By Jim Hoover

The mainstream media is here for you…not for profit, mind you.

How do I know? Because they look after your priorities.

If you want an Eagle Scout’s budget, and favor jet-black hair over a receding hairline, the Ryan budget plan is for you, not the “People’s Budget.”

What? You’ve never heard of the “People’s Budget”?

Well, that is because the mainstream media completely ignored it while calling Ryan’s plan a serious solution to long-term budget problems. Now I must say that the Republican majority in the House completely ignored the “People’s Budget” too.

Most of you know that Ryan and 234 other Republicans in the House who voted to kill Medicare were practically booed out of their own local town meetings by their constituents. Why?

And true to form, 40 Republicans in the Senate also voted for the Ryan plan to kill Medicare.

Because it includes more tax cuts for the wealthy, tax hikes for the middle class, drastic cuts in social spending and a radical restructuring of Medicare that would shift most of the cost of healthcare to seniors, voters saw it as a plan for plutocrats. Can you imagine those voters? Its claims of deficit reduction rely on fatally flawed assumptions and pulled-out-of-Ryan’s-rear-end projections.

The only viable and fair plan was a product of the 76-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, a “People’s Budget” proposal on April 13^th. It eliminates the deficit in 10 years without eroding social services or raising taxes on the working class. Serious economists like Paul Krugman (NY Times) and Jeffrey Sachs (Huffington Post) have favored it. Krugman called it a “genuinely courageous” plan.

Meanwhile, Time Magazine (4/18/11), mostly ignoring the Ryan plan’s assault on the middle class, described Paul Ryan as having “jet black hair and a touch of Eagle Scout to him”.

That’s of greater importance, of course.

Isn’t it?