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The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down
- natcombs 6y ago"No good reason" is subjective. Was there any reason given? Looked at the article, but didn't see any. Perhaps it was cost? Does the Pentagon budget break out the cost of Stars & Stripes?
- Lev1a 6y ago> Looked at the article, but didn't see any. Perhaps it was cost? Does the Pentagon budget break out the cost of Stars & Stripes? From the article: > 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. That's 0.0022% of the Pentagons budget, i.e. essentially nothing.
- ahelwer 6y agoThe average American pays about $10k in federal income taxes each year. Assuming they do this for fifty years, this means the average American might pay $500k in federal income taxes over their lifetime. So this propaganda rag consumed the lifelong social contributions of 31 people, every year. It isn't nothing.
- elliekelly 6y ago> The average American pays about $10k in federal income taxes each year. Do you have a source for this? There is absolutely no way this is true. Are you including Social Security contributions as "federal income tax"? Or maybe did you mean the average American household pays $10k each year?
- ahelwer 6y agoHere you go: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/10/07/a-foolish-take-how-much-does-the-average-american-pay-in-taxes/106237216/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/10... Say it's about $10k for federal, for ease of calculation. If it's less, then that means even more people's lifelong contributions are incinerated by a propaganda rag.
- elliekelly 6y ago> According to a recent survey of nearly 130,000 American consumers, the average American spends $10,489 each year in federal, state, and local income taxes.
- ahelwer 6y agoI really don't know what you're arguing about here. To repeat myself, if I overestimated how much they paid, then it's even more people whose contributions are incinerated. Yay for my original point I guess?
- eesmith 6y agoI think the argument is that simple numbers don't really mean much, especially when misrepresented. If you have an point to make, it should be correct. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/revenues/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... says that payroll taxes and corporate income tax (in 2015) together are about the same contribution to federal income as individual income taxes, which puts a factor of 2 the other way in your estimate.
- ahelwer 6y agoWhy are other source of government income relevant here?
- 6y ago
- valuearb 6y agoThe “average” American doesn’t pay federal income taxes. Only 47% do.
- mikestew 6y agoThe average American also has 2.3 kids. Are you going to counter-argue that no one has three tenths of a child?
- Bud 6y agoI'm not sure you are parsing what "average" means.
- valuearb 6y agoIt was just a (innacurate) turn of phrase. A better way of saying it only 47% of Americans paying federal taxes contribute to Stars and Stripes.
- liability 6y agoMedian seems as valid an 'average' as mean.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago"average" usually means "mode" or "median" when used as "average person". The meaning can be inferred from context or clarified. "Mean" is almost never correct for distributions that aren't near uniform, and never correct for distributions that aren't even near normal and not near symmetric.
- rjmunro 6y ago31 people's tax is nothing in a country of 328,000,000 people. Even 1500 people's tax every year, which sounds worse, is still nothing.
- ahelwer 6y agoNo, it isn't nothing. My point is you can't wave away these numbers just by putting them next to a much larger number. These bills ultimately have to be paid, and asking whether a propaganda rag is worth >31 people's lifelong tax contributions every year is a much better framing than "we already incinerate cash, what's a bit more" - that is just utterly terrible reasoning. Try applying it to your own budget and see where that gets you at the end of the month. Things add up quickly.
- qqqwerty 6y agoIt is nothing. For example, it is the equivalent of me budgeting for a single cup of coffee for the entire year. The administrative costs of removing that expense would dwarf the expense itself, and could actually result in significantly negative ROI when accounting for opportunity cost (hundreds, if not thousands of alternative opportunities to save more money are being ignored while leadership focuses on this one).
- ahelwer 6y agoLeadership isn't interested in cutting military funding generally, so there is no opportunity cost here. I very much doubt there are administrative costs that exceed $15.5 million, certainly not for the next several years. Maybe if democrats decide to turn it into a political football for reasons that make sense only to the liberal mind.
- aaron695 6y ago> That's 0.0022% of the Pentagons budget, i.e. essentially nothing. This is the wrong way to think of it. It's either a positive use of money or negative. But on top of that simplicity, Ryan Air for instance asks employees to steal pens from hotels. They are extremists, but they run some savings that would be so silly they are negative to create a culture. This however seems political. Someone is trying to make someone else look bad.
- nodefortytwo 6y ago"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."
- jdhn 6y agoI'm OK with cutting $15.5 million from the military budget. Sure, it's a drop in the ocean, but any savings we can wring out of the military is a good thing.
- itomato 6y agoNot with you on that one. Soldiers and their families are, were rather, represented in print. Not any more. What's that worth?
- everybodyknows 6y agoNon-government military news sites that regularly expose failures of the system, injustices to those in service: https://www.military.com/ https://www.military.com/ https://www.militarytimes.com/ https://www.militarytimes.com/
- krapp 6y agoNo more or less than any other demographic. If it's that important, someone can put up a website or find another publisher or something.
