James Burgun

[quote="Democratic Peoples republic of Kelvinsi";p="36824873"][spoiler=New App][align=center][img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Seal_of_the_United_States_Congress.svg/170px-Seal_of_the_United_States_Congress.svg.png[/img]

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Character Information Sheet[/align]

NS Nation Name: DPRK

Character Name: James Burgun

Character Gender: Male

Character Age: 59

Character Height: 6 feet 2 inches

Character Weight: 205 pounds

Character Position/Role/Job:

Governor of North Dakota(2013-present)

President of the Bank of North Dakota(2001-2011)

CFO of North Dakota Mill and Elevator(1994-2001)

Senior Manager at North Dakota Mill and Elevator(1992-1994)

Manager of North Dakota Mill and Elevator(1989-1992)

Senior Analyst at North Dakota Mill and Elevator(1985-1989)

Analyst at North Dakota Mill and Elevator(1983-1985)

Appearance:  [img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Kent_Conrad_official_portrait.jpg[/img]

Character State of Origin: North Dakota

Character State of Residence: North Dakota

Character Party Affiliation: Republican

Main Strengths: Folksy Charm, Farmer Background, Perceived as honest, Strong speaker and debater

Main Weaknesses: Heterodoxical Republican with no support from any major wing of the party, Little name recognition, Enemy of Wall Street, Gets rattled stunned and unnerved when something unexpected occurs

Biography:

Born to a family of farmers in Amidon North Dakota, Burgun's entire family had been farming the same patch of ground since their family immigrated to the United States in 1854. The only thing that stayed the same all these years appeared to be the Burguns and their farm. When James was born he had 8 elder siblings living in the same farmhouse. From a young age Burgun knew that it was not his destiny to remain on the Burgun family farm, he desired for some way, any way to escape the day to day mundanity of the family farm. Although his siblings and parents treated the farmhouse as heaven on earth, for James it resembled hell far more.

James despised milking the cows, he grew to dislike sowing the sunflower seeds, he hated collecting eggs from the chickens, and most of all he hated the tractor. One fateful day when James was 14 a neighbor happened to have a yard sale, and a finance textbook caught his eye. Despite his neighbor's insistence that the book was not for sale, and would ruin the souls of men who read it, James did not take heed of that warning and pressed on. Eventually, the neighbor relented and was willing to part with the book for a nominal fee. James used his meager allowance to purchase the textbook and was immediately fascinated by the book. From that day onward Burgun started learning more and more about the finance industry. Eventually recognized for his talent in high school Burgun won a full scholarship to go to the University of North Dakota to study agricultural management. Despite the pleas of his family not to go to university, and to stay with them on the family farm James did leave. Being the first Burgun since the 19th century to leave the family farm.

After he graduated from the University of North Dakota with a specialization in agricultural management he went to work in Minneapolis an investment banker for Norwest specializing the agriculture sector. It was clear from the onset that James had made a terrible mistake in choosing to turn his back on his family to leave North Dakota. He absolutely hated the work, the work was even more mundane. Day in and day out he was making various models. He grew to despise doing the DCFs, LBOs, and Comparable Comps. Within a year he realized that the world that he desired to be a part of was a world that he hated. Thus, he decided to leave the company after working for a single year, he quit his position and returned home to North Dakota. The warning of the neighbor came true, within the year that he spent in the big city he felt his soul ruined.

Returning home to North Dakota, Burgun had no idea what to do next. However, during that time the North Dakota Mill and Elevator were hiring for finance professionals. After applying at a job fair, he got an interview on the spot. It was at the North Dakota Mill and Elevator did Burgun truly find joy for the first time in his entire life. No longer was he a slave farmhand or a drone creating models, for the first time he felt like an actual human being with an enjoyable career.

