75 years ago, the last time California was in an economic crisis this dire, one of the groups that suffered the most was the elderly. Too old to work, with no jobs available even if they could, with savings wiped out in the collapse of the banking system and with no pensions whatsoever, poverty among the elderly reached epidemic proportions, burdening their children and grandchildren with the cost of care.

So a Long Beach doctor named Francis Townsend proposed to do something about it, and through a grassroots movement built a nationwide mass base for the Townsend Plan – which we now know as Social Security.

The 1930s saw us react to crisis by ensuring the elderly had enough to live in their old age, freeing the rest of society for productive work. FDR also promoted stable pensions, ensuring that honest work would be rewarded.

Now, in this economic crisis, conservatives want to destroy pensions. Instead of protecting and bolstering the elderly, they want to attack them, rob them of the pensions they worked hard to earn, and steal what remains of their economic security.

Former San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Ed Mendel started an anti-pensions blog, CalPensions, designed to promote the attack on two cornerstones of financial security for the aged – Cal-PERS and CalSTRS. And if that wasn’t enough, a former Yacht Party assemblyman, Keith Richman, plans to circulate an initiative to eliminate government pensions and replace them with 401(k)s .

Yes, 401(k) accounts, the same that lost between 20% and 40% of their value in 2008. They really believe this is a good idea? Of course they do. Conservatives are driven now by the desire to destroy what remains of the New Deal and the prosperity it created. They see pensions – the fruits of a lifetime of hard work – as illegitimate, a target for destruction.

From a fiscal perspective alone this is a bad move. The city of Pacific Grove, located next to Carmel and Pebble Beach, voted in November 2008 to investigate leaving Cal-PERS and moving city workers to a 401(k), convinced by conservatives that public workers were at the core of the city’s fiscal problems.

The preliminary report, issued earlier this month, showed that it would actually cost PG more money to leave Cal-PERS than to stay. This in a city with a large number of retired workers, which styles itself as “America’s Last Hometown” – a town where, apparently, the teacher and the fireman shouldn’t be able to enjoy a financially secure old age.

There’s no doubt that we need to deal with pensions that have lost value. But instead of doing away with them and consigning the elderly to poverty for their remaining years, it would make sense of us to pursue reforms intended to stabilize pensions and reinforce economic security for all Californians.

Conservatives are convinced that the solution to our state’s crisis is to make the most vulnerable suffer, whether they’re disabled or on a pension. It’s our job as progressives to make sure they do not succeed.

I will be hosting a two-hour radio show on KRXA 540 AM this morning at 8, to discuss this and other issues in California politics

Given the recent losses in the stock markets, this news should come as no surprise:

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System portfolio has lost 31.1 percent of its value since peaking last fall, a staggering $81.4 billion drop. CalPERS officials say a “rainy day fund” is helping to defray the losses – for now. But if the market slump continues, they will hit up state and local employers for more money. That’s a painful prospect as California struggles through a fiscal emergency and municipalities cope with the foreclosure crisis and economic downturn.

Cal-PERS has the power to force the state and local governments to increase contributions to make up for shortfalls. That is good for the state economy, because well-funded pensions help provide jobs and ensure that retired workers are financially secure, easing the burden on and creating more job openings for younger workers.

But that’s also a political problem as the costs can cause a political backlash against not just Cal-PERS as an institution, but against public workers for being “greedy” for daring to want a secure and properly funded pension. Already Orange County has decided to put public workers’ pensions to a public vote, a move designed to screw those workers out of a fair retirement.

Here in Northern California public workers have taken the brunt of the blame for the Vallejo bankruptcy. In Pacific Grove, the town next to Monterey, I was treated to the spectacle all year of so-called progressives attacking public workers and Cal-PERS for causing the city’s financial problems (which actually stemmed from poor accounting, giveaways to the politically connected, and a refusal to raise taxes).

As the economic crisis worsens across California well-funded pensions are an absolute necessity. The movement that eventually produced Social Security, for example, was born in California out of a desire to provide for elderly folks without the cost burdening families already mired in Depression.

We run a very real risk in California of this economic and budget crisis dramatically accelerating the destruction of the public sector, the race toward the bottom. It’s important for us to recognize that government jobs and fair wages and benefits promote economic growth. To undermine and cut them at this time would feed the deflationary cycle and worsen the economic picture.

But maybe that’s just what the right-wing wants…