While you're busting your tail, working 50 or 60 hours a week to put food on your family, it's important to take time now and then to see what it's like to be in the good graces of America's wealthy oil barons and big ag.  Let's take a look at one of the things former North Dakota Governor Ed Schafer, who also served as Secretary of Agriculture under George W. Bush, has been doing lately.

According to various online sources, Schafer became a "consultant" for a company called "Bio Nitrogen Corporation" ("Bion") in September of 2009 and continued as a consultant until December of 2010.  According to disclosures from Bion, Schafer had "joined" Bion in August of 2010 as Executive Vice Chairman. In early 2011, Schafer became a member of Bion's senior management team, "with direct management responsibility for Bion's [ ] state and federal government interfaces" (i.e. "lobbying") and working with the ag industry and the company's interests in Asia and the Middle East.  (Source)  I looked around all the various online resources about Schafer's hiring at at Bion (see, for example, this) and did not see anything advising Bion investors of Schafer's track-record as a serial plagiarist or inventor of toaster bombs.

According to documents filed by Bion with the Securities Exchange Commission, Schafer was paid salary and stock options worth roughly $686,000 in 2011. Not bad for part-time work, eh?  Keep in mind, Schafer also got around $760,000 in compensation for his part-time gig sitting on the board of directors for Continental Resources, the company owned by "The Man Who Bought North Dakota," Harold Hamm. 

Any time you decide to contemplate "wealth inequality in America," keep folks like Schafer in mind.  It's almost as if it doesn't matter any more how hard you work in America; wealth has much more to do with who (or whom) you know. It shouldn't surprise us at all when Schafer shows up in North Dakota every now and then, looking to try to line his owners' pockets by influencing our state's policies.  That's what he's paid to do.

Bion is a "penny stock" trading, at the time of this posting, right around $0.21 per share.  Two pieces of good news are (1) Bion's shares have little more value than Schafer's failed fish farm, and (2) there is hope for serial plagiarists to make a lot of money if they go to work as a part-time consultant for big ag and shilling for the oil industry. The bad news is... well... the same as the good news, I guess.

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