Category Archives: History

Marcus Mariota is obviously the best Oregon Ducks quarterback of all time. Hes the schools only Heisman Trophy winner, he put together an unmatched stat line over three seasons, and he delivered some of the most iconic performances in team history.

But how do the rest of the Oregon quarterbacks stack up in comparison to the GOAT? Ducks Wire recently took a shot at ranking the nine best quarterbacks in Oregon history, and its list opens the door for plenty of discussion.

Theres never a right or wrong way to rank players in lists like these; thats part of the fun. However, as subjective as this power ranking is, there are certainly players who have strong arguments to be ranked either higher or lower based on their resumes and bodies of work.

Kevin Cline

Mariota is the undisputed best quarterback in Oregon history.

The most glaring omission from Ducks Wires ranking is Darron Thomas. All the two-year starter did during his time in Eugene was lead the Ducks to a 23-3 record (he was inactive for one of Oregons victories in 2011), account for more than 70 touchdowns, and lead Oregon to its first Rose Bowl win since 1917. Thomas piloted one of the greatest offenses in the history of the sport, and although he wasnt the most notable superstar on the field, he certainly was a big part of the units success. Norm Van Brocklin and Norv Turner are NFL legends (and Van Brocklin was no slouch in college, either), but Thomas had more individual and team success than both of them in college. Shouldnt he be on the list, and quite frankly, rank highly on it?

Additionally, a case can be made for Dennis Dixon to be ranked as high as No. 2, or as low as No. 6, depending on ones criteria. On the one hand, Dixons best season in 2007 was so exceptional that he very well might have won the Heisman Trophy had he not gotten injured late in the year. That singular season was arguably more impressive than any of Joey Harringtons or Justin Herberts. But factoring in longevity and body of work, its hard to justify ranking Dixon ahead of Herbert, Harrington, or even Dan Fouts and Akili Smith. So, is he in the right spot at No. 4?

What is your reaction to this ranking of Oregon quarterbacks? What criteria would you use to create a list of your own, and how would your rankings be different?

Joshua WhittedMorgantown, West VirginiaTop Photo by Amazing Moments Photography

Excerpt from:

How Would YOU Rank the Best QBs in Oregon History? - FishDuck

A group supported by the Oregon Historical Society is marking a milestone in preserving LGBTQ+ history.

OREGON, USA A local group is celebrating 10 years of trailblazers who have helped uplift the LGBTQ+ community in the Pacific Northwest.

"It's important to tell all of the stories," said Robin Will, president of the Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN). "That old saying that winners write history... If you get into the historical record where you can't be ignored, then you are a winner."

GLAPNworks to preserve an accurate account of local LGBTQ+ history.

"We were criminals by definition," Will said. "[If] you look at the record, you get the impression that no LGBTQ person ever did one damn thing that was worth noticing or writing down... We are in fact a persecuted minority."

"Back then you could be kicked out of a restaurant if the restaurant owner thought you were gay," said Susie Mary Shepherd, an advocate who has helped GLAPN archive LGBTQ stories. "You could certainly be fired... You could get kicked out of your home if you were renting and had a landlord who found out you were gay and didn't like it."

Shepherd is part of that history. She made headlines when she came out in the 70s, and her parents started an LGBTQ family advocacy group called Parents of Gays. That group later became PFLAG.

"We were trying to lobby the legislature for gay civil rights," Shepherd said.

Part of GLAPN's effort to preserve this history is compiling a Queer Heroes list every June.

Will said between 60-80 nominations come in each year. GLAPN selects 30, one for each day of Pride Month. In 2021, the list is on its 10th year.

"We were really writing history," Will said. "Wasn't really getting covered anywhere else, people in the community who might never have otherwise been mentioned... To finally be seen, be recognized, be acknowledged as a person of value."

The list honors people across the Pacific Northwest. Some have passed on, while others are still part of the movement.

"It completely caught me off guard," said Jamar Ruff, who was named a Queer Hero in 2020.

Ruff lives in Coos County and serves a number of community organizations, helping people with HIV and addiction and uplifting LGBTQ youth.

"It's still hard for folks who are coming out," Ruff said. "It's still hard for folks who just want to be themselves... So many people came before us so that we can do the things that we do today."

