With the sex scandal of Mark Foley soiling the "family values" image of the Republican party, Florida Governor Jeb Bush has just dumped his share of dirt on all things Republican.

Mark Foley is the recently resigned Republican Congressman from Florida's 16^th District who has been charged with sexually approaching boys serving as Congressional pages. The scandal has really blown up big since the Democrats disclosed that the Republican house leadership had been aware of Foley's transgressions against boys for about two years. Not only was his activity covered up, but the Democrat on the House's Page Committee was excluded from obtaining the information.

Foley has now resigned, but the scandal grows as the internet posts lewd conversations of Foley soliciting teen boys from all over the country. Republican "family values" imagery has been critically wounded.

Now, Jeb Bush has made a move to do even more damage to Republican "family values."

On June 9, 2006, Bush signed a bill that would wipe out the 3.32% tax on alcoholic beverages served in restaurants and bars. When the tax expires on July 1, 2007, operators of restaurants and bars will get a neat tax break. If they choose to lower prices, drinking is bound to go way up in Florida, resulting in increased alcoholism. It will be hard for Republicans to explain how exactly this would be good for families.

There is a big trend from beer to wine to liquor. The wine makers are looking at liquor acquisitions. Even giant Anheuser Busch, with half the beer market, is frightened at the trend and, according to rumor, is interested in buying a liquor company. Cheaper beer and wine sales are unlikely to create serious alcoholics. But cheaper liquor sales are sure to increase alcoholism. By eliminating the tax, Governor Bush is indirectly creating more alcoholics. Just what the average family needs.

When Governor Jeb increases booze consumption, he is pouring gasoline on the rising fire of diabetes. Ask your doctor. The last thing a glucose-intolerant person needs is a shot (or two or three) of Jack Daniels. Not to mention the added calories, which will accelerate our massive trend to obesity.

Of course there may be a benefit. Jeb may attract induce more Yankee barflies to retire in Florida instead of Arizona, which is a huge competitor for the burgeoning retirement dollar.

Nobody can figure why Bush did this. The restaurant owners have automated cash registers, which makes it easily to collect and send the tax to Tallahassee. And the annual tax take is only about $51 million, which is supposed to go into a trust fund to prevent children and teens from developing substance abuse problems. When the tax disappears, so will the trust fund designed to help children. How will this support family values?

Many restaurant and bar owners are actually angry at Governor Jeb for denying the children this needed help. (It shows there are more Christians tending the bar than tending Florida's executive branch.) Most bar and restaurant owners are willing to keep paying a tax that benefits kids.

Why did Governor Jeb do away with the tax? It seems that the lobbyists got to him. Specifically, the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. The Governor's door was so tightly closed during the alcohol tax negotiation that the average restaurant owner had no idea the anti-tax campaign was going on.

But there is a silver lining in the whole cloudy affair. On closer scrutiny, the kids may not be hurt all that much. It turns out that of the $51 million collected last year, only $12 million was deposited into the trust fund. The politicians got the tax passed by promising it would help the kids, knowing full well that Tallahassee was going to gobble up at least 75 percent of the take. Which it did.

(It's the only kind of promise that politicians are willing to keep. Florida politicians are pretty much like their brethren in Washington. They make big promises, pass high-sounding bills and then quickly move to underfund the bill and grab up as much of the resulting revenue as they can get away with.)

If a children's charity announced that it was providing only 25 cents on the dollar to help children, it would be trashed in the press, investigated for fraud and delisted by the organizations that approve charities. But the legislators have made themselves exempt from such unsettling kinds of oversight.

Curiously enough, the Florida Department of Children and Families is not complaining about this lost revenue, which it expects to be mostly replaced out of the state's general revenue fund.

Its policy is to make the department less dependent on the alcohol tax by making Floridians more dependent on alcohol.

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