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  • Have You Received the Letter? Medicare Trying To Nudge Seniors Out Of Plans With Low Ratings

    By Susan Jaffe

    Medicare officials are trying a novel approach during this open enrollment season to gently nudge a half million beneficiaries out of 26 private drug and medical plans that have performed poorly over the past three years.

    It begins with letters informing seniors they are enrolled in a plan that received low ratings.

    “We encourage you to compare this plan to other options in your area and decide if it is still the right choice for you,” the letter from Medicare urges. About 375,000 members of Medicare Advantage plans received the letters, along with 150,000 drug plan members in 48 states, the District of Columba and Puerto Rico, including California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio and Texas.

    The effort marks the first time that Medicare officials have tried to steer beneficiaries away from some private drug and medical plans, while still allowing them to operate. Officials have also warned the plans that they may be cancelled in the future.

    Instead of a typical government form letter, each one was addressed to the individual member by name and tells the beneficiary that her plan “has been rated ‘poor’ or ‘below average’”  because it earned less than three stars under Medicare’s five-star rating system for three consecutive years.

    Yet that may not be enough to catch their attention.

    “Some people don’t change no matter how many letters you send them,” says Leta Blank, program director for the Montgomery County, Md., Senior Health Insurance Assistance Program, which helps seniors evaluate their coverage options. There are dozens of plans on sale in most counties.  Even if a different plan is cheaper, studies have shown few seniors change plans. “They are paralyzed. It’s a very difficult issue,” Blank says.

    Chart: Medicare Advantage Plans With Low Ratings

    • Medicare officials are encouraging 525,000 beneficiaries to switch out of 26 Medicare Advantage and drug plans that have received low ratings for three consecutive years. See the complete list.

    For many beneficiaries, plan ratings are not as important as price, any restrictions on drugs, such as special authorizations needed or requirements to try a substitute drug first, and in the case of a medical plan, whether their doctors participate, she said.

    In addition to the letters, Medicare is making it harder for people to sign up for one of the 26 plans. If they search for plans on Medicare’s plan finder website, they can access and join other, better performing plans electronically but to join one of the 26, they must contact that insurance company directly. Those plans also have a special warning symbol next to their names to highlight their low ratings.

    And the government will continue to prod even after the usual enrollment period ends Dec. 7.

    Seniors who do pick plans with poor track records will have one chance to switch next year into a better plan (earning three or more stars). And Medicare officials are considering sending a reminder in the mail in February. Most of the roughly 13.3 million Medicare Advantage members and about 19 million drug plan enrollees are locked in to their plans for a year.

    “We want to make it easy for beneficiaries to find and select the highest quality plans, and discourage people from staying in chronically low-performing plans,” said Isabella Leung, a Medicare spokeswoman.

  • Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen

    Katharine HepburnKatharine Hepburn was an icon of theater, film and fashion, where her style was both distinct and influential. Her unique fashion sense is the subject of a new exhibition at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen.

     The exhibition includes over 40 costumes and clothing items from Hepburn’s personal collection. The exhibition — organized by Kent State University Museum and travelling the US — was created in conjunction with a new book, Rebel Chic (published by Skira Rizzoli, 2012). Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen will be on display in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery  through  January 12, 2013 at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. Admission is free. 

    “Katharine Hepburn is one of the giants in the history of the performing arts,” said Jacqueline Z. Davis, Executive Director of NYPL for the Performing Arts. “For her, creating a fully realized character went way beyond the words in the script. She realized the importance that her costume would have in not only defining her character but also drawing the audience into the story. This wonderful exhibition highlights this pivotal skill of a master performer.”

    “What women wear today has been immeasurably influenced by Katharine Hepburn’s strength of personality and insistence on wearing what she wanted,” said exhibition curator Jean Druesedow who is the Director of the Kent State University Museum. “She took charge of her career and her public image early in her career and maintained a consistent style.”

     Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen includes selections from Ms. Hepburn’s personal collection of performance clothes, featuring memorable fashion items from some of her most celebrated  performances on stage and screen including: gowns from The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, and casual modern dress from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and On Golden Pond.

    Stage costumes designed for the star by preeminent designers Valentina, Howard Greer, Cecil Beaton, and Jane Greenwood and film and television costumes by Margaret Furse, Ruth Morley and Noel Taylor are on display in the exhibition. Additional insight into Hepburn’s input into the garments can be seen in the exhibition through costume research,  correspondence and sketches in notebooks and scripts from the Katharine Hepburn Papers that is housed in the Billy Rose Theatre Division at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.   

    Photograph of part of the Katharine Hepburn exhibit at Kent State University

    The exhibition also includes pieces from her personal wardrobe — clothing that was worn for publicity appearances, as well as for casual and rehearsal wear — providing various examples of Hepburn’s “rebel chic” style, including seven pairs of her iconic khaki pants. The exhibition is augmented with film stills, posters and playbills that span her long and distinguished career in theater, film and television.

    Video is from the Kent State University exhibit

  • A Changing Relationship to Visual Truth

    While digital photography and image-editing software have brought about an increased awareness of the degree to which camera images can be manipulated, the practice of doctoring photographs has existed since the medium was invented. Faking It: Manipulating Photography Before Photoshop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the first major exhibition devoted to the history of manipulated photography before the digital age.

    Featuring some 200 visually captivating photographs created between the 1840s and 1990s in the service of art, politics, news, entertainment, and commerce, the exhibition offers a provocative new perspective on the history of photography as it traces the medium’s complex and changing relationship to visual truth. Articulos eléctricos para el hogar / Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home (Grete Stern, 1948)

    Articulos eléctricos para el hogar / Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home (Grete Stern, 1948); Image courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gelatin silver print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2012 (2012.10). Courtesy of Galería Jorge Mara – La Ruche, Buenos Aires

    The photographs in the exhibition were altered using a variety of techniques, including multiple exposure (taking two or more pictures on a single negative), combination printing (producing a single print from elements of two or more negatives), photomontage, overpainting, and retouching on the negative or print.

    In every case, the meaning and content of the camera image was significantly transformed in the process of manipulation.  

    Illustration: John Paul Pennebaker (American, active 1903–1953). Sealed Power Piston Rings, 1933. 1934 Art and Industry Exhibition Photograph Collection, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Mass. © John Paul Pennebaker. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of ArtSealed Power Piston Rings

  • Roses for a Philosophical Garden

    by Ferida Wolff

    I was fretting after the election that our country was still in adversarial mode. It seems to me that we could be working together for the benefit of people rather than the advancement of political agendas.
     
    It was in this frame of mind that I taught my Wednesday morning class at the local recreation center. We did not talk about the election and what divides us but rather what we can do to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy. We discussed how supporting ourselves in positive ways can help us to support the people we interact with – family, friends, neighbors, those we meet casually or formally.
     
    When class was over, one of the participants handed me a bouquet of peach-colored roses. She thanked me and said how much she enjoyed the sessions. I was touched by her gift. It reminded me that appreciation is a beautiful gift we can all offer.
     
    I thought of our politicians. They have a new chance to encourage each other to help our country fulfill it promise. Wouldn’t it be more functional to give appreciation for what works instead of trying to negate it to boost an opposition opinion? And if something isn’t working, why not dig deeper into the situation to find seeds of other possibilities while maintaining an atmosphere that nourishes growth?
     
    What a marvelous philosophical garden we could have if everyone could plant his or her people-supporting ideas within our society. Some of them would not prove viable, no doubt, but some might be just what we need. And it wouldn’t matter which side of the aisle the planter came from because a good idea would grow into something beautiful and benefit all.
     
