Are You a Liberal?

Here's the Atrios/Drum "Are You a Liberal" test, as interpreted by Instapundit, including my answers. As usual, I'm way off-center on specific issues, but on average and overall, I'm somewhere in the middle.

1) Repeal the estate tax repeal:
Yes, and also block all the clever trusts and such rich folks from both sides of the political aisle use to avoid paying any estate tax, even on vast fortunes. If taxes have to be collected, taking them after death seems the least-painful way to do so. Estate taxes, if they actually worked, would also have the useful effect of helping each new generation start its economic competition on a more level playing field, which is essential if you want the losers to continue to respect the rules of the game.

2) Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI.
No, never for any reason. Setting a minimum wage merely forces those unworthy of that salary out of paid employment entirely. Further, the persons hurt thereby are disproportionately the needy folks we should care about helping most.

3) Universal health care.
No. Only an idiot would even consider putting the civil servants who already can't cope with FEMA or homeland security in charge of anything more. On the other hand, if it happens, let's force Congress onto the exact same plan as everyone else, rather than their current better than all others' plan.

4) Increase CAFE standards.
Absolutely, and only one standard for both cars and trucks, with no exceptions for those who choose to drive ten ton tanks. After all, we are at war with people funded by gas purchases.

5) Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice.
Absolutely not on "choice". If it turns out God considers fetuses fully human, our society is offing them at a rate ranking with Stalin and Hitler. On the other hand, those who oppose abortion, ought not also to oppose contraception. Personally, I'd allow anyone one abortion, but tie the tubes of anyone seeking a second.

6) Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code.
Simplify, absolutely. Increase progressivity? Yes, so long as there are no loopholes at all to permit Ted Kennedy to continue to pay a lower income tax rate than me, as he has throughout most of his life. However, I am opposed to increased total taxation. Our government already sets fire to entirely enough money via waste and corruption now.

7) Kill faith-based funding.
Absolutely not. Such groups routinely do a vastly better job meeting every category of need than most other groups, particularly compared to government employees.

8) Reduce corporate giveaways.
Absolutely. In particular, convert all special tax breaks, import tariffs to benefit domestic suppliers, etc. into explicit subsidies visible in the budget. Don't whine about abuse by welfare mothers while simultaneously expecting government to chip in $700 million on a railroad to nowhere just to benefit casinos.

9) Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan.
No, kill it instead.

10) Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.
Worth discussing, but government itself is a big offender here, at least in our state, where my pension is guaranteed by the state constitution, but chronically underfunded by the legislature.

11) Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana.
Yes. Inf fact, let's leave the states alone on most everything added to the plate of our national government in the last century.

12) Paper ballots.
Yes, but let's go further. I'm very much in favor of making it impossible to cheat in or even argue about the outcome of elections. If we can't trust the outcome of our elections to be honest, we won't stay one country long.

13) Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies.
No. I'm all for families, but don't trust goverment efforts to help them as actually having that effect.

14) Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.
Remove the cap entirely, with no resulting increase in benefits for those not in need. It's just welfare for old folks under another name anyway, so we may as well admit it.

15) Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens.
I have no objection to domestic partnerships, and would be willing to use that term for heterosexuals as well. Marriage, is a term I would reserve to the religious rather than legal ceremony. I am strongly in favor of quickly approving the immigration applications of foreign spouses of citizens and most everyone else on the application list long before we even consider doing anything to legalize illegal immigrants.

16) Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration.
No, I may not be entirely up to speed on this one, but it seems OK to me.