"People had to hide who they were," said Kristan Knapp, who started fighting for Oregon LGBTQ+ rights in the '70s.

She noted some of the biggest fights were against anti-LGBTQ ballot measures, spanning many years in the state.

Separate measures in 1992 and 2000, both called Measure 9, would have blocked schools and public institutions from "promoting," or essentially mentioning homosexuality.

"We had all been pretty marginalized and beaten down during that campaign," Knapp recalled.

KGW archive footage from 2000 shows the measure's sponsor, Lon Mabon, proudly proclaiming: "It's winnable, obviously."

The measure's wording lumped in homosexuality with pedophilia and other "abnormal and perverse" behaviors.

Shepherd had served as a teacher in Oregon, and knew this kind of law would mean others like her could be fired for being openly themselves.

"Was an absolutely horrific experience," Shepherd said.

Advocates ended up raising more than a million dollars, creating ad campaigns to discourage people from voting "yes" on Measure 9. They eventually defeated the measure.

"It does feel good that the work we did made a difference," Knapp said.

Washington and Oregon passed some laws in the 2000s to better protect LGBTQ+ people from such discrimination.

Shepherd noted some of her friends and fellow advocates passed away before they could see the progress made by their efforts.

"I get teared up," Shepherd said, holding back tears. "Every time I walk by a house or a business and I see a Pride flag hanging, I look up to heaven where Jerry and Larry are now and I say, 'hey Jerry and Larry, do you see this one?' It's a very important symbol of where we've come."

In a separate effort this year, TriMet has also memorialized local queer heroes for the first time on a Pride bus.

For GLAPN's president, it's meaningful to see such changes in attitudes and efforts to preserve LGBTQ+ history.

"I never really thought I'd see this happen," Will said.

"I was told early on in my career that this kind of research would end my career," Washington State University queer historian Peter Boag said.

Boag was named a Queer Hero in 2018.

As other states enact anti-LGBTQ laws in 2021, he noted this reminder: "Some things have changed, and unfortunately some things haven't."

Ultimately, the growing list of Queer Heroes serves as a reminder of history and of the path forward.

A common thread ties all on the list together.

"We are birthed from resilience," Ruff said. "We are birthed from overcoming."

More here:

Group honors queer heroes, rewriting Oregon and Washington history with truth - KGW.com

Weather forecasts now include a warning about ultraviolet levels and everyone knows they should apply sunscreen. However, this type of protection is a recent innovation.

Sunscreen was first used on a large scale during the second world war, when the US military experimented with substances to prevent sunburn. Red Vet Pet short for red veterinary petrolatum was included in life-raft survival kits for downed airmen. This is a form of petroleum jelly, previously used to treat cuts and burns. It was found to block ultraviolet light, but was oily and unpleasant to apply.

After the war, Benjamin Green, a pharmacist formerly of the US air force, mixed Red Vet Pet with coconut oil and cocoa butter to create a more pleasing texture. His market was leisure rather than survival, helping people to acquire a fashionable tan without getting burnt. Green sold his creation under the name Coppertone, and it became one of the first commercially successful sunscreens.

Since then, decades of research have produced increasingly effective protection. Sunscreen still contains organic substances to absorb UV, but may also include something to reflect it, such as fine particles of zinc oxide. Red Vet Pet had a sun protection factor (SPF) of two, meaning it doubled the time you could remain safely in the sun; modern sunscreens go up to SPF 100.

Excerpt from:

Weatherwatch: shining a light on the history of sunscreen - The Guardian

As the Biden administration and Republicans negotiate a possible infrastructure spending package, how to pay for it has been a key sticking point.

President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress want to raise taxes on the rich, while some Republicans have been pushing for an increase in the gas tax which would be the first in 28 years. A bipartisan group of senators recently crafted a compromise bill that would pay for just under US$1 trillion in spending on rail, roads and bridges over five years in part by indexing the gas tax to inflation. Democrats call this regressive because it would raise taxes on working Americans.

As the director of energy studies at the University of Floridas Public Utility Research Center, Ive studied both taxes on energy and how the government spends money on infrastructure.

Throughout the gas taxs controversial history, leaders have frequently called upon this revenue source when serious infrastructure investment is needed.

This resilient levy is a major source of U.S. funding for roads and transit today. It originated during the Great Depression as a temporary penny-per-gallon gasoline tax. At the time, a gallon cost about 18 cents, or about $2.90 in 2021 dollars.

