Jerry Sandusky's pension

Jerry Sandusky's currently in jail. When he gets sentenced in a few months, he'll likely eventually die in prison. But then there's the matter of his pension.

For whatever reasons, it seems Sandusky's employment while at Penn State in various -- ahem -- capacities, qualifies him to receive $59,000 annually as a pension. Many are outraged.

"It's tax payers' money" they cry.
They miss the obvious. It wouldn't matter if it was 59 cents, 59 thousand, or 59 million. If that's what his tenure of employment entitled him to, and there was no "out" clause for being convicted of child molesting -- then guess what? The pension has to be paid. Unsavory as it may seem -- a deal's a deal, and it must be honored.

Now the Pennsylvania legislature wants to pass a new law to make sure something like this never happens again. That's typical of most politicians. They're normally at least a few years, and sometimes decades, behind the real world. Even if they pass such a law, there's no way they can make it retroactive to affect Sandusky's pension. At that, depending on how it's written, a court might eventually strike it down as being unconstitutional. While many think depriving Sandusky of his pension would be justified, they might want to consider what other implications such a law could have. Would there be a certain set of rules, whereby if an employee broke one of them, their employer could nullify their pension?  Who gets to make the rules? Regardless, the potential for abuse by employers can hardly be overlooked. This could become a very slippery slope.

So where will the 59K go? I doubt it will deposited in Sandusky's commissary account in prison. He'll likely be kept in some sort of isolated confinement, because given his crimes, if exposed to the "general population", his life span might become very short. For some reason, serial child molesters seem to have fatal "accidents" while in prison. Go figure.

His wife Dorothy will probably collect it, and well she should. If a woman stayed married to, and stood by a man like Sandusky for as long as she did, her nickname Dottie starts to make a little more sense, when you think about it.

Besides, $59K is chump change in the world of major college athletics. Let her have it, because she did it the old fashioned way --- she earned it.