It looks like one of the things that will be inflicted on New Yorkers as a result of the scandal at the Internal Revenue Service is a whole new round of tirades from the New York Times calling for state-funded electioneering. This is what we take from the editorial in the Times this morning arguing that the scandal was not that the IRS was looking into tax abuses by social welfare groups allied with the Tea Party but that it wasn’t also looking at social welfare groups allied with the Left.

What is so striking about this is that it comes from a newspaper that wants the taxing power to be used to fund elections. It has made this clear over and over again, most recently after the latest indictments by federal authorities of politicians in New York City and Albany. That editorial ran under the headline “Alarm Bells in Albany,” and calls for enacting public financing of campaigns. It is the view of the Times that this would make elections competitive and pre-empt corruption.

But why is it that money is corrupting when it goes into politics via the free flow of contributions given to tax exempt institutions and not when it goes into politics by the mechanism of taxes under which individuals would be compelled to underwrite electioneering even of candidates they detest. It’s just bizarre. It seems what the Times is against is not money going into politics but money going into politics voluntarily. It’s just odd. The use of the taxing power to investigate voluntary charities is fine with the Times. What it fears is money that gets to the candidates with whom the givers of the money agree. Stopping that is what the Left wants to come out of the current crisis.