Rep. Justin Amash, who is as close to a libertarian as any Republican in Congress, offered this observation about Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Secretary of Commerce:
It’s amazing that Wilbur Ross was nominated and confirmed to be secretary of anything. He’s shown over many years that he doesn’t understand basic economics, and to describe him as out of touch would be an understatement.
In Ross’s case (so severe he looks as though he’s sleeping most of the time), he hasn’t even shown the garden-variety ability of other pro-government conservatives to speak in the language of cronyism (development tools, partnerships, multipliers, job creators, tax incentives, etc.). Most of these development types can speak that way, as though they had a common lexicon designed for men to use public resources for their own private gain.
Honest to goodness, even a WEDC man (and they’re all seemingly from the same nest of vulgar, scheming self-promoters) could do better than Ross.
Indeed, there’s nothing sadder on the local scene in places like Whitewater when one hears ‘development professionals’ looking aspirationally to the WEDC as a model: it’s like a gnat dreaming of being a housefly.