Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

At the Tone, the Time Will Be . . .

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At some point in my northern Virginia childhood, I discovered that I could call 844-1212 and find out exactly what time it was. “At the tone, the time will be 11:41pm and ten seconds . . . (beep).” Around the same time, I also learned that dialing 936-1212 would get you a free, recorded weather report.

These services were provided by C&P Telephone, which was eventually subsumed into Bell Atlantic, and then into Verizon. Against all odds, both services survived from 1939 to present. Long after my preferred weather source moved to CompuServe and then to various Internet sources, you could still get a report from (703) 936-1212. Long after we all got cell phones that synced with accurate tower time automatically, you could still call (703) 844-1212 and get that archaic, soothing voice and tone.

If you call those numbers now, you still get those age-old recorded services . . . but the weather report is preceded by a glib message indicating that Verizon’s time and weather services will cease to exist on June 1 of this year. Such is the price of progress, but I’m always kind-of sad to see these kinds of things go.

SPR Draw-Downs: Not Necessary (Yet?)

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In the aftermath of the 1970’s energy crisis, the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA). Signed into law by President Gerald Ford (R) in 1975, the law established the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which is intended to be used to help carry us through serious oil supply disruptions like the 1973-74 embargo. Stocked nearly to capacity with 726.5 million barrels of oil, the SPR is today the largest emergency fuel supply in the world.

In the event of short-term oil supply disruptions, the U.S. federal government can loan oil from the SPR to oil companies, who then repay the oil (with additional oil as interest) back into the SPR once the supply issues are resolved. Since 1996, this has been done about a dozen times due to pipeline blockages, channel blockages, accidents, and hurricanes.

Additionally, during more serious oil supply disruptions that threaten national security or safety, the government can sell oil from the SPR on the open market to ensure sufficient supply in the market. This has only been done twice, first during Operation Desert Storm in 1990-91 (21 million barrels), and second following the massive oil supply disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (11 million barrels).

The SPR has only been used once for reasons other than mitigating oil supply deficiency. In 1996-97, under President Bill Clinton (D), the U.S. government sold 28 million barrels on the open market for the purposes of deficit reduction. These sales both artificially reduced the federal deficit in those years, and helped push fuel prices below their natural equilibrium price. Those of us who enjoyed the spectacularly-low gas prices in the late 1990’s, and who remember the subsequent economic shock when they jumped up more than $0.30/gal. in a short time thereafter, can place at least some of the blame for the price instability on the government.

Read more . . .

Bypass TurboTax Browser Check in Chrome OS

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I’ve used Intuit’s TurboTax service to file my taxes for many years, and I’ve generally been pretty happy with them. Today, I decided to check my refund status with the IRS’s Where’s My Refund service, which requires me to enter my Social Security number, filing status, and refund amount.

Well, I don’t have my refund amount memorized, so I went to the TurboTax site to log in and get the magic number . . . only to discover that, according to Intuit, the version of the Chrome browser that ships in Chrome OS is officially unsupported. Usually in these situations, companies design their sites to let you continue anyway (with a warning that things might not work right). Intuit, however, decided to just completely block their site for users of officially unsupported browsers.

Normally I would just spoof the user agent of a supported browser, but Chrome OS doesn’t have any practical way to do this (and, frankly, I shouldn’t have to anyway). Luckily, however, Intuit didn’t spend a lot of time on their browser checker. It is very easy to bypass.

All you need to do is bring up the developer tools (in Chrome, wrench menu > tools > developer tools), click on ‘Console’ (at the far right), type or paste this command at the console, and press enter: greenStartAsPost(productid,true);

Tahdah! The browser proceeds to the login screen and everything seems to work as-expected from there on. Note, Intuit doesn’t support this version of Chrome because they haven’t tested it. Using an unsupported browser might not work right. I’m not responsible if you use this trick and your taxes get all screwed up ;-).

Unsustainable

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“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.” – Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), Mar. 16, 2006, (emphasis added).

By President Barack Obama’s (D) own criteria, he and the Democratic super-majorities in the House and Senate that have run the show for the last two years are failed leaders.

Faced with a recession that the government could have stopped in its tracks with a sane tax policy and long-overdue federal budget cuts, the new administration doubled-down on President George W. Bush’s (R) dysfunctional bailout and deficit policies and quadrupled the annual deficit in their first year, setting a new record that dwarfed the worst Bush ever did. While the Bush/Obama Bailout Bonanza seems to have mostly come to an end, the destructive deficit spending continues apace. The U.S. federal government—by which I mean us, the taxpayers—now owes $14,083,345,766,082.15 to countless creditors, including foreign companies and governments (as of 2/10/2010, according to the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury). At some point in the next one or two years, U.S. public debt is expected to rise above 100 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—meaning we will owe more to our creditors than the worth of the entire country’s economic production in a year. The last time our debt was more than 100 percent of our GDP was during and immediately following the Second World War.

Bruce L. Hargraves, USN Retired, wrote a pithy letter to the editor which appeared in the Northern Wyoming Daily News on April 2, 2010. Hargraves said, “I object and take exception to everyone saying that Obama and Congress are spending money like a drunken sailor. As a former drunken sailor, I quit when I ran out of money” (emphasis added). It was funny when I read it last year. It’s not so funny anymore.

Read more . . .

Mubarak Out; Military to Run Egypt (Updated)

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Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced today on state television that President Hosni Mubarak has ‘stepped down,’ and Egypt will now be run by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces pending the establishment of a new democratic republic. Following the announcement, street protesters throughout Cairo erupted into cries of, “Egypt is free!”

This follows eighteen days of unprecedented protests on the streets of Egypt’s main cities against Mubarak’s thirty-year rule. Mubarak was widely expected to step down in a televised speech yesterday, but he did not do so. Some time after the speech, he fled Cairo for the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. His current disposition is unknown.

Although the official announcement characterized Mubarak as having ‘resigned’ the Egyptian Presidency, all indications are that this was a bloodless military coup. The military had lent tacit support to the widespread street protests, and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces had begun meeting without Mubarak on Thursday although Mubarak was still technically its leader. The Council has stated through official channels that it will only run the country during the transition period between governments, and would stand aside once a new civilian government is established.

President Barack Obama (D) issued a statement lending support to the establishment of a democratic republic in Egypt. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the U.S. Department of State will be providing assistance to Egyptian officials and groups toward their establishing free institutions and elections.

UPDATE; 2/13/2011, 10:25am: The military council has dissolved the Egyptian parliament and suspended the constitution. It has announced that it will run Egypt for six months or until new elections can be held.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.