Above, the image of revolving door lobbyist Elwyn Tinklenberg, currency green.
If you are like the DFL boss-crowd thinking the revolving door is not that bad if it's a DFL'er walking thorugh - aka the "double standards crowd" who earlier denounced the GOP lobbying machine, and if you, like them, feel it would be no harm for James Oberstar having two votes, his and Tinkklenberg's just as now there is Kline with Bachmann as Kline's second vote - then don't read further.
The remainder of this post is not directly about Tinklenberg. His name is seldom used. It is more generic. It is about perniciousness and the revolving door. It is about how the revolving door will not be curbed (or stopped if ever) until people with integrity and determination gain strength to curb if not stop things.
The post is about the Revolving Door Working Group.
You can follow the link or read further.
Before commenting on the Group itself - first this historical note from Russ Feingold - our Wisconsin neighbor with a conscience and courage. This is his 2005 inaugural statement for the group still posted on the Project Vote Smart website. It also is independently still posted by Feingold himself:
Speaker: Senator Russell D. Feingold (WI)
Title: Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On the Need for Lobbying and Ethics Reform
Date: 10/26/2005
Speech
Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On the Need for Lobbying and Ethics Reform
Revolving Door Press Conference
Good afternoon. I am pleased to join Public Citizen, Common Cause, and other members of the Revolving Door Working Group to announce the release of their new report. And I'm glad that my longtime friend and colleague, Mr. Meehan, is here as well. We have a pretty good track record working together on reform legislation.
Issues relating to the so-called "revolving door" are a significant component of the problems with lobbying that have gained a great deal of attention in the past year or so. I think we are rapidly approaching a tipping point, where the public will become fed up with the status quo and demand reform. This report will add a lot to the effort to pass legislation to address the problem.
The revolving door is a problem for two basic reasons. First, because of the revolving door some interests have better access to the legislative process than others. Former members and staff, or former executive branch employees, know how to work the system and get results for their clients. Those that have the money to hire them have a leg up. The public perceives this as an unfairness in the process, and I agree. Decisions in Congress on legislation, or in regulatory agencies on regulations or enforcement, or in the Defense Department on huge government contracts should be made on the merits, not based on who has the best connected lobbyist.
The second problem with the revolving door is that it creates the perception that public officials are cashing in on their public service, trading on their connections and their knowledge for personal profit. When you see former Members or staff becoming lobbyists and making three, four, or five times what they made in government service, that just looks bad.
Both sides of this coin combine to further the cynicism about how policy is made in this country and who is making it. That, ultimately, is the biggest problem. The public loses confidence in elected officials and public servants. That is why this was one of the very first issues that Sen. John McCain and I worked on together back in 1995. And it remains a problem today; indeed it has become an even bigger problem as shown by the report released today.
The Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act that I have introduced, S. 1398, includes provisions intended to get at the revolving door. So does a bill introduced by Representatives Meehan and Emmanuel in the House. As we move forward, we will look carefully at the recommendations contained in this report.
I have now been in Congress for nearly 13 years. I have learned that there is much about the way things work here that the public doesn't like. But there is also a lot that they don't know about. That is why reports like this are so important. They inform the public, and once the public sees what is going on, it demands change. We saw it with the gift ban and lobbying disclosure a decade ago. We saw it with campaign finance reform a few years ago, and I think we are going to see it very soon with the revolving door and other problems with lobbying in this town, including the excesses made notorious by the Jack Abramoff scandals.
So I want to thank again this Working Group for work and their report. I look forward to working with them and trying to pass legislation to address this significant issue. Thank you.
Emphasis added. And for those who thought I would not mention Tinklenberg so soon again, well - I am weak and cannot hold off. I have to mention Tinklenberg one more time in closing the Feingold theme - the contrast between a Russ Feingold or Paul Wellstone with this man Tinklenberg and his Bohn family "two-generations" of ATV tear up the countryside lobbyist ties.
There is that language Feingold used that fits the currency-green revolving door would-be-Congressman, about how his revolving door persona and action "creates the perception that public officials are cashing in on their public service, trading on their connections and their knowledge for personal profit."
If Elwyn Tinklenberg in his going about getting Tinklenberg Group contracts from municipalities wanting their highway projects to gain special attention from funding sources, is not "cashing in" on his public service and trading on his connections and his knowledge "for personal profit," then, you tell me - what else is it?
Fact is - it's nothing but a currency colored revolving door, the image that Tinklenberg, his group, and the complicit short-sighted groups that have endorsed him for God knows why, would take to Washington with him if endorsed in the caucuses, except that Bachmann and the cash trove she has amassed will be deployed unceasingly to be saying largely what I have been trying to say over the past few weeks - damaged goods, too much baggage, a problem now in exploiting past service, and a likely bigger problem a few years from now when redistricting might remove the man after a single term but also after he has amassed a greater nationwide range of contacts much as his time in MnDOT has benefitted him since leaving there in October 2002 and, within a month, incorporating and reserving the trade name - the name used in his commerce - "Tinklenberg Group."