As he signed the Revenue Act of 1932 into law, President Herbert Hoover lauded the willingness of our people to accept this added burden in these times in order impregnably to establish the credit of the federal government.

The original gas tax, an emergency measure intended to bolster the budget and fund national defense spending, not to meet transportation needs, was slated to expire in 1933. Instead, persistent budget deficits throughout the New Deal and World War II kept it in force throughout Franklin D. Roosevelts administration over the objections of the oil, automotive and travel industries. It became a permanent 1.5-cent levy in 1941.

Multiple efforts to do away with the gas tax ever since have failed.

For example, Congress again scheduled the taxs repeal in 1951 when it increased it to 2 cents as a source of revenue related to the Korean War. Instead, lawmakers agreed to keep the tax on the books to help pay for one of President Dwight D. Eisenhowers top priorities, the national interstate highway system.

In 1956 the levy rose once more, to 3 cents, when Americans were paying about 30 cents for a gallon of gas. At the same time, the government established the Highway Trust Fund to use the gas tax revenue to pay for building and maintaining the new interstates.

The tax rose to 4 cents per gallon in 1959 and froze at that level for more than two decades.

Gas tax revenue stopped keeping up with the expenses it was supposed to cover in the early 1970s following a severe bout of inflation and OPECs oil embargo. U.S. gas prices soared from about 36 cents per gallon in 1972 to $1.31 in 1981.

Responding to what members of both major political parties saw as a transportation infrastructure crisis, Congress more than doubled the tax to 9 cents per gallon as part of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982. The same law split the Highway Trust Fund and its revenue stream into two parts: The first 8 cents would finance roadwork while the other penny would finance mass transit projects.

This hike may have struck drivers as a sharp increase, but public spending on transportation infrastructure would continue to fall as a percentage of all outlays.

In 1984, Congress increased spending on highways by funneling proceeds from fines and other penalties that businesses pay for safety violations, such as failing to label hazardous materials or forcing drivers to work too many hours in a row.

Congress boosted the tax twice more in the 1990s but primarily to reduce the then-ballooning federal deficit. Only half of a 5-cent increase in 1990 went to highways and transit, while a 4.3-cent lift three years later went entirely to lowering the deficit.

By 1997, the government had redirected all gas tax revenue reserved for deficit reduction to the Highway Trust Fund, where it still flows today.

Along the way, other federal fuel taxes arose, including a 24.4-cent-per-gallon diesel tax and taxes on methanol and compressed natural gas. And state fuel taxes, which in most cases began before the federal gas tax, range from as low as 8.95 cents per gallon in Alaska to as high as 57.6 cents per gallon in Pennsylvania.

Since 1993, when the federal gas tax was first parked at 18.4 cents, inflation and rising construction costs have eroded its effectiveness as a transportation-related revenue source. In addition, U.S. vehicles have grown more fuel-efficient overall which means Americans use less fuel for every mile they drive.

As a result, highway and transit spending has significantly outpaced the revenue collected from the gas tax and other sources. Since 2008, the government has transferred over $80 billion to the fund that it had to take from other sources.

But its still not enough. The American Society of Civil Engineers, which gives U.S. infrastructure a C-minus, is calling on the government and private sector to increase spending on roads and bridges by at least $2.5 trillion within a decade.

While its true the gas tax may be regressive because lower-income people pay the same rate as those who earn higher incomes, there are still advantages to this tax.

For one thing, it follows the user pays principle of providing government services. Under this principle, the people using the roads are held responsible for paying for their upkeep. As the number of motorists using electric vehicles increases, however, this may become less true over time.

Further, it would also create an incentive to at least marginally decrease the use of fossil fuels, accomplishing another goal of the administration.

Finally, the government could always subsidize the tax for the poor, perhaps through annual lump-sum payments, making it less regressive.

Clearly, U.S. infrastructure is in dire need of upgrading and investment. At the end of the day, Americans will pay for it one way or another whether in taxes or through costs of unsafe and inadequate infrastructure, including in lost lives. How the government pays for investment may matter less than that it finally does it.

