Obama gets carried away on sick pay proposal

I just finished watching President’s Obama’s State of the Union address. The thought that everyone should be entitled to seven paid “sick” days per year is interesting, but seems contrary to the work ethic of most Americans. I have been employed for 34 years since I graduated from college. Under this proposal, I would have been entitled to 238 days of paid sick leave over the course of my career. Taking into consideration the number of paid holidays most companies already provide, and my various employers would have paid me for well over an entire year of work for which I was not actually working. While I am certainly fortunate to have had to take only one sick day over these years, this seems excessive no matter how you look at it.

John Bleyaert, Downers Grove

Rauner is hardly the only wealthy politician

I am amazed by the first sentence in a recent letter in the Sun-Times: “Our new governor disparaged his predecessor incessantly about his supposed disconnect with the common people, while he himself is a millionaire several times over.” American government today is chock-full of multimillionaire politicians, including Democrats. Does that mean that they, too, are totally disconnected from the voters?

John Babush, Big Rock, IL