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.

LET'S INCREASE SOCIAL SECURITY, NOT CUT IT!

Here they come again: Billionaires, wailing that Congress must — MUST! — act immediately to slash the monthly Social Security checks that middle-class and poor retirees count on.

Plutocratic elites and their anti-government ideologues periodically erupt in outrage that elderly Americans who've earned retirement benefits are depleting the Social Security Trust Fund. So, they exclaim, the government must cut the payments these old folks are getting.

But wait — it's not "the government's money." It belongs to the retirees themselves. They've paid monthly payroll taxes into the fund for years on the guarantee that they would later draw benefits out.

Maybe so, bark opponents, but the money well is going dry, so the only way to "save" the program is to chop payments owed to beneficiaries.

In three words: That's a lie.

What the superwealthy don't want us to notice is that the Social Security tax is spectacularly unfair. If your yearly income is less than $185,000 (which includes 95% of us) — every penny of your earnings is subject to retirement tax. But if you're paid a million a year, or a billion, or even more — everything over $185,000 is tax-free. Sweet!

Wait, there's more. Instead of being paid wages, most uber-wealthy people draw their annual income from a Wall Street scheme called "unrealized capital gains." Big surprise — those gains are totally exempted from our nation's retirement tax.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... So, let's make Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and other tax-dodging billionaires pay on all of their income as the rest of us do. That's only fair. Then America can increase benefits so everyone can have a dignified retirement. Now that's true fairness!

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Mackenzie Marco at Unsplash