This is an updated version of an article first published on Feb. 27, 2018. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read the original here:

The gas taxs tortured history shows how hard it is to fund new infrastructure - PBS NewsHour

The U.S. Open heads to Brookline next year, site of arguably the most important championship in American golf history.

Francis Ouimet, then a 20-year-old amateur, won the 1913 U.S. Open at The Country Club at Brookline, defeating British legends Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in a playoff. The colossal upset marked the rise of the sport in the U.S.

This will be the fourth time that the Massachusetts venue will play host to the seasons third major. Heres a look at future U.S. Open sites and their U.S. Open history.

2022: The Country Club, Brookline, Mass., June 16-19

2023: The Los Angeles Country Club (North Course), Los Angeles, Calif., June 15-18

2024: Pinehurst No. 2, Pinehurst, N.C., June 13-16

2025: Oakmont Country Club, Oakmont, Pa., June 12-15

2026: Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, South Hampton, N.Y., June 18-21

2027: Pebble Beach Golf Links, Pebble Beach, Calif., June 17-20

See the original post:

Future U.S. Open venues and their U.S. Open history - Golf Channel

WAVERLY, Iowa (KWWL)--- The Waverly Fire Department has a new home for a truck previously used in the department 100 years ago.

The American LaFrance was the first "new" truck used by Waverly Fire in 1921.

After the truck retired service it was sold to Redfield, Iowa, who then later sold it to Dale Miracle. After that, it stayed with a family in Indianola for sixty years.

After three years of negotiations the century-old vehicle finally wheeled its way back home to the Waverly Fire Department.

Assistant Fire Chief Kevin Miller says it's about doing what you can to bring history home.

"Anytime you can get your history back, you only get one shot at that," Miller said. "There's always another house or another car, but in this case, there isn't another truck. This is documented that this is our first piece of equipment."

Miller feels this piece of history gives to the community as well as the fire department's families, as many of them have been involved for generations.

"It's not just in the equipment you see that tradition, it's also in our personal lives," he said.

Waverly Fire Department Training Officer Jim Mckenzie, has 182 years of combined service between all the generations of his family.

"It shows a rich dedication and history of the Waverly Fire department," Mckenzie said.

Miller hopes to restore the truck as soon as possible so it can "serve Waverly once again," whether that be for parades, funerals or weddings.

The public can see the truck at Waverly's Fire Museum. It's alongside two other important trucks from the department's history.

Original post:

Waverly Fire Department brings home history with 100-year-old truck - kwwl.com

Police dog bites send thousands of people to emergency rooms every year.

Studies show that in some places they have been disproportionately Black. That may not be a coincidence, history shows.

Mauled, a new short film produced by Reckon examines how dogs have been used to terrorize and control Black people and communities of color for centuries.

The documentary film is based on reporting from a year-long investigation by AL.com, The Marshall Project, USA Today, IndyStar and the Invisible Institute. The collaboration won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

It begins with an account from Ashley White, who was 26-years-old in 2015 when she was mauled by a police dog in Talladega. A local attorney who represented victims of police dogs in the town, said the department sought out a dog that would attack Black members of their community.

The film features Charlton Yingling, a history professor at the University of Louisville, who points to a long history in the Americas -- dating back to the 1520s -- of using dogs to enforce racial hierarchies and to extract and exploit Black labor.

Tyler D. Parry, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who co-authored a book on the subject with Yingling, said dogs became central to the penitentiary system, including to capture escaped prisoners, and suppress civil rights demonstrations and attack protesters in cities such as Birmingham.

No national database of police dog bites exists, and there is little accountability or redress available for victims. Police officers are often shielded from liability and jurors generally favor the dogs.

The Marshall Project and AL.com will continue their reporting on police dog attacks. You can share your experience with police dogs here.

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Ugly history of using dogs to attack, suppress Black people told in new documentary - AL.com

An undated photo of Broadbent's General Store in Lehi. Various photos and other items from the Broadbent family will soon be digitized thanks to a grant by a state agency issued last week. (City of Lehi)

Editor's note: This article is a part of a series reviewing Utah and U.S. history for KSL.com's Historic section.

SALT LAKE CITY Ever wanted to watch a jazz legend perform in Cedar City or read what Salt Lake County commissioners met about back in 1852? You may soon be in luck.

