In another sign of the coming end of the United States’ Caucasian orientation, the majority of babies born last year were minorities—a first in American history.

 

Just over half (50.4%) of the U.S. population younger than age 1 were minorities as of July 1, 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6% of all births during the 12-month period in question.

 

Demographers say the dominance of minority births has been expected for some time, as the U.S. grows increasingly multiethnic.

 

“This is an important tipping point,” William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, told The New York Times.

 

For the time being, whites will remain a majority of the population, currently 63.4%. But this percentage is expected to decline over the next three decades, with whites ceasing to be in the majority by 2042.

 

The District of Columbia and four states—California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas—have minority population majorities.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Most Children Younger Than Age 1 are Minorities, Census Bureau Reports (U.S. Census Bureau)

Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S. (by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times)

A New York federal judge has temporarily blocked provisions of the controversial National Defense Authorization Act approved by President Barack Obama on December 31, 2011, which allows the military to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects, including American citizens.

 

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest agreed with the so-called Freedom Seven, a group of journalists, academics, and foreign politicians who challenged the new law, saying that section 1021 was unconstitutional. In her ruling, Forrest wrote that the statute failed to “pass constitutional muster” due to its broad language that could stifle political dissent.

 

“There is a strong public interest in protecting rights guaranteed by the First Amendment,” Forrest wrote. “There is also a strong public interest in ensuring that due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment are protected by ensuring that ordinary citizens are able to understand the scope of conduct that could subject them to indefinite military detention.”

 

Obama apologists say that the act does not codify indefinite detention. But section 1021 (c-1) allows “Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of hostilities.” A U.S. president can take the position that he is engaged in a war without end. In fact, that is exactly what Presidents George W. Bush and Obama have done. In addition, section (b-2) states that the law applies not just to members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but to any person who has “substantially supported” “associated forces.” Because these terms are not defined, Obama would appear to be free to interpret them as he chooses…as would be any future president.

 

The Freedom Seven includes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christopher Hedges, Pentagon Papers whistl-blower Daniel Ellsberg, scholar Noam Chomsky, and parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir of Iceland.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

To Learn More:

Judge Blocks Controversial NDAA (by Adam Klasfeld, Courthouse News Service)

Journalists, Wiki-Leakers, Anti-War Activists Overturn Domestic Military Detention in Major Civil Rights Victory (by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet)

Christopher Hedges et al. v. Barack Obama (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York) (pdf)

Obama Signs into Law Indefinite Detention of Americans without Trial (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

The 2012 election is shaping up to be ugly, with considerably more negative advertisements than the election four years ago. It’s no surprise that campaigns are relying more on attack ads, for the simple reason that research shows going negative is effective with voters, if it’s done correctly, especially by incumbents.

 

So far, about 70% of advertising in this year’s presidential contest has been negative, compared to just 9% at this stage in 2008, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.

 

Meanwhile, professors Kim L. Fridkin and Patrick J. Kenney at Arizona State University found after conducting a survey of voters that negative ads can hurt a candidate—if the mud being slung is “relevant.”

 

Relevancy is the key. When commercials were deemed both uncivil and irrelevant, voters were more likely to tune out, according to the survey.

 

The university poll also revealed that certain types of voters are more tolerant of nasty campaign ads, specifically people who are highly partisan, politically dialed in, conservative, male, young, or lacking in political sophistication.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

To Learn More:

Survey Finds Attack Ads Work, Though Better On Some Voters Than Others (by Lee Drutman, Sunlight Foundation)

Presidential Ads 70 Percent Negative in 2012, Up from 9 Percent in 2008 (Wesleyan Media Project)

Raymond Gilmartin’s landing was a soft one after leaving behind an embattled Merck. The one-time top executive of the leading pharmaceutical company, which was engulfed in the Vioxx controversy last decade, splits his time these days between teaching part-time at Harvard and serving on the boards of major corporations.

