Vaclav Havel, the playwright who led the Velvet Revolution that ended communism in Czechoslovakia, has died at 75. At a conference in Prague in 1995, Cato research fellow Stanley Kober drew on Havel’s writings to discuss civil society, the spirit of humility, and the case for limited government. He quoted Havel on the essential quality of a free government:

I am in favor of a political system based on the citizen, and recognizing all his fundamental civil and human rights in their universal validity, and equally applied. The sovereignty of the community, the region, the nation, the state–any higher sovereignty, in fact–makes sense only if it is derived from the one genuine sovereignty, that is, from human sovereignty, which finds its political expression in civic sovereignty.

Although Havel sometimes found himself at odds with his successor, Vaclav Klaus, on the extent of the market economy, Cato vice president Jim Dorn related Havel’s commitment to markets at a conference in Shanghai in 1997:

Though my heart be left of centre, I have always known that the only economic system that works is a market economy, in which everything belongs to someone–which means that someone is responsible for everything. It is a system in which complete independence and plurality of economic entities exist within a legal framework, and its workings are guided chiefly by the laws of the marketplace. This is the only natural economy, the only kind that makes sense, the only one that can lead to prosperity, because it is the only one that reflects the nature of life itself.

Vaclav Havel helped Czechoslovakia make the transition from one of the most repressive Communist regimes to one of the most successful post-Communist countries. RIP.

Earlier today I posted an edited transcript of Christopher Hitchens’s talk “Mayor Bloomberg’s Nanny State.” The only thing better than reading Hitchens is listening to him. So here’s an 8‑minute excerpt from his talk:

Over at Downsizing the Federal Government, we focused on the following issues this past week:

• Extending the extra unemployment insurance benefits would be bad for the federal budget and bad for the economy, and there is a better long-term solution for unemployment than the current UI system.
• All of the massive speculation in the housing market didn’t “just happen”—it was the result of massive government distortions in our housing and financial markets.
• The Obama administration and Gov. Mitch Daniels team up to help build a technology park for defense contractors with taxpayer dollars.
• One would think just the sheer lunacy of federal education policymaking would make it clear to all that Washington should get out of education.
• The U.S. Postal Service gives Congress more time to inevitably kick the can down the road.

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In his final “Chairman’s Corner” blog post as head of the White House’s Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, Earl Devaney highlights the need for orderly publication of data about government spending.

There is bi-partisan legislation now in the Congress—it’s called the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or DATA Act—that could accomplish this mission. But the reform bill faces an uphill battle, primarily because some in the bureaucracy prefer the status quo—a hodgepodge of data collection and display sites that, frankly, makes no sense at all unless you believe your government should confuse you.

The DATA Act would establish an independent board within the executive branch to track federal spending, and it would require federal agencies and recipients of federal funds to comply with reporting requirements set up by the board.

The board would “designate common data elements, such as codes, identifiers, and fields, for information required to be reported by recipients or agencies” (section 102 of the reported version, adding a new §3611 to title 31 of the U.S. code). The bill’s author, Rep. Darrell Issa (R‑CA), spoke at our September Capitol Hill briefing, rolling out our legislative data model.

On Wednesday, another Cato Capitol Hill briefing highlighted the results of our work the last few months to model federal budgeting, appropriating, and spending. Should the DATA Act become law, the model we’ve been working on can illuminate the work of the proposed board. Use of our model will help ensure that the structure of government spending data supports public oversight use cases.

I don’t know that there needs to be a board—certainly not a permanent one. The bill authorizes more money than I think is required for the board, and the Congressional Budget Office’s cost estimate for implementing the requirements of the DATA Act seems wildly high. But the dynamics set in motion by making government spending more transparent may well reduce government spending by well more than even these high estimated costs.

Both Houses have now passed the 2012 Defense Authorization Bill. The president, having dropped his veto threat, will sign it today. That’s too bad.

Authorization bills, keep in mind, are essentially a collection of restrictions and permissions slips for appropriations. In practice, however, budgeteers and appropriators have more say over how we spend. So while authorizers share responsibility for our bloated military spending, I’ll save my customary complaints on that topic for the appropriations bill and focus here on the new policies this bill sets.

On the positive side, the bill creates several reporting requirements that slightly aid future efforts to trim our military ambitions and spending. It requires the Pentagon to look at accelerating the minor drawdown in nuclear weapons required by the New Start Treaty. Another report is to examine options for shrinking our ballistic missile submarine fleet, which could save several hundred billion dollars annually. The bill also requires the administration to produce “independent” studies of overseas basing costs and opportunities for savings. These reports are not likely to themselves promote much change, but they might serve as ammunition for those that do.

A little-noted problem with the bill is that it authorizes the shift of base Pentagon spending to the Overseas Contingency Operations account—the war account. Because the Budget Control Act caps military spending but not war funding, costs shifted from the former to the latter reduce the cuts needed to get under the caps, creating an illusion of savings. Appropriators are trying to protect around $10 billion in base defense costs for 2012 using this ploy. Analysts are still figuring how big a shift in funds the authorization bill endorses. But as Taxpayers for Common Sense has noted, the answer is at least several billion.

