The NCAA's penalty on Penn State University — "a $60 million sanction" and "a vacation of all wins from 1998 through 2011" — seems excessive.

Forcing the university to pay $60 million doesn't punish coach Joe Paterno, who is dead, or assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse. It punishes the university's current students and professors and staff. Few, if any of them, did anything wrong. It also punishes the taxpayers of Pennsylvania, who contribute to funding the university through their tax dollars. Few, if any of them, did anything wrong, either. It's a collective punishment rather than an individual punishment.

The vacation of wins is also absurd. It affects the records not only of the coaches but also of players who did nothing wrong, and it suggests a power of retroactive reality-adjustment that defies reality and common sense. Why not vacate all the college degrees granted by Penn State during that period, too?

"Top 2% Not Job Creators Or Millionaires In Tax Debate," is the headline over a Bloomberg News article that reports:

President Barack Obama describes them as "millionaires and billionaires" who can afford to pay higher taxes. Republicans call them "job creators" who need to keep their money so they can hire more workers.

As the Democratic president and his Republican opponents debate whether to extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the top 2 percent of U.S. taxpayers -- individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and married couples making more than $250,000 -- their poll-tested phrases obscure the truth about who would be affected.

They are two-earner professional couples living on the East and West Coasts, doctors, lawyers, engineers and Wall Street executives. Few are billionaires or earn more than $1 million a year, and most are not employers.

The Obama administration wants to allow people to get rid of their student loan debt through bankruptcy — but only if the debt is owed to private lenders rather than by the federal government. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The recommendation, in a report by the Education Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, wouldn't affect the vast majority of student debt, which is issued by the federal government. It would apply only to the roughly $150 billion, or 15% of total outstanding student debt, issued by private lenders such as SLM Corp.'s Sallie Mae and Wells Fargo & Co....

Expanding the concept to federal loans would be politically controversial given that it would likely result in taxpayer losses...

When the government gets into a business, like student loans, it sometimes tries to write the rules so that it is harder for any privately owned competition to succeed.

Charles Krauthammer writes:

Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails. So did Steve Jobs. Yet only he created the Mac and the iPad.

Obama's infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What's variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes.

Or, as I put it here the other day:

Never mind that there are lots of people who have the same great teachers, roads, bridges, and the Internet and who, for whatever reason, do not choose to build businesses

Frederick Van Bennekom, a FutureOfCapitalism community member who is a professional survey design expert at Great Brook, sends some thoughts on the New York Times news article about its own poll:

Since I'm a surveyor, I had to look at the Times survey. A couple of things jumped out.

In the description of the survey, I found this line in the article interesting: "The poll, conducted between July 11 and 16 and including 982 registered voters..."

It leaves a lot unsaid, namely that it included 147 people who were not registered. 82% of respondents were registered, yet 88% said they intend to vote. Hmmm...

Then there's this gross misstatement from the write-up:

"Nearly half of voters say the current economic plight stems from the policies of Mr. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, which most voters expect Mr. Romney would return to. "

The actual question is:

Pressure is building for Mitt Romney to release more tax returns than he already has released. The Wall Street Journal runs an op-ed today Joseph Thorndike, an employee of the tax-exempt Tax Analysts, calling on Mr. Romney to put out more returns. USA Today has an editorial calling for Mr. Romney to release more returns, and even the right-leaning National Review advised in an editorial, "he should release them."

I disagree with the National Review editorial and with the other voices calling on Mr. Romney to put out more returns. Here are three reasons why it would be a bad idea.

John Kass, writing in the Chicago Tribune, has a column on "You Didn't Build That": "He stands there at the front of the mob, in his shirt sleeves, swinging that government hammer, exhorting the crowd to use its votes and take what it wants."

President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness has not met in six months, Politico's Josh Gerstein, a former colleague of mine, reports:

The seeming slowdown in Jobs Council activities may be partly due to the departure of two key staffers, Greg Nelson and John Oxtoby. The pair served as "the logistics backbone" of the council's work, a former colleague said...

