No Spanish Disposition: Rangel's Language Barrier Claim

Photograph of Rangel during his press conference yesterday by Victoria Burke/AP

It's the day after Representative Charles Rangel's press conference discussing his tax issues related to not reporting 20 years of rental income (totaling around $75,000) to the IRS, and the big headline is that no one seems to quite buy one of his excuses. From the NY Times:

At a Capitol Hill news conference, during which he was by turns remorseful and combative, the congressman said that he had not been aware of the income and unpaid taxes in part because he had trouble getting detailed financial statements from the resort’s managers in the Dominican Republic.

“Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish,” Mr. Rangel said.

The explanation was greeted with skepticism and surprise by some people in his district, where Spanish is the primary language in nearly half the households and even Mr. Rangel’s own Congressional Web site can be instantly translated to Spanish with just two clicks of a computer mouse.

In another Times article, a reporter spoke to Rangel's constituents in Harlem, one of whom "said she saw him interacting with Spanish-speaking voters some years ago, looking as if he understood what they were saying and throwing back a few phrases in Spanish as well."

Rangel, who did apologize ("I sincerely regret and take personal responsibility for these errors"), didn't think this issue would prevent him from continuing his position at Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, "I'm a lucky old son of a gun, and ain't nothin' gonna stop me from gettin' back here next year."

But the Daily News reported Rangel "was suddenly quiet" when told he was called one of Congress's "most corrupt" politicians by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, "Am I on the list? I think that's sad and unfair."

Rangel also informed reporters that the Post cover of him--CASH COW--prompted his wife to tell him he's fat, "I hope that some of you will notice that I've lost about 10 or 15 pounds as a result of that picture."

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By Jen Chung in News on September 11, 2008 11:28 AM

Comments [rss]

mfib

I don't know. Whenever I'm trying to settle a major financial or real estate deal and people start talking some crazy moonman language, it makes my head hurt.

I just figure whatever I was asking wasn't important and everything must be legal.

Then, I sign whatever papers you put in front of you.

Of course, I am an ignorant corrupt fuck.

jackdonaghy

Is he serious with that b.s. excuse? Not only does he probably speak Spanish, he could have had someone translate for him.

What's worse - that's he obviously lying or that he wants us to believe that the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee is too dumb to know how to follow up with his taxes b/c it's a foreign country?

It's sad that one of the most prominent NYers in Washington is corrupt. This isn't going to help NY's national image.

Ared

The man who writes the tax laws for the world's largest economy cheated on his taxes.

I feel better about how long it takes me to file my returns.

jchez

Wait, didn't Obama say that we should all learn to speak Spanish or another language?

Rangel represents upper Manhattan, which has a huge Dominican and Puerto Rican population, and also owns a villa in the Dominican. For him not to have bothered over 30 years to learn Spanish shows him to be as intellectually lazy as those same constituents of his who don't bother to learn English. Even Bush learned Spanish in Texas.

whitecastlerock

Rangel is a crook. Fuck him and any other politician who thinks they are above the law—regardless of party. Any average citizen would be in very deep shit with the tax man for acting like he did. he needs to go...

faprilano

still, and i say this as a die-hard democrat, rangel is a schmuck and regardless of his party, he's an arrogant slob and cheater. he's been caught in "mistake" after "mistake" and he should do the honorable thing (if that's even possible for him) and step out of office.

Sommelier

More smokescreen: the republicans would rather have us reading the front page with talk about a good man like Rangel owing a few thousand dollars in taxes than talking about the millions and billions of OUR dollars that they've been giving away to "contractors" in Iraq.

Has George W. Dumbf__k paid taxes on his 10,000 acres of farmland in Paraguay? Didn't think so.