In English

A recent RJ story mentioned complaints from some Asian restaurant owners that the health department is making their lives harder because they have all these instructions and rules they do not understand because they are in English (“Inspections frustrate Asian eatery owners,” Wednesday). Are you kidding me? At the rate we are going, everything will have to be in four or five languages.

Would someone remind them that they are in the United States and our language here is English? You can go to any part of the world and you will hardly find one country that is willing to translate and post instructions or rules in any language other than its own. We need to stop this bilingual business. We are wasting our money. people to pay income tax on money they never get to see because they are already paying it in taxes to a state government?

The states that have higher state income taxes, such as New York and California, have two things in common. First, they already contribute far more in tax dollars to federal coffers than they receive back. A further increase in federal taxes selectively on the citizens of those states is neither fair nor equitable. The second thing they have in common is that they tend to vote Democratic. If passed by the Republican Congress, it would appear to be more punitive than fair and equitable.

If the RJ wants to advocate eliminating a deduction that proportionately taxes the wealthy in all states, you should embrace the elimination of the deduction for mortgage interest. Because most people buy homes relatively proportionate to their income, it would tax the wealthy more than middleor lower-income families and spare increasing taxes on the poor who cannot afford to buy a home. It would raise taxes on all 50 states, not just the “blue states.”

A change like that would make the tax code simpler and more equitable. Of course, that won’t happen because the Republican Congress would never pass a law that takes away a deduction for its constituents.