    I am grateful for my roses and for the kind appreciation they represent. Yes, roses have thorns but their splendor makes our cautious handling worth it. Governing presents thorns, too, but when we work together, when we genuinely cooperate, we can grow a magnificent garden.
      
    Interested in growing roses? Here is a site to get you started:
     

    Editor’s Note:
    We began a rose garden for the first time a few years ago in California, where the season is about seven months long. That lengthy season requires more attention, feeding and training than other parts of the United States. At the moment, a couple of roses from our Mr. Lincoln bush is perfuming a living room that we’re preparing for a Thanksgiving meal.
     
    The book our Filoli instructor,  Mimi Clarke,  recommended highly is published by The American Horticultural Society, Pruning & Training; A Fully Illustrated Plant-by-Plant Manual by Christopher Brickell and David Joyce.

  • Who Would I Like to Be?

    By Rose Madeline Mula

    Way back in 1979, when I was just a little girl (yeah, I wish!), I took a humor writing class at Boston’s Emerson College.  It was taught by Sybil Adelman, a woman who was living my dream.  Many years before, she had been Carl Reiner’s secretary (I, too, had once been a secretary!).  Sybil later become a writer for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Northern Exposure, Growing Pains, Maude, and several other hit sitcoms of the day.  (Another coincidence!  I, too, wrote many TV sitcom scripts — also for Mary Tyler Moore, as well as The Bob Newhart Show, Mash, One Day at Time, and Rhoda! Unfortunately, none of mine were ever produced.)

    One week Sybil asked us to write an essay on who we would like to be.  The following was my answer.  (I wrote this in 1979, remember, so please forgive the outdated references.  For one, some of you may not have recently seen on screen the Academy-award-winning actress, Joanne Woodward, who was married to the late Paul Newman.  And if you don’t remember Paul Newman, you don’t know what you missed.) Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman

     

    WHO I WOULD LIKE TO BE

     

     Who would I like to be?  God!  Hold it!  That’s not my answer — it’s just an exclamation.  Not that it isn’t an interesting possibility,  but there’s no way I’m going to take the rap for creating this messed-up universe.  Also, I’m rather fond of the concept of the four-day work week; and if you’re God, you get only the seventh day off.

    You know who I’d really like to be?  Joanne Woodward.  But if I can’t be Joanne Woodward, then I’d like to be the other woman in her divorce case.

     And if I can’t be that, I’d like to be Sybil Adelman.  Why?  Because she probably knows Paul Newman.  Also, because she no longer has to sharpen Carl Reiner’s pencils.  (Come to think of it, I don’t have to sharpen Carl Reiner’s pencils either; so Sybil and I still have a lot in common.)

    Maybe I just want to be me — only young, pretty, rich, and famous.  Regrettably, the only one of those attributes I’ve ever had in my life was youth.  And George Bernard Shaw was so right.  It was wasted on me.  I was much too young to appreciate it.

    Okay. No more kidding around. I’ll tell you what my real fantasy is — if you’ll promise not to breathe a word to Gloria Steinem. I’d like to be a sex symbol. Who am I kidding? It’s way too late for that, so I’d settle for being someone who can ice skate (on the blades instead of my ankle bones), or who can swim more than three strokes without sinking, do the latest dance steps without looking like a sneaker in the dryer, play a mean game of tennis, or even someone who can gargle without gagging.

  • The Electoral College Needs Some ‘Splaining; Who Are Faithless Electors?

    The Electoral College: How It Works in Contemporary Presidential Elections (PDF) Source: Congressional Research Service (via US Department of State Foreign Press Center.

    Editor’s Note: We have selected the Summary and two additional sections. Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 2011
    It’s time to VOTE! Find your polling place now through a one-step Google search. Or, go to 866ourvote.org, where you can get details on what you’ll need to bring to the polls. From the Women’s National Law Center

    Summary
    When Americans vote for President and Vice President, they are actually choosing presidential electors, known collectively as the electoral college. It is these officials who choose the President and Vice President of the United States. The complex elements comprising the electoral college system are responsible for one of the most important processes of the American political and constitutional system: election of the President and Vice President. A failure to elect, or worse, the choice of a chief executive whose legitimacy might be open to question, could precipitate a profound constitutional crisis that would require prompt, judicious, and well-informed action by Congress.

    Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, as amended in 1804 by the 12th Amendment, sets forth the requirements for election of the President and Vice President. It authorizes each state to appoint, by whatever means the legislature chooses, a number of electors equal to the combined total of its Senate and House of Representatives delegations, for a contemporary total of 538, including three electors for the District of Columbia. Since the Civil War, the states have universally provided for popular election of the presidential electors. Anyone may serve as an elector, except Members of Congress and persons holding offices of “Trust or Profit” under the Constitution. In each presidential election year, the political parties and other groups that have secured a place on the ballot in each state nominate a “slate” or “ticket” of candidates for elector.

    When voters cast a single vote for their favored candidates on general election day, Tuesday after the first Monday in November (November 6 in 2012), they are actually voting for the slate of electors pledged to those candidates. The entire slate of electors winning the most popular votes in the state is elected, a practice known as winner-take-all, or the general ticket system. Maine and Nebraska use an alternative method, the district plan, which awards two electors to the popular vote winners statewide, and one to the popular vote winners in each congressional district. Electors assemble in their respective states on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December (December 17 in 2012). They are expected to vote for the candidates they represent.

    Separate ballots are cast for President and Vice President, after which the electoral college ceases to exist until the next presidential election. State electoral vote results are reported to Congress and are counted and declared at a joint session of Congress, usually held on January 6 of the year succeeding the election, a date that may be altered by legislation. Since January 6 falls on a Sunday in 2013, Congress will likely set another date for the joint session in 2013, possibly January 8. A majority of electoral votes (currently 270 of 538) is required to win, but the results submitted by any state are open to challenge at the joint session, as provided by law.

    Past proposals for change by constitutional amendment have included various reform options and direct popular election, which would eliminate the electoral college system, but no substantive action on this issue has been taken in Congress for more than 20 years. At present, however, a non-governmental organization, the National Popular Vote (NPV) campaign, proposes to reform the electoral college by action taken at the state level; eight states and the District of Columbia have approved the NPV compact to date.

    Disregarding the Voters’ Choice: Faithless Electors

    Notwithstanding the tradition that electors are bound to vote for the candidates of the party that nominated them, individual electors have sometimes broken their commitment, voting for a different candidate or candidates other than those to whom they were pledged; they are known as “faithless” or “unfaithful” electors. Although 24 states seek to prohibit faithless electors by a variety of methods, including pledges and the threat of fines or criminal action, 17 most constitutional scholars believe that once electors have been chosen, they remain constitutionally free agents, able to vote for any candidate who meets the requirements for President and Vice President.18 Faithless electors have been few in number (since the 20th century, one each in 1948, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1976, and 198819, one blank ballot cast in 2000,20 and one in 200421), and have never influenced the outcome of a presidential election.

  • Writing a Novel in a Month? Go on, you can do it, if not this year, next.

    Editor’s Note: The pumpkins are now decorated with turkey feathers, the waters are receding, it isn’t tax time (yet), and after voting, you can turn off the commercials, so sharpen the pen or keyboard and go to it. Before you start, read Jane Shortall’s piece about women writing, Dazzling All Comers:

    Jane Shortall writes: Studies have shown that the people who do better, who go on to really enjoy and thrive in old age, are women who write, and those who started late in life have a marvelous future ahead of them, because they have so much to say. What a marvelous thought. Read More…

    How NaNoWriMo Works

    1) Sign up for the event by clicking the “Start Here” button at NaNoWriMo.org.

    2) Follow the instructions on the following screen to create an account.

    2.5) Check your email for the account validation email and click on the link included.

    3) Log into your account, where you’ll be prompted to finish the sign-up process.