- colejohnson66 6y agoNot saying whether this is a good idea or not, but soldiers on the front lines don’t always have internet, and, as such, can’t access internet news.
- krapp 6y ago
- mcot2 6y agoThe answer is so obvious it doesn’t require this pedantic exercise.
- mcintyre1994 6y agoFrom the article it sounds like the cost is $15.5m? > 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. > 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.
- strombye 6y agoAnd you’re gonna fall for that as the reason? And just ignore the administration’s long running campaign to undermine journalists Whenever possible?
- pwinnski 6y agoI think this is a case in which words don't properly convey the scale at hand. $15.5 million and $700 billion might better be said as $15.5 million and $700,000.0 million.
- stanfordkid 6y agoThe military budget is $700 billion, as stated in the article. They probably spend more than $15mm on toilet paper for a single Airforce base.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoLet's say you need to clean out your garage. It's piled full of stuff and it's going to take you a while to clean up. Do you first reach for the biggest thing in the bottom of the pile, or do you grab the small stuff on top that's closest to you first?
- klyrs 6y agoOnly, you're not cleaning a garage, you're a tin-pot dictator and you control the budget of a newspaper which has recently covered a narrative that you don't like.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoThe article did not mention that they covered a narrative that Trump disliked. Where did you get that from?
- matt_kantor 6y ago> https://www.stripes.com/news/us/trump-denies-reports-that-he-disparaged-us-war-dead-as-losers-suckers-1.643839 https://www.stripes.com/news/us/trump-denies-reports-that-he... > A few days ago they also ran a story about a poll showing Trump lagging Biden among the military. Thanks to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24375564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24375564
- liability 6y agoIt may well be retaliatory, but not for that specific article/poll. The Trump administration proposed defunding Stars and Stripes back in February. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-stars-and-stripes-newspaper-has-long-supported-the-troops-now-it-needs-congresss-support/2020/06/18/10046b92-8982-11ea-8ac1-bfb250876b7a_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-stars-... > In February, the Trump administration proposed eliminating all of the publication’s federal support in 2021. That’s more than $15 million a year, about half its budget. “I can’t think of a graver threat to its independence,” the paper’s ombudsman, Ernie Gates, told me recently. “That’s a fatal cut.”
- brmgb 6y ago> Looked at the article, but didn't see any > Does the Pentagon budget break out the cost of Stars & Stripes? The answer to this question is in the eighth paragraph of the article, right before the discussion on how congress actually refunded the publication, the decision now resting with the senate and how the Pentagon ordered it to shutdown anyway which is unusual. I will hasard that when you said you looked at the article it was to be taken literally and didn't imply that you actually read it.
- moate 6y agoNo reason is given, so there is “no good reason”. There technically isn’t a bad reason. The implied reason is “because its funding wasn’t included in the (non-binding) presidential budget proposal “
- snowwrestler 6y agoBy cutting Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon will finally afford to add a few more developers to the lean-and-mean F-35 program, which is sure to speed up the software delivery. Smart management.
- standardUser 6y ago"Perhaps it was cost?" I hope we all got a good laugh over the idea that the Pentagon would ever be concerned with costs on the scale!
- liability 6y agoHard to mourn the demise of a propaganda publication, no matter how old it is. I know they supposedly have editorial independence, but that's hard to take seriously.
- martythemaniak 6y agoIt seems there's a very simple reason. https://www.stripes.com/news/us/trump-denies-reports-that-he-disparaged-us-war-dead-as-losers-suckers-1.643839 https://www.stripes.com/news/us/trump-denies-reports-that-he... A few days ago they also ran a story about a poll showing Trump lagging Biden among the military.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vandyswa 6y agoAh, thank you. I was pretty sure it would be something like this, but couldn't find details anywhere else.
- liability 6y agoCheck the dates involved, this explanation doesn't hold water. However there may be another story from months ago that prompted this.
- Balgair 6y agoWhat makes it all the more frustrating is that Stars and Stripes didn't conduct the poll, they just reported on it. The poll was conducted by Military Times with Syracuse University. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/08/31/as-trumps-popularity-slips-in-latest-military-times-poll-more-troops-say-theyll-vote-for-biden/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/08... To note in that poll, ~60% of officers would like to have another Commander in Chief.
- pstuart 6y agoAny mention of he who cannot be named will bring out the downvoters here. Pity, isn't it?
- ars 6y agoAre you seriously implying Trump has a time machine? This memo happened before the story you linked.
- tomohawk 6y agoNever heard of "firemen first"? That's what this sounds like. Whenever there's a budget fight, there's brinkmanship, and this is a common tactic. Government, industry - it doesn't matter. Respond to cuts or proposed cuts by putting something on the cut pile that is unacceptable.