Oxtoby recently left the White House to attend Harvard Business School, the ex-colleague said. According to his LinkedIn page, he is presently a business development manager with Intel in China.

The portion of the White House website devoted to the Jobs Council shows its last meeting as October and lists Oxtoby and Nelson as still on board. What appears to be the council's primary website, www.jobs-council.com, is run by General Electric, whose CEO, Immelt, serves as the panel's chairman. Clicking on the site's "contact" link directs a visitor to GE's media relations department...

Powerline's Scott Johnson makes an interesting point about President Obama's "You Didn't Build That" comment:

Obama's remarks support his demand for higher income taxes. Making his case, Obama seeks to undermine the claim of right with which individuals hold their property, their income, their wealth. Under Obama's doctrine, all arise from the collective support of the government. They are not the fruit of the individual's labor.

Under Obama's doctrine, there is no just limit on the power of the government to take the individual's property. The property isn't that man's alone; he alone did not earn it. What the government does not take from the individual by taxes or regulation remains his conditionally, on the sufferance of the state.

Clive Crook, writing in Bloomberg View:

The obsession with the Bush-era tax rates is mistaken in another way, too. It opens Democrats to the charge that their notion of fairness is about leveling down not leveling up. That's still a profoundly un-American idea. You don't improve the prospects of the unemployed, or of people with limited skills in low-wage jobs, by increasing taxes on the rich. Where is Obama's agenda for expanding economic opportunity? Shouldn't he have one? And shouldn't it have at least equal standing with the quest to hammer the 1 percent?

The "you didn't build that" passage of President Obama's Roanoke speech has gone viral on the Internet, with the Republican National Committee posting posters of Steve Jobs, the Wright Brothers, and Alexander Graham Bell. The Wall Street Journal has an editorial calling it "the line of the year."

Here's the full passage:

President Obama, speaking July 17 in San Antonio: "We've already cut a trillion dollars out of our federal budget."

A strike authorization vote is among the options under consideration for newsroom employees at the New York Times, the union that represents the Times reporters is saying.

A negotiations update issued Tuesday on the web site of the Newspaper Guild of New York, a Communications Workers of America local, accused Times management of trying to declare an impasse in the 17-month-long talks over a new contract.

"If impasse is declared, the Guild would challenge the move at the National Labor Relations Board. A strike authorization vote, members' only other recourse, is another option," the update said.

A New York Times strike, or even the threat of one, in the middle of the national political conventions, the presidential debates, and the presidential election could cripple the newspaper, already challenged by competition from online newcomers.

A college student who saw my column responding to President Obama's stump speech had some follow-up questions:

You did a good job responding to most of the President's speech, so I'd like to hear what you have to say for the rest of it (I imagine you couldn't write about the entire speech otherwise your article would be too long).
Below are some of the other points the President makes that I find interesting and I'd like your thoughts on (and by thoughts, I'm hoping you'll explain the hole in the logic).

1. The Clinton era took a 'balanced-budget approach' that raised taxes and cut spending which resulted in surpluses, jobs and wealth ... thus we should do it again

2. Government research created the internet which allowed companies to grow and capitalize on them ... some of the best things have come thanks to government (not private) enterprise

3. Taxes were tremendously high in the 60's and yet we had economic growth ... high taxes today won't be that burdensome

Andy Kessler has a good piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining how productivity improvements of the sort Bain Capital pursued help to create jobs:

In a competitive economy, productivity—doing more with less—always lowers the cost of products or services: $5,000 computers become $500 tablets. Consumers get to spend the difference elsewhere in the economy, and entrepreneurs will be happy to sell them what they want or create new things they never heard of, but will want. And those with capital will be eager to fund these entrepreneurs. Win, win.

The mechanism to decide the most effective use for this capital is profits. The stock market bundles profits and is the divining rod of productivity, allocating capital in cycle after cycle toward the economy's most productive companies and best-compensated jobs. And it does so better than any elite economist or politician picking pork-barrel projects and relabeling them as "investments."