I appreciate you taking the time to actually take me up on it. Your detailed and researched answers are one of the things I miss around here.

I wish I had the capacity and time to formalize the question into a real survey, i.e. "Do you agree or disagree that health care should be provided by the government to all citizens?" "Should there be a maximum wage?" "Should there be a minimum wage?" Ideally, the questions would be asked of leftists, liberals, conservatives, and card-carrying Socialists, and the results compared with the proper controls. Ah, well.

In any case, I'm a lot less worried about your positions than I am about those of John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton.

I'll reproduce the Agriculture and Economics sections of the Socialist Platform here, so others can tally your opinions, and more easily check their own against them. Try and imagine how the current Democratic Party leaders and candidates would respond.

Agriculture:

1. We support agricultural worker cooperatives, and oppose large corporate factory farms that lower food quality, cause profound damage to the environment, push farmers off the land, cruelly treat animals, and wreck small town culture.

2. We call for a farm price support system that guarantees farmers a return on the full cost of production. We call for low-cost loans, grants, and technical help to farmers including help to shift farm production from non-essentials to staple foods and fibers. We encourage the reintroduction of hemp farming.

3. We support the right of farmers and farm workers to organize unions for good wages, housing, and working conditions (including the right to be protected from pesticides).

4. We support the right of farmers and farm workers to be included in negotiating contracts with canneries as well as growers.

5. We support land use planning to protect farmland from suburban sprawl.

6. We encourage plant diversity, and oppose the creating, patenting, and licensing of life forms.

7. We call for the labeling of artificially genetically altered food, and the banning of genetically altered seeds to make them sterile.

8. We call for the democratic control of agricultural research and the complete testing of agricultural products.
We support inspections of domestic and imported agricultural products to make sure they meet U.S. standards for food safety, and environmental and worker protection.

9. We call for country-of-origin labeling on agricultural products.

10. We call for the reassessment of all international trade negotiations in light of workers’, farmers’, consumers’ and environmental interests.

11. We call for the production of agriculturally produced and environmentally sound alternative fuels to reduce our dependence on petroleum.

12. We support research toward the elimination of the use of pesticides.

1. We call for a minimum wage of $12 an hour, indexed to the cost of living.

2. We support the provision of a livable guaranteed annual income for those outside the work force.

3. We call for a full employment policy and programs.

4. We call for all financial institutions to be socially owned and operated by a democratically-controlled national banking authority, which should include credit unions, mutual insurance cooperatives, and cooperative state banks, in order to meet the diversity of local and regional needs and the needs of various sectors of the economy.
We call for a steeply graduated income tax, and a maximum income of no more than ten times the minimum.
We oppose the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization as instruments of oppression throughout the world.

5. We support restoring and increasing federal grants to democratically controlled local and state governments.

6. We oppose balancing the federal budget at the expense of funding basic human services.

7. We call for a National Pension Authority to hold the assets of private pension funds, and a levy against corporate assets for any pension fund deficits.

8. We call for increased unemployment compensation.

9. We support a program of massive federal investment in both urban and rural areas for infrastructure reconstruction and economic development.

10. We call for the elimination of subsidies and tax breaks that benefit corporations and wealthy households at the expense of working people.

11. We call for the creation of new jobs through the formation of worker- and community-controlled cooperatives, for the purpose of providing quality housing, health care, education, food, and clothing for all.

12. We call for Social Security, health, disability, and unemployment insurance to be paid for by a steeply graduated income tax and by a steeply graduated estate tax. We oppose such regressive taxes as the payroll tax, sales tax, and "sin" tax.

13. We support tax benefits for renters equal to those for homeowners.

14. We support the use of any federal budget surplus on human services rather than tax cuts that will only benefit the rich.