR

Bet, this has something to do with that smear article today from "The Atlantic."

Not so sure about that in the timeline, however we don't get to be privvy to what was already known by media before today, and of course Trump is partial about lauding the military at any particular moment in time....just like he wanted to execute Snowden when out of power, now he wants to praise him, while the latest from Trump is that the S&S will continue!
Trump should go work for Confused.com and give the country a bi of peace.

a reply to: EndtheMadnessNow

Thanks for posting the Good News! Glad Stars and Stripes will continue.

The military can save a lot more money by paying less for toilet seats, hammers, and stuff.

a reply to: dug88

I wonder who actually makes the budget for this ?

Who actually decided that this paper should end?