 

Gilmartin served as Merck’s president and CEO for 12 years (1994-2006) during troubles that stemmed from the company’s anti-arthritis medicine Vioxx. Despite knowing that Vioxx was potentially lethal, Merck put it on the market in 1999. Although a Food and Drug Administration study showed that perhaps 55,000 Americans died from heart attacks and strokes after using Vioxx, other sources indicated that upwards of 500,000 people—almost all of them older adults—may have died from the drug, which produced lawsuit after lawsuit against Merck. The company wound up settling for $4.85 billion.

 

Before it was pulled from the market in 2004, the drug was very profitable for Merck, earning about $2 billion per year in revenue at its peak. It also paid handsomely for Gilmartin, who reportedly made $50 million in just five of his years at the corporate helm.

 

After retiring from his post, Gilmartin joined the faculty of Harvard Business School, where, according to the school’s Web site, he still serves as an adjunct professor, teaching second-year MBA candidates to run businesses just like he did in a course called Building and Sustaining Successful Enterprises.

 

Gilmartin also serves on the boards of General Mills, Inc., and the Microsoft Corporation.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Vicki Baker

 

When Half a Million Americans Died and Nobody Noticed (by Alexander Cockburn, The Week)

Raymond Gilmartin (Harvard Business School)

Merck Pays $950 Million for Vioxx Illegal Marketing and Dangers…But No Jail Time (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

The self-styled “Masters of the Universe” have done it again. Just three-and-a-half years after Wall Street’s best and brightest lost billions of dollars on bad bets and crashed the global economy, mega-bank JPMorgan Chase lost more than $2 billion (with perhaps more than another billion to come) on the same sort of risky trading. Earlier this spring, the bank bet heavily on derivatives instruments whose prices are tied to the value of corporate bonds. When the value of such bonds tanked in late March, losses began to mount, and the bank pulled the plug and went public with the debacle last week.

 

As of Monday, it was estimated that at least three executives will lose their jobs, although golden parachutes will doubtless limit their pain to the emotional realm. One of those, Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew, “retired” on Monday. Her total calculated compensation as of FY 2011 was $15.5 million, according to Bloomberg.

 

Ironically, JPMorgan Chase, through its CEO and mouthpiece Jamie Dimon, has been fighting tooth and nail against a regulatory change that would have prevented this latest disaster. The “Volcker Rule,” named for Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chair who proposed it, would restrict banks whose deposits are federally insured from trading for their own profit, thus keeping high-rolling gamblers in banks from risking the federally insured deposits of average banking customers.

 

Although President Barack Obama proposed the Volcker Rule as part of Wall Street reform in January 2010, JPMorgan and Dimon have successfully lobbied to weaken it. As Dimon wrote in the company’s annual report, he believes the Volcker Rule would have “huge negative unintended consequences for American competitiveness and economic growth.”

 

As it turns out, it is the lack of the Volcker Rule that threatens the world economy, and JPMorgan Chase is now facing an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into its recent activities.

-Matt Bewig

 

The Bet That Blew Up for JPMorgan Chase (by Peter Eavis and Susanne Craig, New York Times)

In JPMorgan Chase Trading Bet, Its Confidence Yields to Loss (by Ben Protess, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Mark Scott and Nathaniel Popper, New York Times)

S.E.C. Opens Investigation Into JPMorgan’s $2 Billion Loss (by Ben Protess and Susanne Craig, New York Times)

JPMorgan Loss Shows Wall Street Needs Limits, Trumka Says (by Kathleen Hunter, Bloomberg)

JPMorgan Sought Loophole on Risky Trading (by Edward Wyatt, New York Times)

 

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC), which is owned by the Communist government of China, will buy a controlling stake (80%) in the U.S. unit of Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia Ltd., giving it ownership of 10 branches in California and three in New York.

 

“The deal is insignificant to ICBC’s operations but the implications are profound as it opens up the U.S. market to further expansion from ICBC,” Mike Werner, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., told Bloomberg News.

