How safe are your fruits and vegetables? The government doesn't want you do know.

Today's Chicago Tribune reported that the Bush administration abruptly halted a government program that tests the levels of pesticides in fruits, vegetables, and field crops. Their argument is that the $8 million a year program is too expensive. The article also states that the data generated from this program is used by numerous other public programs from the EPA to the Integrated Pest Management Center at the University of Illinois. These programs now must purchase unreliable data from private companies at a cost of $500,000 to $700,000 a year.

In other words, by killing an $8 million a year program because it's too expensive, other government agencies are now spending money that together approaches the $8 million but provides less actuate results thereby not really saving any money at all and putting consumers at greater risk by preventing regulatory agencies from really knowing how much pesticides are on our fruits and vegetables. Meanwhile we're talking about a $700 billion bailout of banks that made bad decisions while their executives will probably walk away with golden parachutes that will make $8 million look like peanuts.

So the next time you bite into an apple or have a slice of tomato or cucumber, just remember, the government doesn't care about your health, it only cares about protecting rich people who make stupid decisions from loosing their ability to make large donations to political campaigns.