    4) Start filling out information about yourself and your novel in My NaNoWriMo.

    5) Begin procrastinating by reading through all the great advice and funny stories in the forums. Post some stories and questions of your own. Get excited. Get nervous. Try to rope someone else into doing this with you. Eat lots of chocolate and stockpile noveling rewards.

    6) On November 1, begin writing your novel. You write on your own computer, using whatever software you prefer.Your goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, local time, on November 30th.

    7) This is not as scary as it sounds.Northanger Abbey and Persuasion

    8) Starting November 1, you can update your word count in that box at the top of the site, and post excerpts of your work for others to read. Watch your word-count accumulate and story take shape. Feel a little giddy.

    9) Write with other NaNoWriMo participants in your area. Write by yourself. Write. Write. Write.

    9.25) If you write 50,000 words of fiction by midnight, local time, November 30th, you can upload your novel for official verification, and be added to our hallowed Winner’s Page and receive a handsome winner’s certificate and web badge. We’ll post step-by-step instructions on how to scramble and upload your novel starting in mid-November.

    9.3333) Reward yourself copiously for embarking on this outrageously creative adventure.

    10) Win or lose, you rock for even trying.

    That’s all there is to it! Occasionally, participants write in to ask about the rules of the event. We don’t have many! But because we’ve found that creativity is often heightened by constraints (and communities bolstered by shared goals) we have evolved a handful of rules over the years. The rules state that, to be an official NaNoWriMo winner, you must…

    • Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
    • Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people’s works).
    • Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
    • Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
    • Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
    • Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

    Back to “About”

  • How The Health Law Might Be Changed By The Next President

    By Mary Agnes Carey,

    On the presidential campaign trail, Republican Mitt Romney has repeatedly called for repeal of the 2010 health law and President Barack Obama has vowed to implement it. Yet both men could face obstacles: Romney may be stymied by the lack of a majority in Congress to do his will and Obama could be forced by fiscal concerns or public opinion to revamp parts of the law.

    Here is a look at how Obama and Romney might change the health law in the years ahead based on interviews with health policy experts.

    OBAMA’S CHALLENGES

    Obama

    President Barack Obama waves to an audience of about 15,000 supporters during a campaign rally in Virginia (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images).

    President Barack Obama has urged voters to re-elect him so that he can put the law fully into effect. But some analysts predict the mounting pressures to reduce federal spending will complicate that plan.  And others note that in a second term, Obama may be more open to working with Congress to tweak provisions of the law that have raised concerns. Leading up to this tight election, Obama and Democrats have been reluctant to make modifications to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

    “Right now (Democrats) can’t criticize the ACA. It’s just not politically smart,” said Dan Mendelson, chief executive of the consulting firm Avalere Health who oversaw health programs at the Clinton administration’s Office of Management and Budget. But should Obama win a second term and Democrats retain control of the Senate, “I think that adjustments are on the table” as part of a larger deal to reduce the federal deficit, he said.

    Scale Back Subsidies: As part of that effort to reduce federal spending, there could be pressure to scale back the health law’s subsidies that help low-income residents afford coverage. People who earn up to 400 percent of poverty — currently about $92,000 for a family of four — are eligible to get financial help in purchasing coverage.  Another big-ticket item is the expansion of Medicaid coverage to anyone up to 133 percent of the poverty level, or about $30,656 for a family of four.

    The ACA is “so vast that by default it has to be impacted if there is a bipartisan, grand bargain debt deal,” said Mike Tuffin, managing director of the consulting firm APCO Worldwide’s Washington, D.C., office and formerly executive vice president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an insurance industry trade group. “You can imagine the subsidies being impacted, the Medicaid expansion being impacted.”

    Changing the law’s implementation schedule is wishful thinking among Republicans, Mendelson said. Any delay in full implementation could risk political backlash from consumers, who have waited years for the major provisions of the ACA to kick in. Delays may also open the law to other changes that Obama and Democrats don’t want.

