78 Years Old, Social Security Her Only Income, Living in a Car with a Dead Battery

Life For Someone in Paul Ryan’s America

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan likes to think of himself as a person interested in poverty.  He wants us to think of him as a person interested in poverty.  So in the past he has made trips to look at poverty and used his well oiled PR apparatus to let everyone know that he wants to do something about poverty.

Well if Paul Ryan has his way people like Edythe Russell will feel his impact, but not in a good way.  Edythe is living in her car in southern California.  From the L. A. Times.

"A  little more than 10 years ago, she dropped her hard-earned savings into a pair of $150,000 homes in Arizona, lived in one and rented the other. Just in time for the housing crash. Her renter walked away, her mortgage rate spiked, her income nose-dived and she lost everything.

Russell packed up and headed west with Chloe, a Yorkie, and Tippy, a Yorkie-poodle, and bunked with a friend in California. But she got shoved out when the friend’s daughter and granddaughter moved back in.

Her latest ex-husband lent a hand, setting her up in a Vista trailer park, but then he passed. Russell’s work dried up and she lost the trailer. Her $932 Social Security check barely covered the space rental and utility costs at the trailer park, and it didn’t help that Chloe and Tippy ran up some big medical bills."

Edythe Russell lost nearly everything; now she's living in a car with a dead battery and no gas

Oh, and what does Paul Ryan want to do about people like Edythe?  Well cut her Medicaid and privatize her Social Security.  See Paul thinks the biggest problem in Edythe’s life is she doesn’t have enough freedom, not enough choices and that government makes her take SS rather than letting her live on her own.

Thanks Paul, but Edythe really doesn’t need your help,  You and your fellow GOP mean spirited lawmakers have done enough to make her life miserable.