Fabian Nunez' questionable expenditures (luxury foreign hotels, goods)

California Assembly speaker and Hillary Clinton campaign co-chair Fabian Nunez must be on the outs with the Politburo, because the Los Angeles Times offers "Nunez travels the world like a high-roller" (link):
[...his spending] includes $47,412 on United, Lufthansa and Air France airlines this year; $8,745 at the exclusive Hotel Arts in Barcelona, Spain; $5,149 for a "meeting" at Cave L'Avant Garde, a wine seller in the Bordeaux region of France; a total of $2,562 for two "office expenses" at Vuitton, two years apart; and $1,795 for a "meeting" at Le Grand Colbert, a venerable Parisian restaurant.

...Other expenses are closer to home: a $1,715 meeting at Asia de Cuba restaurant in West Hollywood; a $317 purchase at upscale Pavilion Salon Shoes in Sacramento; a $2,428 meeting at 58 Degrees and Holding, a Sacramento wine bar and bistro; and $800 spent at Dollar Rent a Car in Kihei, Hawaii.

...Given a list of 99 entries culled from his campaign finance filings, however, Nunez's staff refused to show how the expenditures were related to California government or politics...

..."There's not too big a difference," [Nunez] said, "between how I live and how most middle-class people live."

...He received a total of $1.9 million in 2005 and 2006 from unions, corporations and others with a perennial stake in legislative business. They include $17,300 from AT&T and Verizon, phone companies that pushed Nunez legislation allowing them to compete against cable television companies, and $2,500 from a group of pharmaceutical companies affected by a Nunez bill to create a prescription drug discount program.

The State Building and Construction Trades Council of California donated $5,000 in February 2006, one day before a bill it sponsored was introduced in the Assembly.

The state Democratic Party, which unlike officeholders can raise unlimited sums, transferred $4 million to Nunez's campaign account last November.

...Similarly, the tax-exempt William C. Velasquez Institute, a policy think tank focused on Latino issues, paid $6,169 toward Nunez's 2005 trip to France and Sweden to study universal preschool. The institute also helped finance Nunez's trip to France in April to study high-speed rail, according to institute President Antonio Gonzalez...

Comments

Fabian, I'm middle class, and the most I ever spend on wine was 20 bucks at Ralphs!

THE GUY IS A MEXICAN, Meaning No Class, and what he did and what he will do is just like any third world political pig. what did you think this little mexican was doing with your money, hey people Nunez loves one thing his own little world and after all that is the way life is in a third world country.

..."There's not too big a difference," [Nunez] said, "between how I live and how most middle-class people live." Lord, yes. I spend like this everyday. So do all my friends. Doesn't everybody?

D. Flinchum, I'm sure Nunez just knows a lot of people who believe in good government and who regard him as a splendid person, full of admirable character traits!

dchamil, I, too have many friends who believe in good government and who regard ME as a "a splendid person, full of admirable character traits" but they don't fund me like his "buddies" do!! Too funny!!!

did any of you hear that ed brown's and wife have been arrested and are now under the control of the government soon to be disappeared inside this political prison system for money owned to the government? maybe Fabian Nunez can buy the home for his mexican drug dealer friends?