    “My feeling is that it would be a major political liability for the president to encourage delay,” he said, “and that if this is going to be his legacy, I see no indication from the policy makers that they either want or expect there to be a delay.”

    The president “is willing to work with anyone with good ideas to improve the Affordable Care Act.  What he is not willing to do is reopen old partisan battles over the central guarantees of Obamacare,” said Adam Fetcher, a spokesman for the Obama campaign.

    Change in Age Rating Bands: The ACA prohibits insurers from charging more than three times as much for a policy sold to an older person than to a younger person. (This does not affect people over 65 who are covered by Medicare.)  This is a change from current law in most states where there are no limits on how much more insurers can charge older people. America’s Health Insurance Plans is advocating that the law’s rating bands be changed to 5:1 to prevent what the group describes as “rate shock” for younger people and families.

  • ThinkProgress: Romney Campaign Incorrectly Trains Iowa Poll Watchers To Check For Photo ID

    By Scott Keyes on Nov 1, 2012 at 1:00 pm

    Earlier this week, ThinkProgress released internal documents from the Romney campaign detailing how it is training poll watchers to mislead voters in Wisconsin. Now, according to new documents, Wisconsin may not be the only state where Romney’s campaign is equipping volunteers with deceptive information.

    A new ThinkProgress investigation has found that in Iowa, Romney poll watchers are being trained to watch for voters who show up without a photo ID, even though no voter ID law exists in the state.

    In a training video for Romney poll watchers in Iowa, the narrator tells volunteers to be on the lookout for anytime “a voter fails to show a voter ID and they are still permitted to vote.” If that happens, he says, “alert the legal team so they can handle the problem.” The text of the campaign’s slide, however, says something contradictory, instructing volunteers when poll workers should check the voter’s ID. Despite the mixed messages, the slide ends with: “If an election worker is not checking photo ID, please call the legal hotline immediately.”

    NARRATOR: Naturally, you’re probably wondering what irregularities may come up throughout the day. We’ll walk you through some quick examples. First, there may be an instance where a voter fails to show a voter ID and they are still permitted to vote. If you notice this, use the legal help button to alert the legal team so they can handle the problem and you can get back to checking voters.

    Watch it:

    The text on the video notes that utility bills and other government documents are acceptable forms of ID, but that section is contradicted by the narrator’s decree to be on the lookout for anyone who tries to vote without a photo ID and text at the bottom warning poll watchers to be on the lookout for voters who lack photo ID. In sum, the training material is, at best, highly misleading.

    Iowa is not a voter ID state. ThinkProgress asked a representative at the Iowa Secretary of State’s office whether it would be incorrect to say that voter ID is required in Iowa. “That’s right,” she confirmed. Voters do not need ID on Election Day; they can show a current utility bill (including cell phone bill), bank statement, paycheck, or other government document, but are not required to do so.

    This video is part of Romney’s massive nationwide poll-watcher effort on Election Day. The campaign is training 34,000 volunteers to fan out in swing states across the country and monitor for voter fraud. Romney personally touted Project ORCA in a video released Wednesday evening, telling poll watchers that they’ll “be the key link in providing critical, real-time information to me.” Because of the program, Romney said, “our campaign will have an unprecedented advantage on Election Day.”

    Update After ThinkProgress published this story, the Romney campaign scrubbed the original training video from the web. It has since been replaced with an alternate video that does not mention photo ID. We captured the original video:

    Update A number of readers have noted that, in fact, most Iowans aren’t required to show any identification at all, including non-photo forms like a utility bill or pay stub, though it’s still helpful to bring if you have it readily available.

    Think Progress is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The Center for American Progress Action Fund is a nonpartisan organization.

  • FactCheck.org: Whoppers of the 2012 Election, Final Edition

    Summary; The biggest falsehoods from the presidential campaign.

