None of these points claim to demonstrate that these things are unique to America. They just assume you'll trust them on it. So how trustworthy are they on the verifiable facts?
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1) Only in America could the rich people – who pay 86% of all income taxes – be accused of not paying their “fair share” by people who don’t pay any income taxes at all.
They did specify
income taxes, not taxes generally, which puts this in the right ballpark. In 2009, the top 25% of personal income tax returns accounted for 87.3% of all personal income tax revenue. That includes everyone making $66,193 or more that year. 2008, 2006, and 2005 would each round to 86%. [
1,
2] Those same sources say the bottom 50% pays only 2-3% of the revenue, which suggests the 47% figure is about right.
However, the set of people who accuse the rich of not paying their "fair share" and the set of people who pay no income taxes are not the same set of people. I'm going to be paying zero income taxes in April, and I think the rich are paying their fair share already.
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2) Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when they have a black President, a black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black while only 12% of the population is black.
As of the 2010 census, 12.6% of the US population self-identified as black or African American. That's up from 12.3% in 2000. [
3]
Eric Holder is the only African-American head of a federal department right now (1 of 15, or 6.67%), though there are 3 other African-Americans in Cabinet-level positions (4 of 23, or 17.4%). [
4] As of 2008, 337,742 federal employees (excluding postal workers and the military) were black out of 1,916,726 total (17.6%). [
5]
It's worth noting that the employment-population ratio is 7.7 percentage points higher for whites than for blacks (51.7% vs. 59.4%). [
6]
I dispute the claim that statistical outcomes prove anything about racial bias in the process, so I reject the conclusions he arrives at. Even if statistical outcomes did prove something, the numbers above include two examples suggesting anti-black bias and two suggesting pro-black bias; an inconclusive mixed bag. But the list's author did provide essentially accurate information.
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3) Only in America could they have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the TreasuryDepartment and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.
Timothy Geithner was opposed to extending the Bush tax cuts pretty much his entire term as head of the Treasury Department, and there was an issue where he had to pay some $34,000 in back taxes (Medicaid and Social Security self-employment payroll taxes) before he took that position [
7]. But "tax cheat" is a stretch; his seemingly (and self-described) unintentional mistake was caught by an audit and he had to pay interest on what he owed (not pay a fine or spend time in jail, as one would expect of a tax cheat). [
8]
The story is similar for Charles Rangel -- the list's author is stretching a bit.
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4) Only in America can they have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.
Hate crimes against Muslims spiked in the years following 9/11, so the concern was warranted. In 2000, there were 36 Muslim victims of hate crime [
9], and in 2002 there were 174 [
10] Innocent Muslims were harmed by the backlash. Also, 31 innocent Muslims were killed in the 9/11 bombings themselves [
11]. The idea that 9/11 was Muslims attacking non-Muslims was (and is) worth disputing.
Incidentally, the media in France has arguably been ignoring hate crimes and rioting by Muslims out of a misguided sense of cultural sensitivity. For example, that argument has been made here: [
12] So, clearly it is not "Only in America."
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5) Only in America would they make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just ‘magically’ become American citizens.
When immigration was a hot topic during the Bush Administration, the most reasonable Democrats proposal was to charge illegal aliens the same fees that people who wait in line paid in order to re-enter the line. If memory serves. That policy doesn't eliminate unfairness against those who follow the process properly, but the author exaggerates the extent of it. Also, it's a lot more practical a policy than the "self-deportation" alternative pushed by Republicans.
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6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country’s Constitution be thought of as”extremists.”
Nobody is thought an extremist for those reasons alone. Radically narrow definitions of what "sticking by the country's Constitution" means or bizarre expressions of one's views are the reasons people are thought to be extremists.
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7) Only in America could you need to present a driver’s license to cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.
Nothing to fact check.
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8) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company(Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes(Nike).
Oil companies did have record profits and high prices in unison for a few years there. That's not proof of anything, but it is suspicious. I don't know where to find corporate return on investment numbers for comparison, or when that comparison was claimed to be true.
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9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion dollars more than it has per year – for total spending of $7-Million PER MINUTE, and complain that it doesn’t have nearly enough money.
This might be true in the sense that most nations in history didn't collect taxes in dollars, but in other currencies. The Roman Empire used to collect more revenue than their number system could properly depict, so it was generally understood that the revenue figures were always in thousands of denarii. They also deficit-spent quite readily. Also, there is more wealth to go around than any time in history, and the USA has a pretty massive chunk of that wealth. Fair comparisons wouldn't put the USA at the top of history's most-taxed populations, of its most spend-happy governments, or of its worst deficit spending.
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10) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000.00 a plate campaign fund-raising event.
The hypocrisy is amusing, but I imagine most nations have similar problems.
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11) Only in America can a man with no background, no qualifications and no experience … and a complete failure at his job … be re-elected.
Strictly speaking, not even in America. Everyone has some background, and everyone ever re-elected (President or otherwise) has had at least a thin resume.
With looser definitions, you've pretty much defined "politician" here (with a thin minority of exceptions). I'm sure some hard-core Democrats think of Bush from that description, and some hard-core Liberals think of Harper in those terms.
In general, there wasn't much to fact check. The logic rarely follows, but what few facts are there seem generally accurate.