And unlike the Tinklenberg Group being a revolving door group, the Revolving Door Working Group is the antithesis of the Tinklenbergers - the RDWG folks are the good guys. They wear the white hats, ride the better looking horses, and shoot straight.
Tinklenbergers probably hope Tink himself is to play a bigger role on a bigger lobbyist stage. He and they probably anticipate the promise going to Congress holds for Elwyn Tinklenberg - and his groupies - building the rolodex swat, on the public's nickel, nailing down a federal pension, and learning more about K Street. Whether he says that is an aim, or not, it surely is a possibility and one he's so far not renounced or equivocated over - just get the endorsements, control the caucuses, deal with Bachmann, one step at a time.
The Revolving Door Working Group.
Again, the website is here. Please go there. Download the report, How The Revolving Door Undermines Public Confidence In Government, and What To Do About It. Read the report. And get incensed.
Money talks and all else walks. Three revolving doors are noted on the RDWG site, the third being Tinklenberg's although it is municipal, not corporate clients:
The Government-to-Lobbyist Revolving Door, through which former lawmakers and executive-branch officials use their inside connections to advance the interests of corporate clients.
Wodele, spokesperson for Tnklenberg, is reported to have claimed the man has no need to register as a federal lobbyist. Why, what factual basis or possible loophole chapter and verse, Wodele has not said, or not been quoted as saying. Just, "Don't worry, be happy."
The RDWG wants to tighten loopholes:
While some observers argue that such movement between regulatory roles and regulated industries ensures that policymakers bring expertise and understanding to their oversight functions, there is ample evidence to suggest that the revolving door more often creates at least the appearance of serious conflict of interest.
The Revolving Door Working Group (RDWG) investigates, exposes and seeks remedies for conflict-of-interest problems such as loopholes in revolving door laws, inadequate disclosure, and other issues associated with the improper influence of the regulated community over the regulatory process. RDWG has just produced a white paper on the issue, entitled: A Matter of Trust: How the Revolving Door Undermines Public Confidence in Government, and What to Do About It. The paper includes a comprehensive review of problems associated with the revolving door, and proposes the following measures to tighten ethics rules, eliminate loopholes, and reduce conflicts of interest:
* consolidation of ethics oversight entities in the executive branch and in Congress;
* granting the consolidated entities greater oversight and enforcement powers;
* standardization of conflict-of-interest rules throughout the federal government;
* adoption of procedures that would allow the Office of Government Ethics to rule a person ineligible for a certain post if that person's employment background would tend to create frequent conflicts with the rule requiring impartiality on the part of federal employees;
* strengthening of recusal rules that bar appointees from handling matters involving their former employers in the private sector, including mandatory recusal on matters directly involving one's employers and clients during the 24-month period prior to taking office;
* monitoring of recusal agreements by the Office of Government Ethics;
* prohibiting, for a period of time, senior officials from seeking employment with contractors that may have significantly benefited from policies formulated by those officials;
* restricting the granting of waivers that allow public officials to negotiate future employment in the private sector while still in office;
* extending the period during which officials cannot engage in lobbying after leaving office and expanding the scope of prohibited activities;
* requiring federal officials to enter into a binding ethics "exit plan" when leaving the public sector to clarify what activities will be prohibited;
* revoking the special privileges granted to former members of Congress while they are serving as lobbyists; and
* improving the reporting and disclosure of recusal agreements, waivers, lobbyist reports and other ethics filings.
The Revolving Door Working Group's recommendations do not seek to disqualify all private-sector veterans from government service, nor do we suggest that federal officials be completely barred from moving to the business world. Yet there is clearly a need to strengthen the existing regulatory framework covering revolving door activity and to tighten its enforcement. Doing so will go a long way toward restoring integrity to the federal government.
Restoring integrity to the federal government is a good aim, and however slow it may be, doing it one lobbyist at a time - starting with Elwyn Tinklenberg, also is a good aim.
The RDWG includes a number of public interest groups, there are related online resources, it reports on South Dakota Sen. John Thune who made the door revolve the way Tinklenberg wants to - from lobbyist to legislator, and the RDWG's contact people include Craig Holman of Public Citizen who has been quoted as concerned over the Tinklenberg status and whether facts would show a need to register - or to at least have his situation vetted that way.
It looks like a class act, out to police and curb crass acts. We all should appreciate that people exist in DC who are on the side of the good and the clean. There are DC people who wear the white hats, ride the better looking horses, and shoot straight and we are fortunate to have them.