A TIGER OUT OF THE CAGE
Tiger walks the green for the first time since his ‘haitus.’
Tiger Woods arrived without warning on a lazy Sunday afternoon at the Masters. He offered a playful jab when he greeted two reporters he had not seen in five months, acting as though nothing had changed. He then strolled onto the new practice facility at Augusta National and stopped to chat with Paul Casey. It’s where I’m used to seeing him,” Casey said, choosing to keep their conversation private. “All of a sudden he appeared behind me. He was all business as usual—hit 10 balls and go play.” This Masters figures to be anything but that. Woods has not been seen in public, except for a few chosen media, since his middle-of-the-night car accident Nov. 27 that set off explosive revelations of a sordid life hardly anyone knew existed. More than a four-time Masters champion and the No. 1 player in golf, he is currently facing the music for a sex scandal that have made him a regular in tabloids.
THE JOBS BILL: BOGGED DOWN
With the mid-term election looming in November, officials in Washington, DC are facing pressure to do something about jobs. By now, the litany of dismaying statistics is all too familiar. Nearly 15m Americans are unemployed, and over 6m have been out of work for more than six months. By the administration’s estimates, the economy will create only 95,000 jobs a month in 2010—not enough to reduce the unemployment rate, which is forecast to stay above 9% well into 2011. Meanwhile, government support programs are winding down. The stimulus bill passed a year ago will have a declining impact during the rest of this year, and although the Federal Reserve may not increase interest rates this year, it will end other interventions sooner. The House of Representatives moved to fill the gap last December, when it passed a $154 billion jobs bill focused on infrastructure, aid to the states and extended unemployment benefits. Earlier this month Barack Obama outlined his own approach to the problem of joblessness in the 2011 budget. His plan, worth about $250 billion in 2010 and 2011, mirrors the House’s in some ways, but it adds measures to create jobs, notably a $33 billion program of tax credits. Firms would get a $5,000 credit for each new worker hired, and money to offset payroll-tax expenses from increased wages or hours worked.
STAND UP, BE COUNTED
Every ten years, says the constitution, America’s government must count every person living in the United States. For
a country of more than 300m, this is an immense logistical feat: the Census Bureau mailed out or hand-delivered about 134m questionnaires for census day on April 1st. Little wonder, given the ways in which the results help to shape the distribution of political and economic power. As after every census, the population changes tallied will alter the state-by-state apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives and therefore the electoral college, the body that picks the president after elections. According to the non-profit Population Reference Bureau, the
southern and western states will do well; Texas is likely to gain three seats, with Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Utah each gaining one. The losers (one seat each) are likely to be Iowa, Louisiana (thanks to Hurricane Katrina), Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Another result of the census is to determine how much loot states bag from the federal government. Andrew Reamer of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, estimates that in the 2008 fiscal year alone census data were used to apportion $447 billion of federal assistance grants.