The Utah State Historical Records Advisory Board, under the Utah Division of Archives and Records Service, last week approved a little more than $25,000 in grants that will go toward six organizations working to digitize pieces of Utah history and make it more accessible.

With the funding, thousands of documents from across the state will soon be made better available as they are converted from photos, film and paperwork to digital formats.

"Digitization makes records really, really accessible to the public," said Mahala Ruddell, an archivist with the Utah Division of Archives and Records Service and executive secretary for the board. "For many historical records that are on film ... even old video cassette tapes, that kind of footage is really prone to degradation and decay. That film is not forever, so being able to pull that record to digitize it, I think, is really important."

The Hutchings Museum in Lehi received the largest grant from the board this year. It approved a $7,500 grant to digitize items from the Broadbent Collection, which features various items from a prominent family in Lehi history.

Broadbent's General Store opened in 1882 and operated in Lehi for 135 years before it closed in 2017, according to the city. The collection to be digitized includes about 9,000 photos, maps and other records from Lehi history, officials with the Utah Division of Archives and Records Service said.

Meanwhile, the Moab Museum received $5,196 to digitize images from the massive Francis "Fran" and Terby Barnes Collection. Their collection features more than 50,000 photos of southern Utah landscapes ranging from 1960 to 2008, according to the museum. The collection also includes maps and written works from the lives of the prolific lives of the Moab couple.

Fran Barnes was credited with writing 46 books about the desert landscapes and history of southeast Utah, while Terby Barnes served on both the Grand County Travel Council and the Bureau of Land Management Advisory Board in her lifetime.

"The Fran and Terby Barnes Photograph Archive is an invaluable display of the Barnes' efforts to promote the history of Moab and the Four Corners region a region that's popularity has surpassed, in many towns (especially Moab) its infrastructure many times over in recent years," the museum wrote. "The collection highlights backcountry areas which are at risk due to commercial development and resource extraction."

The board also granted Southern Utah University $4,627 to digitize 16mm film reels that document student life dating back to when it was still called Branch Agricultural Culture in 1947 and ending when it was Southern Utah State College in 1970. Some of the films include a trip to Zion National Park in 1948, a Louis Armstrong concert in 1962 and a taping of "Taming of the Shrew" from the inaugural year of the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 1961.

Other items include commencement ceremonies in 1949 and 1962. State officials said the footage should be available in time for the 60th anniversary of the Shakespeare Festival this year and the 125th anniversary of SUU's founding, which is next year.

The Duchesne County Library received $4,000 to preserve its cemetery database and move it to cloud storage. The database holds "extensive" records from the county's 14 cemeteries, including pictures of gravestones and obituaries.

Another $2,240 went toward the Salt Lake County Archives to help digitize minutes from county commission meetings dating all the way back to 1852. The documents include all sorts of discussions and decisions involving zoning, roads, schools, election districts, business licenses and irrigation canals.

The final grant went toward the Cache Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum in Logan. The museum is working to digitize pioneer histories written between 1930 and 1970, according to the Division of Archives and Records Service.

Ruddell explained the grants are approved by the Utah State Historical Records Advisory Board annually from funds received by National Archives and Records Administration. Every year, the board receives about $25,000 to $30,000 it can reapportion to various nonprofits in the state that qualify for the grants.

Board members then use a rubric to pick the projects that best fit state and federal guidelines but are also beneficial for the general public.

Though the pieces will soon be digitized, Ruddell said there will still be plenty of care provided to preserve digital collections that always run the threat of being erased. Still, it offers additional protection for pieces that may have otherwise disappeared from existence.

"Once something is digitized, you have to care for it with sort of just the same amount of detail that you would a physical collection," she said. "You need to make sure the files you have are kept safe and you have lots of backup copies."

Once converted to a digital format, the organization overseeing a project will have the ability to make it available in the way it best sees fit, but there will be several access points. For example, Ruddell said the Moab Museum will have photos available online while Salt Lake County will work with the state archives offices to make sure it's public information.

Many items will also eventually be available through the Mountain West Digital Library.

See the original post:

Board grants $25K to digitize pieces of Utah history. Here's what is getting preserved - KSL.com

On his very first day in office the new President Biden sent a comprehensive immigration bill to Congress to fulfill one of his major campaign promises. Will it work this time? A short look back at history shows just how difficult immigration reform can be. There have been two attempts at comprehensive immigration reform in the 21st century: one in 2007 and one in 2013. In both instances the political environment started out looking promising, and in both instances the legislation failed.

