Santa Monica’s Lasting Legacy of Robert Myers
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Your report on the beating of newsman Gary Shepard by transients (Times, Nov. 22) includes a comment by former Santa Monica City Atty. Robert Myers: “It’s much easier to take drastic action against the homeless if you demonize them as a group.”
Yes, indeed. And who should know better than Robert Myers the enormous political advantages of demonizing certain people as a group in order to take drastic action? Myers, author of the country’s harshest and most repressive rent-control law, succeeded in getting his tract voted into law in 1979 by demonizing Santa Monica’s apartment owners. Since then, his political machine (Santa Monicans for Renters Rights) has maintained its grip on the city by sledgehammer mail campaigns at election time in which apartment owners are routinely demonized by hysterical and wildly false claims that rent control will be “gutted” by these demons if SMRR no longer controls the city.
No truth-in-advertising or any other ethical standard is considered necessary by our city’s leaders at election time; demonizing is the name of the game now. This is Robert Myers’ legacy.
JILL RENTON
Santa Monica
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