The most odious aspect of this bill is its detention provisions. These sections of the bill are confusing because they seem to say various things that they then unsay. Section 1021 requires the president to place al Qaeda members and their associates, with the exception of American citizens, in military custody and deny them civilian trial. It then destroys this “requirement” by letting the president waive it and claim that it serves “national security interests.” Section 1022 affirms that the president has the authority under the 2001 Authorization of Military Force to detain without trial anyone who belongs to al Qaeda or the Taliban, or associates of those groups who are engaged in hostilities with the United States. Language further down in the section insists that this affirmation does not “limit or expand” the president’s authority or endorse his claimed power to seize suspected terrorists in the United States and deprive them of trials.

What that compromise language section leaves us with—beyond a further muddying of the legal waters—is a punt. The offense to civil liberties is less what the bill does than what it doesn’t: deny that the president can arbitrarily detain without trial anyone he decides is al Qaeda or its helper. So when congressional leaders dismiss civil liberty concerns about the legislation by saying it “merely codifies current law,” one response is that that’s exactly the problem.

But as I noted the other day, it isn’t clear that Congress’s efforts here to keep its hand off current law will entirely succeed. Federal courts hearing cases questioning the constitutionality of war powers, including the president’s right to detain people, tend to consider whether Congress has endorsed or rejected the power in question. Judges may take all this throat-clearing as a tacit endorsement of the president’s claims, making them more likely to survive constitutional scrutiny. The question is not whether there is damage to civil liberties here, but how bad it is.

Cross-posted from the Skeptics at the National Interest.

At their ongoing ministerial meeting in Geneva, the World Trade Organization’s 153 members earlier today unanimously approved Russia’s accession as a member. The ball is now in the court of the U.S. Congress to effectively ratify this historic development or to forfeit significant benefits for the U.S. economy.

Russia will officially become a member 30 days after its legislative Duma gives its final approval, which is expected to occur in March, April, or May of next year. But U.S. companies will enjoy enhanced access to the Russian market only after Congress votes to repeal application of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment.

The Cold-War-era amendment bars normal trade relations from applying to communist and formerly communist nations that restricted the emigration of Jews. Although that issue disappeared decades ago, the amendment still requires an annual exemption for Russia. As long as the amendment applies, Russia can withhold the more liberal access to its market that it agreed to extend to all other WTO members upon its accession. As Reuters reports today:

The Jackson-Vanik amendment, a 1974 provision linking trade to emigration rights for Soviet Jews, would have to be revoked for Washington to be able to apply so-called “permanent normal trade relations” to Russia.

Failure to do so would allow Russia to deny the United States preferential access to its markets in what would amount to an own-goal for U.S. businesses such as Pepsico or Alcoa that have already invested billions of dollars in Russia.

With Washington and Moscow exchanging reproaches over the conduct of Russia’s parliamentary vote, repealing Jackson-Vanik will be a challenge as Republicans, who control the House, gird for next year’s U.S. presidential election.

“Russia’s membership in the WTO marks an important milestone in its history, but there is hard work yet to be done on the American side,” said Edward Verona, head of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, a business lobby that backs Russian WTO entry.

“If Jackson-Vanik still applies to Russia once it accedes, then U.S. companies and farmers will be at a disadvantage to their global competitors and will not have access to the preferential trade regime negotiated over the last 18 years.”

As for our take on why Congress should repeal Jackson-Vanik as soon as possible, you can read the long and the short of it on our website.

The battle over school choice in Pennsylvania is instructive in many ways. The most obvious lesson is that education tax credits are easier to pass than are vouchers, ceteris paribus.

But why? The results of a recent poll from UnitePA and the Independence Hall Tea Party make the basic answer fairly plain: education tax credits are substantially more popular than vouchers. More than mere popularity is important, however. Credits are supported, on balance overall, by Democrats, and by a massive 30 points by Republicans. Both liberals and conservatives support credits overwhelmingly.

Vouchers are opposed on balance overall and by Republicans in particular. Unfortunately, this means that Republican legislators who may support vouchers for ideological reasons face a Republican electorate that is decidedly opposed to them. This has consequences; we saw a major rift among the Tea Party groups in PA this year over the issue, with many groups opposing the voucher bill. Between the flak he is sure to get from the government-school lobby and the instinctive opposition to vouchers from many Republican voters who like the public schools and dislike government handouts (which is how vouchers are perceived), a Republican legislator might well put his seat at risk by voting for a voucher.

Democrats actually support vouchers on balance, but less than they do credits. The crosstabs for this poll reveal huge margins of support for vouchers by African-American and low-income citizens, followed by liberals. However, all the affluent liberal interest groups are absolutely opposed to vouchers. With the support of these elites and the assistance of the government-school lobby, a Democratic legislator is extremely unlikely to put his seat at risk if he votes against a voucher bill.

Here’s the problem: vouchers sound like a Progressive policy. Vouchers send government checks to low-income families, which sounds to many voters like some form of welfare. But it is adamantly opposed by liberal elites and supported by conservative elites.

Education tax credits bridge this political disconnect, drawing more support and less opposition across the political spectrum. And credits happen to be better policy to boot.

These lessons hold across the country, in state after state. And yet vouchers, more often than not, are the primary focus of national school choice organizations that provide advice, assistance, and money to proponents of school choice at the state level. A reassessment of how the school choice movement’s resources are invested is long overdue.