In 2006 there was every reason to be optimistic about the prospects for immigration reform. President George W. Bush was in his second term and thus had nothing to fear from a far-right challenge for his partys nomination. In addition, as a former governor of Texas, he had great familiarity with the issue and wanted very much to do something about it. He had bipartisan support in the Senate from two of its most revered members: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA). In the 2006 elections, Democrats took control and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (CA) became the first woman speaker of the House. There was reason to assume that a strong, bipartisan coalition could be put together in favor of a comprehensive bill.

But that coalition never happened.

In the winter and spring of 2006 pro-immigration reform groups, many of them Mexican-American political action organizations, decided that they could help the prospect of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act by organizing a series of high-profile national marches. Not content with the fact that President George W. Bush and most of the liberals in the Senate, including Senator Ted Kennedy, were planning to work together on a bipartisan bill, organizers assumed that bringing the fight out of Washington and to the country would help their cause.

All through the spring of 2006 organizers put together mega-events. A march in Chicago drew 100,000 marchers. It was followed by demonstrations in Tampa, Houston, Dallas and even Salt Lake City. The biggest demonstration of all took place in Los Angeles on March 25, 2006, when more than 500,000 people marched and attended rallies at the Civic Center and in MacArthur Park. Even more marches took place on May Day (May 1) a day otherwise known as International Workers Daya traditional time of demonstrations for trade unions and other left-wing political causes.

The marches were widely covered by a mostly favorable media. Marchers waved American flags (some upside downwhich can be a sign of distress or of disrespect) and Mexican flags. Signs were in Spanish and EnglishSi se puede was a popular one, as was Today we march, tomorrow we vote. In both breadth and enthusiasm, these marches evoked the large civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s.

However, the consensus immediately after the fact was that the demonstrations backfired. Even though organizers had tried to get marchers to leave the Mexican flags at home, their argument was only partially successful against arguments about ethnic pride. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration group, saw its membership increase. Members of Congress felt the backlash. Republican lawmakers saw their offices flooded with phone calls as a result of the marches. Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) said They lost me, when I saw so many Mexican flags.[1] The size and magnitude of the demonstrations had some kind of backfire effect, said John McLoughlin, a Republican pollster working for House members and Senators seeking re-election.

With a large chunk of the Republican Party energized by their nativist base to oppose the 2007 bill, President Bush needed solid Democratic support. But the Democrats had their own factional problems. In April 2006 the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, referred to the guest worker provisions in the bill as indentured servitude. And AFL-CIO President John Sweeny openly opposed the guest worker provisions as well. Opposition came from Black lawmakers too. Speaking on National Public Radio, political scientist Ron Walters pointed to the response of the Congressional Black Caucus to a liberal immigration bill produced by one of its own members, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas. Only 9 of the 43 caucus members supported it.

The factional divides among House Democrats were present among Democratic voters as well. A 2005 Pew poll asked Democrats questions about immigration and divided them into liberals, conservatives and disadvantaged democrats (referring to economic disadvantage). Note the stark differences between liberals and both disadvantaged Democrats and conservatives.

Table 1: Other Fissures in the Democratic Coalition (Source: Pew Research Center)

The immigration bill died in the summer of 2007 when proponents failed to garner the 60 votes in the Senate required to move the bill forward. And in the House, Speaker Pelosi needed 50 to 70 Republican votes to move forward but a resolution in the Republican conference opposing the Senate bill passed by 114 to 21. She decided not to bring it to the floor.

It took six years before a second comprehensive immigration bill was introduced into Congress. As in 2007, many political experts thought that this time the stars were aligned. Democrats had picked up seats in the Senate in the 2012 elections that gave them a comfortable majority. And Democratic President Barack Obama had won a second term in office with a strong backing from Hispanic voters, leading national Republicans to discuss the need to deal with immigration in the face of the growing Hispanic vote. While Republicans still controlled the House, Democrats had picked up seats. On June 27, 2013, Senate bill 744, a second comprehensive immigration bill, passed the Senate on a 68 to 32 vote. The bill had been created by a bipartisan gang of 8 four Democratic senators and four Republican senatorsand its passage created the expectation that there would be quick action in the House as well.[2]

Contributing to this optimism was the fact that this time around the Democratic coalition was less divided. In the six years since failure of the 2007 legislation, the labor movement had changed and included many more Hispanics in its membership. Rick Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO had this to say about the new legislation:

Our role is to make sure that road map leads to citizenship achievable not only in theory but in fact. Workers care for the elderly, mow our lawns or drive our taxis, work hard and deserve a reliable road map to citizenship. And so the labor movements entire grassroots structure will be mobilized throughout this process and across this country to make sure the road map is inclusive.