Being quickly recognized for his competency, he advanced rapidly through the ranks. Gaining a reputation for competency, with the ability to reduce budgets consistently without disrupting payroll by cutting down on machine idle time. Eventually, he was promoted to CFO of the company. As CFO of North Dakota Mill and Elevator. In that executive position, Burgun was able to convince the CEO of the firm to expand the company. He was able to obtain a large amount of cheap debt financing to faciliate the expansion of the company, essentially selling the bonds issued by the company as being backed up by the government of North Dakota which drastically decreased the cost of debt in a high-interest rate environment. He was able to convince the Governor and members of the North Dakota Industrial Commission.

Under his tenure, the North Dakota Mill and Elevator grew quickly and expanded into the largest flour mill in the United States. After that successful expansion, the then CEO was willing to listen to whatever advice his CFO was giving. During that period the North Dakota Mill and Elevator started signing unprecedented contracts with farmers as far away as Western Iowa. Burgun was able to direct investments into the then unproven technology of web delivery tracking, a policy that ended up paying off massively. The Governor at the time seeing Burgun's competency appointed him as the President of the Bank of North Dakota.

The Bank of North Dakota immediately saw massive reform under the Burgun era. Seeing how well integrating technology in the workplace worked for North Dakota Mill and Elevator Burgun pushed to integrate technology into the Bank of North Dakota. This, in turn, resulted in massive gains in productivity from the single office of the Bank of North Dakota. The same Governor who appointed Burgun recognized that fact, and thus Burgun convinced him and the legislature to allow the Bank of North Dakota to open 10 new branches, and for municipalities to have an option of depositing their funds with the Bank of North Dakota. This in turn provided competition to large commercial banks of Wall Street which cut into their bottom line. This, in turn, upset Wall Street and caused the Bank of North Dakota to get wrapped up in endless litigation, a black mark that has somewhat tainted his tenure. Yet with loans being more easily available for new businesses or businesses wishing to expand\ it contributed positively to the economy of North Dakota.

Since 2005 and the endless litigation from Wall Street, as well as the record low rates offered by Wall Street firms on loans caused Burgun to take a more conservative approach. Throughout that time the Bank of North Dakota started putting more cash away, increasing the Bank of North Dakota's reserves. Burgun wondered why bundled mortgage securities were all rated as AAA, despite the high likelihood of default on mortgages, especially with the rising amount of mortgages given to lenders who have no way of paying it back. To that end, Burgun published an article in the New York Times about the dangers of mortgage securities as an editorial. For that article, he was widely mocked on cable news television, and for almost a week Burgun was the laughingstock of the finance community before his name was promptly forgotten. Of course, when the 2008 financial crisis hit the shoe was on the other foot with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Bank of North Dakota had ample reserves to deal with the financial crisis. Thanks to the high liquidity of the Bank of North Dakota, it was able to deal with the crisis unscathed. This, in turn, caused a massive boom in the trust of the Bank of North Dakota among North Dakotans. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, Burgun petitioned the government of North Dakota to allow the Bank of North Dakota to expand into mortgage lending. With the aftermath of the financial crisis and Burgun's astute predictions, the legislature agreed, albeit with only a 2 vote difference. During that period the Bank of North Dakota was funneling 200 million dollars a year to the government treasury.

By 2011 Burgun resigned the Presidency of the Bank of North Dakota satisfied with what he built it into in order to concentrate on another task, running for the Governor of North Dakota as a Republican. Despite, accusations of disrupting capitalism by his Republican opponents, thanks to his steady handling of the financial crisis Burgun was able to easily win the Republican primary defeating his primary rival 53-47. Needless to say, the Governor race was a walk in the par due to the political nature of North Dakota.

