Marxist retirement is tragic and unnecessary

I will know that California is low on funds when I stop reading about 6-figure pensions. The Santa Cruz newspaper reports:

SANTA CRUZ - Mike Rotkin, who has spent nearly two-thirds of his life at the City on a Hill, has finally and officially retired.

The five-time former mayor, who holds the record for City Council service, retired from UC Santa Cruz at the end of December, nearly 43 years after arriving as a graduate student in 1969.

After working as a teacher's assistant for several years, Rotkin served a combined 38 years as a lecturer and field study coordinator for Community Studies, a program being phased out by UCSC amid ongoing state funding cuts.

"I do feel that I'm not harmed by this as much as the students and the university by closing the program," Rotkin, 66, said. "It's tragic and unnecessary." ...

And even now, he's not really leaving. He will teach "Introduction to Marxism" as a summer session course and continue as member of the University Council of American Federation of Teachers' negotiating team.

"I didn't retire because I was tired of teaching," he said. "I retired because they threw me out."

There was a financial calculation, too.

Rotkin, who earned $88,461 from UCSC in the 2009-2010 academic year, figured out he would take home more each year if he started drawing on his pension. As a 26-year veteran of the City Council, he also gets a small pension from the city.

So he was being paid $90k to teach Marxism, and even more not to teach Marxism? The governor is planning on a tax increase to be approved by a ballot measure. There should be a ballot measure to abolish unfunded pensions and stop teaching Marxism.