Yesterday, a U.S. Congressman claimed that “cultural and language barriers” prevented him from paying taxes he owed on his beach house in the Dominican Republic. In a political season gone wild, this story made front-page news in New York City.

At a press conference in Washington, D.C., Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York’s 15th Congressional District said that he was not aware that the rental of his beach house in a Punta Cana resort yielded income that he should have reported to the Internal Revenue Service (the tax guys). He cited difficulties in dealing with the detailed financial statements prepared by the managers of the resort in the Caribbean island nation. “Every time I thought that I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish,” said the Congressman.

Perhaps frustrated by their failure to make “the bridge to nowhere” lead to some acknowledgment of flip-flops by Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president, the press gleefully laid bare the Democratic Congressman’s problems with his indecipherable financial statements.

What could the poor man do? Among other things, Representative Rangel could have availed himself of any of the following tactics to figure out what the Dominican financial managers were trying to tell him:

• Take a walk around the 15th District, where, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, nearly half the households speak Spanish as the primary language.
• Ask the person who translates his newsletter into Spanish (Rangel’s newsletter can be had in English or Spanish) or one of his hispanoparlante staff members.
• Follow the link to the free online machine translation site Babel Fish that appears behind the translate button on his website.
• Look into a machine interpretation service.
• Call Omar Minaya, the Dominican-born manager of the New York Mets.
• Ask one of the people he marched with in the Cinco de Mayo parade for language help.
• Look online or in the yellow pages for an interpreter.
• Call us. Hey, if someone from the Honorable Mr. Rangel’s office contacts us at +1-978-275-0500 (dial 9 for the dial-by-name company directory), we’ll send the Congressman a copy of our report on interpretation. It’s our civic duty (even though we live in the 5th Congressional District).

And of course, for tax advice, Mr. Rangel, a lawyer, could have consulted one of his colleagues on Congress’ tax-writing committee, where he’s served for several decades. According to press coverage, the Congressman was remorseful and said that he would pay what he owes the government. And we can only hope that next time around, he tries a different defense – something like “that’s just not true,” “you’re still practicing the discredited politics of the culture wars,” or, our childhood favorite, “so’s your mama!”