It’s really depressing to see that even at this point — after the issue has been aired pretty thoroughly in all kinds of forums — certain members of the media still routinely refer to Huckabee’s so called Fair Tax as a 23% tax rather than the 30% tax it really is:

The former Arkansas governor met with supporters and held a news conference at a small airport Sunday night.

Early Sunday, he told a supporters at a rally in Jacksonville that he is the only major candidate supporting the “fair tax,” a proposal to replace federal income taxes with a 23 percent national sales tax.

“It’s fair. It’s flat. It’s finite and it’s family friendly,” he told a crowd of about 300.

No sir, no sir, three bags full (and let’s not get into what they’re full of). It’s false math is what it is.

I would love to assume that Melissa Nelson, the Associated Press writer who wrote the above, went to school. I would love to assume that she was therein exposed not just to Reading and ‘Riting, but ‘Rithmetic too. But then she would understand, would she not, that if you pay $30 in tax on a $100 purchase, that’s a 30% tax and not a 23% tax?

(Here’s the thing about being ‘Rithmetically challenged: it affects your credibility as a reporter. Especially when numbers creep into what you write. So, when Melissa Nelson writes that it was “a crowd of about 300″, are you really going to take her word for it? Maybe she counted them on her fingers? And forgot to include her thumbs, or included them twice? And if she — to invoke the old joke — counted the legs and divided by two, she could be off by a factor of anything.)