Senate Confirms (Billionaire) Penny Pritzker to Be Commerce Secretary, 97 to 1

[badtoworse]

40. Condescending? How about ridiculous?

Preferring a ditch digger to a successful and wealthy business person as Secretary of Commerce wasn't my idea, but I'll stand by my assertion that it's ridiculous. Pointing that out is not condescension.

We need a Commerce Secretary who is serious about making the US an attractive place to do business. If we could somehow attract companies to bring some of the maufacturing jobs we've lost, a lot of those hardworking people might be able to find decent jobs. The lack of those jobs is is the biggest problem we have in this country today and I would expect the Commerce Secretary to lead the effort to fix it. I would also expect that to be effective, a Commerce Secretary should have experience successfully managing a large business. That person would need to speak the same language as senior executives in Fortune 500 companies and understand what will drive their decisions on business expansion. As a practical matter, such a person is most likely to be wealthy and part of the 1%

I have no problem with the Commerce Secretary being wealthy as long as that person is effective. The real shame would be if Pritzker turns out to be a another do nothing Secretary who ignores the real business problems we have and does nothing to improve the business climate here.