What a show, huh? Big-name corporations went all out this July 4th with a patriotic ad blitz professing their devotion to America's democracy.

But it amounted to a Firecracker of Hypocrisy, for many of these showboat patriots have been backroom funders of the President Donald Trump regime's repression of our people's democratic rights.

Also, there's an internal level of cynical dishonesty in their flashy show of support for egalitarian values. In the past few years, a clique of these Silicon Valley and Wall Street giants has been monkeywrenching the rules of their own corporate governance to crush the very idea of "shareholder democracy."

Yes, such a concept has existed, at least in theory. For decades, big business profiteers have been given special privileges over the rest of us by claiming to be "democratic enterprises," governed by masses of common shareholders who get one vote for each share of stock they own. (Actually, that makes a corporation more of a plutocracy, since the more stock you own, the more votes you get.)

Today, though, even plutocracy is too democratic for monarchical billionaire bosses like Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX. So, they've invented a super-class of shareholders — mostly themselves and their cronies. These elite owners get domineering voting power, exceeding all other investors combined. For example, Musk owns about 40% of the stock in SpaceX, but in his self-created system, he gets more than 80% of shareholder votes. Among other advantages, his skewed voting power makes Musk "unfireable" — unless he votes to fire himself.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... Beware of billionaires professing any allegiance to America's democratic values. In fact, just beware of billionaires, period.