Hans Bader used a June 3 CNSNews.com column to hype how a gas station in Mendocino, Calif., hiked gas prices to $9.45 a gallon, far above the national average at the time and even well above the average price in California. He cited a local blogger to claim that the owner did it because her station and repair shop is “an independent business, not a franchise of Chevron. Her business does not sell food and drink, the goods that most often bring profit to gas stations across the United States.”
But that’s not the whole story. As an actual media source noted, the station’s prices have been unrealistically high since the current owners took it over — the only gas station in town — in the early 2000s, and that gas prices are much cheaper down the road
Dubious notoriety is growing for the only gas station in town, one that is earning scorn from locals in the tight-knit community and guffaws from out-of-state looky-loos. As gas prices across the country climb to near daily records and drivers are crushed by $100 fill-ups, Mendocino’s fuel depot has become a lightning rod for outraged drivers who say they have no clue if the local station is setting a fair price or gouging them for an essential good.
“I don’t give a diddle what the next guy down the streets thinks,” said Schlafer, the station’s 71-year-old proprietor who is fielding calls from fed-up drivers across the country. “I’ve gotten really hard.”
[…]“Twenty years ago everyone used it. They were priced competitively. Then all of a sudden she jacked up the prices,” said Gary Poehlmann, a contractor living in Mendocino for four decades. “She’s obviously giving everybody the middle finger.”
Now the station caters almost exclusively to people in a pinch after long drives up the California coast and tourists unaware that they can cruise 15 minutes north to Fort Bragg where gas is nearly 40% cheaper.
Because Bader is more interested in delivering right-wing talking points than enlightening readers with relevant facts, Bader used this station’s wildly overpriced fuel not to criticize the owner for gouging customers but, rather, to attack President Biden:
Gas prices continue to rise despite Joe Biden partially emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. As the Daily Caller reported, gas prices rose every time Joe Biden released oil from the reserve, showing that it achieved nothing except leaving less in the reserve to deal with a future emergency.
Biden’s release of oil from the reserve is just a political gimmick designed to make it look like he is trying to cut oil prices. Critics have argued that Biden’s releases of oil were illegal, because they weren’t in response to an emergency.
In a recent gaffe, Biden suggested he actually likes high gas prices, because they push people away from using fossil fuels.
Bader doesn’t note that the Caller is engaging in the correlation-equals-causation fallacy by suggesting that releases from the SPR caused gas prices to rise. He also didn’t explain why Biden should be treated as the sole cause of higher prices when there are undeniable contributing factors like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bader is engaged in a political attack, not a fact-based one. Unfortunately, we expect nothing less from him.