As Governor of North Dakota Burgun adopted a governing policy that is quite bizarre for a Republican. As he took office during the height of the oil boom Burgun refused to cut taxes further, and instead utilized the royalties from the oil in order to invest in wind energy farm incentives. Although this dipped his approval rating greatly at the time, as the oil boom started wearing off Burgun's wind farms were able to blunt that blow the North Dakota's economy. Burgun was also able to convince Microsoft to expand its campus in North Dakota, and for the corporation to partially sponsor an expansion of the University of North Dakota in return for the University customizing its tech curriculum to Microsoft's needs. He was likewise able to convince Amazon to do the same in return for customizing UND's Operations Management curriculum to Amazon's needs. These twin policies resulted in the University of North Dakota's ranking jumping from 263rd to 163rd. Burgun also greatly incentivized E-Learning administered by a public North Dakota E-Learning School Board for rural communities by giving rural parents tax credits for enrolling their children in E-learning programs, which was able to greatly alleviate the strain on the education systems posed by rapid population growth. To further alleviate pressures Burgun took advantage of the high bond rating of North Dakota to issue bonds to construct more schools and hire more teachers. Burgun was a major opponent of school choice legislation, which is the majority position of ND Senate Republicans much to the chagrin of ND House Republicans, saying that it "worked poorly in Michigan" and was not able to provide a long-term solution to North Dakota's population boom. Burgun further offered Flextime for teachers giving teachers large additional benefits if they taught extra classes. Thanks to his education reforms Burgun was supported by the teacher unions during his reelection campaign.

The support would very much be needed thanks to the Dakota Access Pipeline and the protests brought on by it. Gov. Burgun was a key advocate of the pipeline pointing to the jobs and potential revenue generated by the project. He even went so far as to suggest that he would set up a fast track approval for all future pipelines. However, American Indians were not big fans of the policy, and as a result, took the streets in protest during April 2016. Burgun reportedly locked himself in his office refusing to speak with anybody for a week. The one exception being a disastrous press conference where the pipeline was "inevitable" and the Indians could do "nothing to stop it" and they should "just accept the facts". That did nothing to calm the situation and in fact made the whole affair significantly worse. The natives took to protesting by shutting down all the major ND railies effectively crippling the State. Bergun in shock refused to see the press for a full 2 weeks and refused to acknowledge the incident as a crisis. After 16 days with no signs from Bergun of any negotiations, the First Nations finally ended their protest. But the damage was done, the entire State was crippled for a full 2 weeks and the incident caused his approval rating to drop drastically, although that would slowly recover. His reelection bid was unnaturally close due to record Native turnout, yet he won at the end with a 55-45 margin against the Democrat, a near disaster for a Republican in ND.

Burgun's 2nd term was mostly focused around trying to develop a new healthcare system for North Dakota. Burgun during his tenure created the Roughrider Health Savings Accounts where North Dakotans are allowed to deposit upward of 10% of their income to the savings accounts the cash would be then funneled into the Bank of North Dakota and its new Roughrider State Wealth Fund, partially created from the budget surpluses, that would use the money to both do equity and debt investment. The Roughrider Health Savings Account would be State tax-exempt and would also have tax free interest income indexed to the Roughrider State Wealth Fund. The Roughrider Health Savings Account can be used to pay any medical-related expenses. Furthermore, the State also created the optional Basic Catastrophic Insurance Plan with a premium ranging from $33-$425 a year depending on age that would cover any treatment of catastrophic incidences defined as "any illness or condition that would require 2 weeks or more of hospitalization" not including any and all optional purchases or additions to treatment. Thanks to the new healthcare system North Dakota's new health insurance program health insurance costs dropped markedly to around $6000 dollars a year without any tax increases.

Currently, he is considering a run for the US Presidency has he is not satisfied with any of the current Presidential candidates.

Other Info

Political Deviations from Standard Republican

-Has been exceptionally critical of increased corporate influence in politics, especially in regards to Georgia HB 757

-Critical of those who try to "remove their history"

-Stated repeatedly that he believes a Singapore style healthcare model would work best for the United States

I have read and accept the rules of the roleplay: DPRK

Do Not Remove: 84721[/spoiler]

Right added 3 big distinctions between him and the generic Republican and added more concreate position timeline.[/quote]