The latest hub-bub in Ohio and around the country has been the push for all employers to offer paid sick days to all of their employees. The proposal, currently working its way through state legislation, is under fire because many see it as yet another area where the government is stepping into the business sector.

This may be true, but this time I am behind the intrusion as long as the lawmakers can draft a law which provides some minimum of mandatory sick days to employees, while also allowing for many of the notable exceptions included in the new minimum wage law. Hopefully it will also provide some flexibility in there as well. All that, and it has my yes vote!

This is a good idea for one simple reason. The first thing you hear from teachers and school administrators is to keep your kids home when they are sick so that whatever they have isn't spread throughout the entire school. This same principle applies to small businesses, maybe even more so because a good deal of them do not have the capacity to carry on with five employees all out since Jayne didn't stay home with pink eye because rent was due next week.

Just when I was about ready to give up on them people in Washington, they went and did somethin' nice fur me. Yep, the gubmint is cuttin me a check fur nothin'. It's like gettin' a present just fur bein' a citizen. Kinda makes you proud to be American again, don't it? Bein' that I'm luckier than a lot of people and I don't have to spend my check on stuff like food or life saving medicine, I been thinkin' about what I'm a'gonna do with dat money when I git it. So far I come up with a couple pretty cool ideas. At least they're pretty cool if ya ask me.

First, I'm a'gonna git a new mirror for my truck. Dat one on the shotgun side had a nasty run-in with a mailbox. The good news is that it stayed fixed to the truck like where it's s'posed to be. The mailbox didn't come out so good. Ole Cooter at the gayrage tells me he can fix me up with a new mirror for about $70. I spected it'd cost me more like twice as much. He says they's bringin' them mirrors in reeeel cheap like from China. Guess I'm gonna stimulate China some.

The second thing I'm buyin' will be a new lawn mower. I gots two of 'em already but one's 'bout 20 years old. That's the one with the handle held on by hose clamps from where it broke a couple years ago. It gots heating duct for a grass chute that I screwed on there when the real one rusted off. I'll prolly keep the old mower cuz, shucks, it still works, and I'm gotten kinda fond of it after all them years. If'n I does buy a new one I think I'm a'gonna git real fancy and git one of them ones that drives itself going forward and you just walk behind it with your hands on it.

I'm gonna hafta do these things really quick like though, cuz I hear we gots some trouble comin' down the pike. It's lookin' like that Barack Obama feller is gonna git hisself voted to be da prezeedent. It's not that I gots anything against the feller wantin' to be in the big office, he gots a right to do that. But it's lookin like his $845 billion United Nations Poverty Tax is gonna git jammed down our American throats reeeel quick and quiet like. I'm guessin we won't be seein too many more free gubmint checks after that.