They may think it’s a joke, but pasting these stickers on gas pumps is vandalism.
It makes extra work for the gas station attendants who have to remove them (see story here).
It’s not a laughing matter for the station owner when it chases away other customers who don’t agree with the political message.
In Pennsylvania, a gas station clerk called the cops, and when they arrived the culprit fought the police and now faces criminal charges (read story here).
The bottom line is people don’t have a right to do this, and they’re disrespecting someone else’s property and breaking the law when they do.
Is Biden responsible for high gas prices? Well, yes, partly, to the extent his policies have helped put the pandemic behind us, which is getting people back to work and putting cars back on the road. That’s driving up demand for gas, and pump prices are going up because supply can’t keep up.
Presidents don’t set gas prices, oil companies do, based on market forces. And the oil companies aren’t being bad guys. Years of low oil prices (and cheap gas) deprived them of revenue to invest in production. They lost money in 2020, the height of the pandemic.* Today’s high prices balance out those years of low prices, and they need these prices to drill for oil again.
It isn’t just gas, of course. There’s general price inflation. That’s mostly caused by Federal Reserve policies and pandemic-caused shortages. Most of that predates Biden’s presidency. All he did to influence Fed policy was reappoint Trump’s Federal Reserve chairman. You’re going to blame inflation on him because of that?
These stickers, like so much of what Republicans say, convey a falsehood. Political lying is allowed in this country, and that’s no big deal in itself. If you put those stickers on your own car, nobody should say anything, because that’s your prerogative.
Putting them on gas pumps is a problem, if they don’t own the pumps. It’s akin to a stranger pasting a Biden/Harris bumper sticker to their car, then spraying clear coat over it to make it hard to remove. How would they like it, if someone did that? That’s what the Pennsylvania guy did to the gas pump, before he started fighting with the cops. It’s just one more bit of proof that Republicans have no respect for other people.
* Exxon’s total profit in 2014 was $32.5 billion on sales of $365 billion; this dropped to $16 billion on sales of $237 billion in 2015, $7.8 billion on sales of $226 billion in 2016, and turned into a $22 billion loss on sales of $181 billion in 2020. Exxon’s debt doubled in 2020, and higher gas prices are helping it pay down that debt. When you look at the numbers, even with prices as high as they are now, the big oil companies make only a 7% – 8% profit in their best years. Many other businesses make more. As for gas stations, they aren’t ripping customers off either; they make only a few cents on each gallon, and they make most of their money from the repair garage or convenience store part of their business. Selling gas doesn’t make money, it only gets customers to the station.