Executive Compensation at the Corn Refiners Association
The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) is a Washington, DC-based non-profit, tax-exempt 501 (c) (6) providing educational material and resources on corn and corn products. A member-driven trade association, the CRA represents corn wet millers (companies that break corn kernels down into their component parts: oil, starch, fiber, protein, by using water (as opposed to dry milling).
CRA has 6 member companies (Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Grain Processing Corp, Ingredion, Roquette America, and Tate & Lyles Americas) who pay membership dues totaling $9 million annually (note: the website states there are 6 member companies but the Form 990 reports there are 4 member companies).
In 2018, CRA reported total revenue of $9.2 million and expenses of $6.6 million, which means $2.6 million was left unspent and allocated to the general fund which had $7.5 million at year-end (up from $4.9 million at the beginning of the year). Read more 
“Purity”
Secrets were power. Money was power. Being needed was power. Power, power, power: how could the world be organized around the struggle for a thing so lonely and oppressive in the having of it?
In Jonathan Franzen’s newest novel Purity, the author introduces the reader to Purity (“Pip”) Tyler, a 23-year old recent college graduate with $130,000 in student loan debt living in a squatter’s house in Oakland, California. Distancing herself from the mother who raised her in the Santa Cruz mountains, trying to find her biological father, and employed in a dead-end job, Pip is all but disillusioned about the world and the impact she will make on it. When offered an internship to work for the Sunlight Project – an organization that prides itself on leaking government secrets – in Bolivia, Pip takes a leap of faith, quits her job, packs up, and moves to South America. Read more
Paddock Post 