- throwaway5752 6y agoIt's not. This administration has increased the defense budget by $200 billion, cumulatively.
- sokoloff 6y agoYet if you wanted to increase it by $300B, you could still throw something unacceptable on the cut list as pressure to raise the budget further. This is a second-derivative tactic; it can be employed even if the first-derivative is positive.
- iron0013 6y agoThe actual title of this article is “The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down for no good reason“. The second half of that title, which you removed, is the entire point of the article. Altering that title does not make it more objective, it fundamentally obscures the entire point of the article. Moderators, please stop editorializing via manipulation of post titles. You are not making them “less inflammatory”, you are inserting your own perspective and misleading HN readers into thinking the article is about something that it’s not.
- Finnucane 6y ago"Stars and Stripes embodies that most American of values: the right to speak truth to power." Which is the last the thing current administration wants anyone to be able to do.
- Shivetya 6y agoShow me one in the last generation or two that did? Who harassed more journalist and whistle blowers during their time in office, Trump or Obama. Neither was great but the prior administration set new standards for threatening those who would make government justify its actions. The difference is one was a media darling and the other is a media flashpoint
- valuearb 6y agoWhataboutwhat?
- nicwolff 6y agoNo contest: Trump harasses journalists at every rally – by now, hundreds or thousands of them. And whistle blowers? He fired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman and his brother after Vindman testified. His lackeys in the House exposed the IRS whistleblower by name.
- ch4s3 6y agoI don't really have a stake here, and voted for Obama but he and his justice department prosecuted a record number of journalists. To quote the Washington Post "Of the 13 people who have" (ever) "been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for leaking secrets, eight were arrested under Obama's administration"
- slg 6y agoAnyone have a full list of who they are counting as either the 8 or 13 in that quote? According to Wikipedia, the number of people who have been charged under the espionage act is much higher than 13. For example, there are 52 pages of people convicted under the act.[1] I guess it depends on your definition of "leaking". The relevant dictionary definition of leak is "to give out (information) surreptitiously".[2] Giving information to a foreign government should seemingly be classified as leaking so I'm not sure we should necessarily link it to either journalistic endeavors or whistleblowing. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Persons_convicted_under_the_Espionage_Act_of_1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Persons_convicted_und... [2] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leak https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leak
- apricot 6y agoI'd be willing to bet that it's because they printed something that criticized Trump, and it was mentioned on a TV program Trump watches.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ghufran_syed 6y agoFor those who are against this move, in general are you in favor of government journalism in general? Do you think the US would be better with more government journalism? Should there be a a US postal service newspaper, a bureau of land management newspaper, possibly a US Customs and immigration service newspaper? If not, what's so special about having a government-run military newspaper that you think it should exist, but not the others?
- liability 6y agoPBS and NPR are generally okayish, they certainly look good when compared to their commercial equivalents anyway... though that might be damning with faint praise. I'm not sure of these are valid comparisons to Stars and Stripes though.
- nateberkopec 6y agoNPR and PBS both receive the majority of their funding from private sources, so I don't think its a valid comparison.
- paulmd 6y agoBBC generally works pretty well and produces a lot of quality content (even many kinds that are not necessarily commercially viable but nevertheless benefit us all when they're made). I don't see what's inherently negative about government journalism, although I certainly wouldn't trust the independence of say Voice of America based on the way it's run. But the BBC shows it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
- js2 6y agoFrom a bipartisan group of Senators: > We understand that DoD plans to cease publication of Stars and Stripes on September 30, 2020 and completely dissolve the organization by January 31, 2021 as a result of the proposed termination of funding in the fiscal year 2021 President’s budget. We urge you to take steps to preserve the funding prerogatives of Congress before allowing any such disruption to take place, for the following reasons. > First, the House-passed version of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2021, contains additional funding not requested by the Administration to continue operating Stars and Stripes. Second, the Senate has not yet released a defense appropriations bill, nor had an opportunity to conference with the House position, leaving it as a real possibility that Congress may not agree with the proposal to eliminate this funding. Third, the standard text of a continuing resolution – that funds are provided “at a rate of operations… for continuing projects and activities” as provided for in the previous year’s Department of Defense Appropriations Act – places a legal obligation on the Department to not act on a termination of a program until a full-year appropriations bill is enacted. We seek your written assurance that the Department will comply with this obligation and avoid steps that would preempt the funding prerogatives of Congress. https://www.boozman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/9/boozman-colleagues-urge-dod-to-reinstate-stars-and-stripes-funding https://www.boozman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/9/boozm... Additional coverage: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/09/02/senators-esper-reverse-your-decision-kill-stars-and-stripes.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/09/02/senators-espe... https://www.stripes.com/news/us/bipartisan-group-of-senators-urges-esper-to-keep-funding-stars-and-stripes-1.643650 https://www.stripes.com/news/us/bipartisan-group-of-senators...
