Since my last post about the Bush Administration and its cozy relationship with logging industry lobbyists, the “revolving door” between the two has spun again.

The latest whirl has Jan Poling, a high-level lawyer for the Forest Service, landing in the lap of the nation’s most powerful timber industry lobbying group – the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA).

As Poling takes her post as general counsel for AF&PA, she’ll run into lots of familiar faces.  There will be, of course, industry friends who kept her company during her stint at the Forest Service.  But there will also be Dave Tenny, Bush’s former “deputy undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment” (does that title even fit on a business card?) who, like Poling, swapped his job at the Bush administration for one at AF&PA this year.

To bring the door back full circle, I’ll point out Dave Tenny’s new job at AF&PA – vice president of forestry and wood products – is the same one that Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey held before Bush put him in charge of the Forest Service.

I think the revolving door is becoming more like one of those carnival rides where you spin and spin until the centrifugal forces stick you to the wall.  I love those rides.  But this one ain’t as much fun.  Rather than defying gravity, this ride has folks like Rey, Polling, and Tenny defying the public interest, sticking to the narrow ideology of the logging industry instead.

-Rolf