We know reporters have trouble with math, but would somebody at the RJ please try to use common sense.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/bill-designed-to-create-jobs-passes-85801467.html

Benjamin Spillman reported Monday, with a straight face, that the Legislature approved a jobs bill that imposes a 75-cent per gallon tax on gasoline.

Do the math. That would make the $2.79/gallon I just put into my aging Taurus $3.54 a gallon.

And this story ran inside the paper while President Obama's poll numbers (which still show him above 50 percent here) run atop the fold of the front page?

Spillman must have missed the point. Completely. And nobody at that paper is sharp enough to realize that nobody is adding 75 cents to every gallon of gas. Now if the Legislature added .75 cent per gallon that makes sense.

Now my gas is a whopping $2.80/gallon. Think I notice that in the grand scheme of a 15-gallon fill?

No. But I sure would the way Spillman wrote it.

By now it's pointless to see if the paper will correct it, but we'll call for a correction, anyway.

An assist goes out to a savvy media reader for spotting this one. Spillman's sidebar was too boring for me to get through and find the obvious error.

To Spillman we say: Hey Big Taxer, how 'bout a calculator?