- t0mmyb0y 6y agoSo sad. S&S is one of the best ways to turn locals.
- glitcher 6y agoOne thing I've always wondered about when it comes to the temporary nature of US presidential terms and their respective administrations - why does it seem like it's so much easier to dismantle things than to create them in the first place? Especially for things that took a substantial amount of time and effort to build, shouldn't we require much more scrutiny before considering an action that effectively dismantles/dissovles/destroys them? Instead it feels more like we are at the mercy of the whims of whoever is the current temp-employee-in-chief.
- jakkyboi 6y agoI think that's just the nature of government. If a large enough force acts, it's very easy to tear down such an abstract system.
- bilbo0s 6y agoIn all honesty it doesn't even have to be large, it suffices to be powerful. Like the President. If you're the president, you don't really need the 535 people from congress to act with you. You only need them to not act, which they can be relied on to do more often than not. (In fact, I believe you don't even need all 535 of them to not act, only some of them can take the action of "no action" and you can do what you wish.)
- madhadron 6y agoWhat we have learned is that you only need the Senate Majority Leader to refuse to act. It turns out that is the crucial weakness in the US government with no checks and balances on it. And, of course, isn't in the US Constitution.
- ultrarunner 6y agoIf this were true wouldn't the size and scope of governments decline over time? I'm quite confident that there are more governmental organizations in the US than I could name, and each one of them have numerous programs. Indeed there have been entire agencies created in my lifetime, but despite the calls to defund or abolish some, I can't think of one that's closed. (caveat: you said "things" which I took to mean something like "governmental products" which tend to have a high amount of inertia; if you had something else in mind this may not apply)
- Dirlewanger 6y agoI wonder if this qualifies as violating the 1st Amendment, since it's basically the government shutting down another voice in the government.
- krick 6y agoThe link is the usual... stuff, so it's obvious why I cannot treat seriously any words of this "opinion contributor". So I don't have anything better than to ask HN: for those unaware of the situation, what can be considered the real reason to shut down this newspaper? It seems like unusual thing to do, and considering the circumstances will surely cause some discontent (and, what's more importantly, if I'm not mistaken: discontent of some subset of Trump's supporters), so there must be some important reason to issue such an order. So what is it?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Balgair 6y agoIt seems to be related to a recent poll of US troops on their preferred presidential candidate. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/08/31/as-trumps-popularity-slips-in-latest-military-times-poll-more-troops-say-theyll-vote-for-biden/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/08... It seems Donny is trying to take out his frustration with lackluster polling on Star and Stripes, despite that not having been the publication that conducted the poll. It is a more widely read US armed forces publication, though. To note on the poll, officers would rather have another Commander in Chief by about a 3-2 margin.
- Gibbon1 6y agoThe Republicans and the Administration are pissed because they ordered the military to break the black lives matters protests and the army told them to get stuffed. So they are throwing a tantrum because they always assumed they'd have the army to back them up and it turns out they don't.
- czzr 6y agoCompletely off topic but - the US today “EU experience” is amazing. Just a simple clean page you can read.
- TheGrim-888 6y agoWhatever the actual situation is, and whether it's good or bad, this is the absolute worst form of journalism. It just screams bias; the author injects their own political opinions, they tell the reader what to feel and believe, they twist words and exaggerate in order to sell their political message, it pulls the usual tricks around trying to imply that Trump was directly responsible, and that you should hate Trump like the writer does - this is the complete opposite of any sort of respectable impartial journalism, it's a blatant political hit piece. In my mind this type of journalism, this article itself, is one of the biggest threads to our country, it's so ironic. Note that I'm not saying we shouldn't have freedom of speech, or that they shouldn't be able to write what they want. I'm just saying it's possible to write horrible, damaging, biased, political hit pieces, and that is what this is.
- briefcomment 6y agoTrump just tweeted that he won't let this happen. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1301968873487564802 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13019688734875648...
- aaron695 6y agoThis should be top by now. And how did this article get out he was cutting it? His base is in part military and family's it's not something he would logically do 3 months before an election.
- Fjolsvith 6y agoFake news to undermine military support for Trump in the upcoming election?
- shadowgovt 6y agoNeither is calling Vietnam vets "suckers," but here we are. Perhaps he's not a good strategist. Evidence seems to suggest.
- aaron695 6y agoYes, also fake news it seems. So outlandish, but the suckers just believe it. I don't think the media even has a source willing to say they directly heard it but they are still running it. So it seems the media is attacking him on the military front.
- shadowgovt 6y agoI think it's understandable why sources would want to remain anonymous when criticizing this President. The key question is: will he sue for libel or defamation? I expect he won't, and I expect he won't because truth is always an affirmative defense against those accusations in US law.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]