Living the Life...

Giuliani indulges in swanky hotels on the campaign trail:

He's running for president, but some of Rudy Giuliani's campaign-trail hotels have been fit for a king.

Giuliani, whose campaign boasts of having spent the least cash of all the Republican White House candidates, rented rooms at a string of high-end hotels as he stumped around the country over the last three months, his campaign filings show.

They included the swank Fairmont San Francisco, the Arizona Biltmore hotel in Phoenix and the Hotel Andalucia in Santa Barbara, where the campaign paid $2,457 at the end of last month.

Some $4,600 went to the Conrad Hotel in Indianapolis, a city where the candidate held a fund-raiser last month co-hosted by former Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, a policy adviser to Giuliani.

Oh, and by the way... Giuliani's not a tax-cutter after all..

But he also worked hard for high taxes. In 1994, Giuliani endorsed Gov. Mario Cuomo, a Democrat, for re-election against then-challenger George Pataki, the Republican. Why? In part, it was because Giuliani opposed Pataki's proposed tax cuts.

And in 1999 Giuliani fought against the State Legislature's repeal of a commuter income tax.

In fact, Giuliani's rather smallish tax cuts were swamped by his tax increases. New York City's personal, corporate and unincorporated business income taxes, on top of state income levies, have long hampered entrepreneurship and economic growth, chasing away individuals and businesses. Giuliani's budgets called for continuing a temporary personal income tax surcharges when they were to expire. Those are big tax increases Giuliani does not bring up when he's campaigning.

Comments are now closed for this entry.