Today’s Links: October 17, 2012

OPINION

MATTHEW YGLESIAS: “Five Bad Ideas in Tonight’s Debate
E-Verify: Mitt Romney is normally very upset about the potential job-killing impact of regulations, except when it comes to the idea of creating new and stricter regulatory supervision of who businesses are hiring! It’s easy to see why investing extra resources in hounding potential unauthorized migrants out of jobs would be bad for the migrants and their employers, but high levels of immigration also turns out to boost the wages of native-born American workers, so there’s just no reason to do this.”

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER EDITORIAL: “Romney Encounters Feistier Obama
“President Barack Obama’s performance Tuesday surpassed that in his first debate with Gov. Mitt Romney. He fared much better on style, but on substance, his rhetoric in many instances didn’t match his record. ‘I think a lot of this campaign, maybe over the last four years, has been devoted to this notion that I think government creates jobs, that that somehow is the answer,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘That’s not what I believe. I believe that the free-enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world’s ever known.’ Yet the Obama administration, in the first 26 months of his presidency, imposed 75 new major regulations. The costs to the private sector exceeded $40 billion, according to the Heritage Foundation.”

VIRGINIA POSTREL: “An Economics Nobel For Saving Lives”
“[Alvin E.] Roth, whose ‘market design’ bridges economics and operations research, is known for developing algorithms to find the best available matches in real-world situations: medical residencies, public schools and — the analogy to my child-care hypothetical —kidney transplants from living donors. ‘He likes to study markets that don’t involve money,’ says Michael Rees, a kidney transplant surgeon at the University of Toledo Medical Center in Ohio who has worked with Roth on paired kidney donations.”

NEWS

WOMEN – Paul Ryan explains ‘binders full of women’
“In his second face-off with President Barack Obama at Hofstra University on Long Island, Romney said that when he was governor of Massachusetts, his office went through “binders full of women” to find possible female cabinet members, and immediately sparked an explosion of memes and jokes online and on Twitter.”

COPYRIGHT – Internet providers set to crack down on illegal file-sharing
“AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and other major Internet service providers are set to implement a copyright alert system aimed at cutting down on illegal peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted material “over the next several weeks,” according to the head of the organization overseeing the new anti-piracy program.”

ENTREPRENEURS? – Celebrity sperm donor service gears up for launch
Fame Daddy will offer would-be-mothers ‘top quality celebrity surrogate fathers’ when it launches next February, according to Dan Richards, its chief executive. Prices will start at £15,000 for a premium sperm service from the clinic.”