The upcoming election in Israel — and its potential similarity to next year's presidential election in the United States — is the the topic of my column this week. Please check out the full column at the New York Sun (here) and Newsmax (here).

In honor of opening day of baseball season, here is a picture from the Library of Congress exhibit "Baseball Americana." The exhibit, I was delighted to discover, quotes a column I wrote in July 2013. If you happen to be in Washington and have any interest in the national pastime, I highly recommend a visit to this exhibit.

Teacher pay is emerging as an issue in the presidential campaign, I write in my latest column for Education Next. Please check out the full article on the Education Next website here.

The presidential campaign of Beto O'Rourke is the topic of my column this week. I trailed him for a day in New Hampshire. Please check out the full column at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

Lots of startups are trying to solve the problem of low-quality news with some sort of ranking or rating or review system. One new one, called Credder, is the subject of a piece in the Monday Note. Credder rates or reviews individual articles, rather than publications or journalists. Execution is a challenge in this space, as I learned myself. But it's nice to see people recognizing this as a problem to be addressed.

Education Next, an education policy journal for which I have been doing some work, has published a column I wrote under the headline, "A Teacher Strike Even Conservatives Can Support." Please check out the full column here.

My latest column explores whether the press is correct to blame President Trump's deregulatory push for two deadly crashes of Boeing passenger jets. Please read the full column at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

Apologies for the delay in posting updates here. Let me attempt to catch up.

My three most recent columns were about:

•Trump the "isolationist" (not exactly). Check the full column out please at Newsmax here and the New Boston Post here.

•Warren Buffett's latest shareholder letter. Check the full column out please at Newsmax here and the New York Sun here.

The business section of the New York Times carries a column by Dealbook founder and CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin. It is about ways to raise taxes on the rich that make more sense than the plans proposed by Senator Warren, Senator Sanders, or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Sorkin writes, "Over the past month, I've consulted with tax accountants, lawyers, executives, political leaders and yes, billionaires, and specific ideas have come up about plugging the gaps in the tax code, without blowing it apart."

The first one of Sorkin's suggestions is to end the step-up in basis on death. He calls closing this loophole "critical." He explains, "after someone dies, the rules allow assets to be passed on at their current — or 'stepped up' — value, with no tax paid on the gains. An asset could rise in value for decades without being subject to a tax. Many wealthy Americans even borrow against their assets rather than sell them to avoid paying capital gains tax."

President Trump's line in the State of the Union address about school choice is the topic of an article I wrote for Education Next, an education policy journal for which I have been doing some work. You can read the piece in full here. It prompted a response from the Heritage Foundation, which in turn prompted a New York Sun editorial.

Senator Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign was the topic of a recent column of mine based on my firsthand observations of her campaign launch in Lawrence, Mass., and her campaign stop in Dover, N.H. Please check out the full column at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here). It also was mentioned on the Fox News website (here), and on the Cafe Hayek blog (here).

Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are the topic of my column this week. Please check out the full article at the New Boston Post (here), the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks takes a look at proposals from two of the Democratic presidential candidates:

• Senator Elizabeth Warren, already an announced 2020 presidential candidate, has introduced her Accountable Capitalism Act. Two of its provisions caught my attention:

  . . . incorporation for large companies would become a federal matter, . . . These federally chartered companies would be mandated to consider the interests of a list of stakeholders, from investors to employees to customers and communities. These groups could then sue if they deemed the company had breached their duties. . . .

  . . . Senator Warren's legislation calls for 40 percent of directors to be elected by employees. (The Financial Times, September 24, 2018)

News that Apple punished Facebook for violating its privacy rules is the topic of a Kevin Roose column in the New York Times:

Mr. Cook, who has called privacy a "fundamental human right" and taken Facebook and Google to task for the misuse of user data in the past, could effectively become a technology regulator of last resort — using the power of Apple's iOS operating system as a cudgel to force software companies to respect user privacy and play by the rules, or risk losing access to millions of iPhone users....

While [government] regulators have fined Facebook for privacy violations, those punishments rarely amount to anything truly meaningful — at most, the company pays a few million dollars, promises to do better next time, and goes right back to work....Apple's defense of user privacy, while certainly self-interested, is a boon to its users and a lever for change within the tech industry.

The new socialist congresswoman from New York, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, is leading an effort to blame America's problems on the existence of billionaires. That effort, how it will play out in the 2020 presidential campaign, and how it might be answered are the topics of my column this week. Please check out the full column at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).