Dave Loebsack owes Casey's an apology

I attended 2nd District Congressman Dave Loebsack's town hall meeting in Cedar Rapids this morning. The meeting was at Ballantyne Auditorium on the campus at Kirkwood Community College. I estimated the crowd at about 300 seated, 200 standing and perhaps a couple hundred outside.

To his credit, I thought Loebsack handled the largely hostile crowd gracefully. As a Republican activist, I would love to get my hands on the mailing list they harvested from the crowd today.

While I am an opponent of a public option or any other form of government healthcare, I am going to focus on one comment the congressman made in this post.

During his answer to a question Loebsack referred to a hypothetical ...

... Casey's employee that could not afford health insurance.

Of course Loebsack was referring to the Casey's General Stores  headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa. It is bad enough that Democrats demonize companies like Wal-Mart but why did he choose to pick on an Iowa company?

Before he joined the army and deployed to Afghanistan, my son worked at Casey's. He was a third shift clerk in one of their convenience stores. Not only does Casey's offer insurance, it was affordable and my son had better coverage than I did working as a computer professional.

So let me say this:

Congressman Loebsack, you owe Casey's an apology. Do your homework, you should be praising, not attacking great Iowa companies like Casey's General Stores.