The Congressional Black Caucus was a bit less enthusiastic but still expressed support for the effort while complaining that the Diversity Visa Program had been eliminated.[3] And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the agricultural lobby were on board as well.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration had continued efforts begun during the Bush administration to prove that the United States could police the borders. In 2013 federal prosecutions for immigration crimes reached an all-time high.

But Obamas get-tough actions at the border infuriated Hispanic activists and failed to convince some Republicans that the border was under control.

If the factions of the Democratic Party had softened in the years between 2007 and 2013, the factions in the Republican Party had hardened. In 2013, Speaker John Boehner was facing significant intra-party infighting, largely due to the growing voice of the Tea Party activists in his conferencea group that would contribute to his historic resignation just two years later. To please the hard-liners in his party he rejected the Senate bill in favor of a series of smaller bills and then, when suspicion was that these smaller bills would go to conference with the hated Senate bill, he had to promise not to compromise.

And then, as is so often the case in politics, something happened that on the face of it had nothing to do with immigration reform but that killed it nonetheless. Majority Leader Eric Cantor, widely expected to succeed Boehner as speaker, lost his Republican primary to a right-wing tea party supporter who among other things campaigned on opposition to immigration reform. Republicans were spooked by Cantors loss. If a member of the leadership could lose to an unknown Tea Party challenger, they could too. Boehner never brought the legislation to the floor, in spite of the fact that it probably could have passed with a united Democratic caucus and some more moderate business-oriented Republicans.

What will happen this time around is anyones guess. Immigration reform has always had a way of eluding the best-laid plans of powerful people. The Republican Party is still in limbo, with many members clearly anti-immigrant and others fearful of an anti-immigrant primary electorate. While Democrats are less divided than Republicans, their margins are so small that they cant afford to lose anyone.

Immigration reform may be as difficult in the third decade of the 21st century as it was in the first and second. This is in part because of a fundamental paradox. On the one hand, the United States is a country of immigrants; on the other hand, it is a country that has always been worried about being overrun by immigrants. And this makes reform especially difficult.

[1] Otis L. Graham Jr. Immigration Reform and Americas Unchosen Future (Bloomington Indiana, Author House 2008), page 437.

[2] The Democrats were: Michael Bennett (CO) Dick Durbin (ILL) Bob Menendez (NJ) and Chuck Schumer (NY). The Republicans were: Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), Jeff Flake (AZ) John McCain (AZ) and Marco Rubio (FLA)

[3] The Diversity Visa Program is a lottery for obtaining a green card to work in the United States.

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Can Biden pass immigration reform? History says it will be tough - Brookings Institution

Inflation is on the rise, hitting some of the highest levels seen since the early 1980s. Back then, the Federal Reserves Paul Volcker killed off rampant price rises, hitting the economy hard initially, but ushering in decades of repeated rallies in stocks and bonds.

If todays post Covid-19 pandemic inflation proves sticky, will it be like the years before Volcker, or could it be more like the happier growth that followed World War II? These periods hold lessons about how financial markets might perform.

After World War II, stocks did well despite bouts of inflation. But that only lasted until the mid-1960s. Returns for stocks and Treasurys then struggled until after the 1970s inflation was crushed.

One reason why stocks did well in the 1950s was that money flowed into the market as pension funds and other institutions bought equities for the first time, according to Ian Harnett, chief investment strategist at Absolute Strategy Research. That helped push down the so-called equity-risk premium, which measures the extra returns stock investors demand over government bonds for the risk of losing their money.

In the 1970s, the risk premium rose again and stocks underperformed when inflation took hold. The clues to why this happened are elsewhere in the economic backdrop.

Read more:

What Investors Can Learn From the History of Inflation - The Wall Street Journal