Spending millions to save thousands

Dark money. Dark because no light shines on its origin. It's money that anonymous donors pour into Political Action Committees (PACs). They can do this because in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that donated money was a form of free speech. Individual Americans can only spend $3,500 per supported political candidate. But that doesn't apply to issues. As long as candidates aren't named, people and corporations can influence issues with money. Corporations have most of the same rights as mere mortals, and tend to donate more than lessor beings.

Whopping amounts are chasing voters in this midterm election. Elon Musk alone poured 77 million into his super PAC. In Colorado, more than 6.5 million dollars in dark donations have been spent to oppose Amendment 87. So what do dark donors hope to get for their money?

Amendment 87 changes how Colorado collects income tax, replacing a proportional tax with a progressive tax. What does that mean? The IRS explains:

• Progressive tax—A tax that takes a larger percentage of income from high-income groups than from low-income groups.
• Proportional tax—A tax that takes the same percentage of income from all income groups.
• Regressive tax—A tax that takes a larger percentage of income from low-income groups than from high-income groups.

Amendment 87 reduces state income tax for 97 percent of Colorado's citizens. The other three percent would pay more. Someone earning two million dollars yearly would be taxed at the highest bracket of 8.4 percent, while someone earning 25 thousand dollars would be taxed at 3.7 percent. Under the current 4.4 percent for everyone, that double-millionaire pays $88,000 yearly. His taxes would increase by $55,925 which is a fair chunk of change — but then, again, so is two million.

So, is it worth it to spend 6.5 million dollars to save a bit less than 56,000 dollars yearly? That depends on how many dark donors share the donation burden, and how many years they can hope to save on their taxes before they need to open their wallets to block another tax increase.

Currently the highest federal marginal income tax rate (or bracket) is 37 percent. It wasn't always that rate. In 1939, the final year of the Great Depression, the highest tax bracket was 79 percent. In 1945, the final year of World War Two the highest rate was 94 percent. Through much of the 1950s — Cold War years — the top rate was 91 percent. The wealthy paid extra tax to help their country. Now they spend darkly to help themselves avoid higher taxes.

During hard times and war, America has asked its wealthy to pay more. And they did. Currently we have low unemployment, but we also have low employment opportunities. Many Americans now struggle to pay for housing, gasoline and food. The country is in an expensive war and our national debt is obscenely high. But dark money wants tax increases off the table. Whatever can we do?

Voyage to a new world

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness
Michael Pollan
2026, Non-fiction, 318 pages

 

Until recently scientists avoided discussing consciousness. Such topics defy scientific investigation and make investigators look unscientific. Michael Pollan thinks the topic would still be taboo if Christof Koch and Nobel Prize winner, Francis Crick, hadn’t teamed up to study it during the 1980s.

As Koch and Crick were attempting to find the “neural correlates” that drive conscious experience, another idea began to take hold. Philosopher, David Chalmers, first voiced this idea in 1994 and followed up with a paper addressing it in 1995. The idea is simple, but it’s slippery for some. Chalmers wondered about the “hard problem” of consciousness: “The puzzle of why any of these mental operations are accompanied by any conscious experience whatsoever.”

If mental operations simply did things, science could explain them. However we experience things through a variety of sensations and feelings. And that defies explanation.

Philosopher, Philip Goff, argues in his book, Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, that Galileo advanced science by focusing on mensurable phenomena and excluding their qualitative properties.

Science can identify the wavelength of indigo (Artists like Duke Ellington describe the feeling of Mood Indigo.) People feel and experience. Why do they do so instead of simply living without consciousness, like zombies?

Psychology has generally followed Galileo’s method. It excludes qualitative and subjective explanations. First published in 1989, The International Dictionary of Psychology considered consciousness

“A fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.”

Chalmers and other writers made consciousness a respectable topic, one that earns its place in contemporary thought. Chalmers leans toward panpsychism; in his version the universe is pervaded with consciousness. Perhaps even at subatomic levels.

Pollan admits that:

 Except for a brief period in my teenage years when I was reading Hermann Hesse, writing bad poetry, and thinking about the Big Questions, I never gave much thought to consciousness. What pushed the question front and center for me were a couple of psychedelic experiences I had in my fifties and sixties.

Others, too, have engaged with consciousness while influenced by psychedelics:

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that a single psychedelic experience dramatically increases the likelihood that a person will attribute consciousness to other entities, both living and nonliving. Among the entities mentioned in the study, plants saw the greatest increase in conferral of consciousness: Before their psychedelic experience, 26 percent of participants believed plants to be conscious; afterward, this figure climbed to 61 percent.

Pollan acknowledges that many of those who study consciousness, begin with human consciousness. Beginning with human consciousness adds complexity since humans can have awareness of being conscious – they can experience metaconsciousness. We’re not too sure that other animals are capable of metaconsciousness. Pollan begins his inquiry with plants. Can plants be conscious? There are some who think they might be. Of course, plants lack brains. Could they have some form of distributed consciousness? Scientists are finding plants respond to their environment in ways that seem conscious. One-celled organisms can do so as well.

Unlike most books on consciousness, Pollan doesn’t just stick to science and philosophy. He adds an extra dimension with his exploration of stream-of-consciousness literature, such as Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Pollan is easy to read. He makes complex topics accessible and entertaining.