    With only days to go until Election Day 2012, we look here at the most egregiously false and misleading claims from the entire presidential campaign. Some examples:

    • President Barack Obama claimed Mitt Romney is planning to raise taxes by $2,000 on middle-income taxpayers and/or cut taxes by $5 trillion. Neither is true.
    • Romney claimed Obama plans to raise taxes by $4,000 on middle-income taxpayers. That’s not true, either.
    • It’s also not true that Obama plans “to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements,” as Romney claimed.
    • Equally untrue is the Obama campaign’s repeated claim that Romney backed a law that would outlaw “all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.”

    So many false and twisted claims were made in the early months that we issued an “early edition” of our annual wrap-up of political whoppers in July. We noted then that the campaign had been nasty, brutish and long.

    And it’s only gotten longer, not more truthful.

    For example, Romney just claimed that the bailed-out Chrysler Corp. is thinking of moving all Jeep production to China. Chrysler quickly denounced that as a falsehood. Romney’s latest whopper is perhaps his payback for Obama’s earlier accusation that Romney personally “shipped jobs to China” at a time when, in reality, Romney was running the 2002 Winter Olympics, not Bain Capital. Thus one whopper begets another.

    It’s been that sort of campaign, filled from beginning to end with deceptive attacks and counterattacks, and dubious claims. For a generous sampling of the worst of a bad lot, please read on to our Analysis section.

    Analysis

    When we issued our “early edition” of this annual wrap-up, we complained that “neither candidate speaks candidly of what he would actually do if elected.” We also expressed a hope that “the candidates will become less personal, more substantive, and more forthcoming about their plans.” But instead of a candid discussion of how to address pressing issues, including trillion-dollar annual deficits, rising health care costs and the needs of an aging population, we’ve seen even more exaggerations, distortions and falsehoods, on both sides.

    We offer them here in no particular order, and with no attempt to judge which candidate strays furthest — or most often — from the facts. Readers may judge that for themselves. And we make no claim that this list is comprehensive. Rather, it represents a summary and sampling of our findings issued over the course of a long and not very illuminating campaign.

    Obama: Romney Raises/Cuts Taxes

    Obama has claimed at various times that Romney has proposed “a $5 trillion tax cut,” or that he wants to raise taxes by $2,000 on the middle class. Neither claim is accurate.

    Obama, Oct 3: Governor Romney’s central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut — on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

    Obama, Sept. 17: I am not going to ask middle-class families with kids to pay over $2,000 more so that millionaires and billionaires get to pay less.

    Romney’s plan is not a $5 trillion tax cut. He has always said he’d offset his rate cuts by eliminating deductions and taxing a wider base of income, producing no net loss of revenue.

    Romney proposed cutting income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminating the estate tax, and eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains and dividends for those earning under $200,000 a year. That would indeed cost about $480 billion in 2015, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, or roughly $5 trillion if projected over a full decade.

    But that’s not all Romney’s plan entailed. He has always said he’d pay for his tax cuts by reducing tax deductions and preferences — taxing more income — so no revenue is lost. If he delivers on that promise — a big “if” to be sure — it would be a $0 tax cut.

    Romney’s plan doesn’t call for raising taxes by $2,000 on middle-income taxpayers, either. He has been most emphatic about that in recent debates. In the second debate at Hofstra University on Oct. 16, he said: “Middle-income people are going to get a tax break.”

    The president bases his claim on a twisted reading of the Tax Policy Center’s study, which found that it was mathematically impossible for Romney to cut rates and hold revenue constant without also shifting the tax burden onto the shoulders of families, with children, making under $200,000 a year. TPC’s director, Donald Marron, disputed Obama’s interpretation of the study, saying, “I view it as showing that [Romney’s] plan can’t accomplish all his stated objectives.”

    Dubious Denver Debate Declarations, Oct. 4

    Obama’s Stump Speech, Sept. 19

    FactChecking Obama and Biden, Sept. 7