 

Werner called the decision by the Fed, which required approval from the U.S. Department of Justice, “a watershed moment, as it makes possible greater participation from other Chinese banks” in the U.S. banking sector.

 

ICBC has assets totaling $2.5 trillion and subsidiaries or branches throughout Asia as well as in Germany.

 

ICBC is one of the largest banks in the world, with $238 billion in market capitalization. But its strength and stability may be questionable, according to Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil.

 

“Much of [ICBC’s] capital consists of the remnants of bad loans dating to the 1990s,” wrote Weil.

 

“Either the Chinese government has become extremely skilled at lending in a very short time, and Chinese borrowers have become even better at repaying. Or the numbers are too good to be true, in which case the quality of the bank’s capital matters a great deal, as a gauge of its ability to absorb losses,” he added.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

ICBC Gets Fed Nod as Chinese Banks Seek U.S. Growth (by Jeran Wittenstein and Dakin Campbell, Bloomberg News)

Fed Clears China’s First US Bank Takeover (Agence France-Presse)

China’s Big Banks Look More Like Paper Tigers (by Jonathan Weil, Bloomberg)

 

But if a so-called independent group can sling your mud for you, then going negative is a much more successful strategy, according to two professors at Dartmouth College.

 

In their study published by the American Politics Research journal, Deborah Jordan Brooks and Michael Murov say it is better for an independent expenditure committee to pay for negative commercials because voters can’t really identify who’s behind such nastiness. Such groups often have innocuous names like Restore Our Future (pro-Mitt Romney) or the Red White and Blue Fund (pro-Rick Santorum).

 

“The fact that the public cannot identify the contributors to so many of these groups thus makes it easier for these groups to go on the attack,” Brooks and Murov wrote.

 

Independent advertising in this year’s presidential campaign has skyrocketed compared to 2008—by 1,600%, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. And more than 85% of these ads have negative messages.

 

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Are Independent Attack Ads More Effective Than Candidate Attack Ads? New Research Says Yes (by Lee Drutman, Sunlight Foundation)

Assessing Accountability in a Post-Citizens United Era: The Effects of Attack Ad Sponsorship by Unknown Independent Groups (by Deborah Jordan Brooks and Michael Murov, American Politics Research) (pdf)

Pro-Romney Super PAC Spent More in Florida than McCain’s Entire 2008 Primary Ad Budget (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

 

According to a new Gallup poll, 32% of young workers (age 18-29) are underemployed, a category that combines the unemployed with individuals who are working part-time but are seeking full-time work.

 

The rate in March was 30.1%, and last year it was 30.7%, indicating the job market has grown worse for this group of Americans.

 

It also means trouble for them in the future: If one in three Gen Y’ers can’t gain full-time job experience while they’re young, their prospects may be slim for landing good jobs in their later years. Without experienced, skilled workers, U.S. businesses will suffer in the coming decades.

 

If there’s a silver lining, underemployment among all Americans has gone down over the past year to 18.2%. A year ago it was 19.3%.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Vicki Baker

 

One in Three Young U.S. Workers Are Underemployed (by Dennis Jacobe, Gallup)

One-Third of Workers Under 35 Live with Parents (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

 

From May 2011 to April 2012, the nationally averaged temperature was 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit above what scientists called the “long-term average” for the entire 20th century.

 

Last month alone, warmer-than-average temperatures occurred in nine states located in the Central and Northeast regions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that above-average temperatures also were recorded in the Southeast, Upper Midwest and much of the West.

 

So far in 2012 (not counting the month of May), the U.S. (minus Alaska and Hawaii) has experienced the warmest four-month period on record, with an average temperature of 45.4 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature was 5.4 degrees above the long-term average, according to the NOAA.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

U.S. Temperatures for April Third Warmest on Record (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Ten Warmest 12-month Periods for the Contiguous U.S. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)