Yesterday came the alarming news that there would be no big 4th of July fireworks show in Seattle this year, because the non-profit that organizes it

has been unable to find any local companies willing to pay the $500,000-plus annual cost to become title sponsor.

Talk about a failure of imagination! What, we can’t celebrate the 4th with fireworks because no corporation was willing to pay for naming rights on the festivities? Why should that matter?

My immediate reaction: Why not just ask regular folks to contribute in small dollar amounts – and leave off the corporate name? I’m sure in a city as large and prosperous as Seattle, we could easily raise the required cash. And after all – shouldn’t the 4th be an American holiday – not a corporate one?

Local restauranteur Tom Douglas beat me to the punch, and chipped in $5,000 of his own to get things going. By this morning when my wife and I contributed $25 through the small (under $1,000) donor page, they’d already raised over $450,000. If only 20,000 households in Seattle gave as much as we did on average – we could buy a 4th of July fireworks celebration for ourselves.

Yet still the large corporate and individual donors managed to cut us out of the action – the small donor page was put up last, and taken down immediately when $500,000 was reached – so we only contributed $7,454 to the total. Meanwhile the large donors got their names posted online – with special thanks to Microsoft and Starbucks – but not the small ones.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m happy we saved the 4th of July in Seattle. And all kudos to Tom, who’s a stand up guy and tackled this problem immediately. (Though it is a little odd that he’s on the Board of the non-profit that puts on the show…shouldn’t he have seen this coming earlier?)

But why do non-profits collude with wealthy corporations and individuals to keep 99% of Americans out of the action – even in funding their own 4th of July celebrations?

I guess they figure if they keep taking care of us in paternalistic fashion and giving us bread and circuses – we won’t ask why 4th of July fireworks started to be thought of as, in the main, a corporate naming opportunity, and how corporations and wealthy individuals have so much money to throw around in the first place – or suddenly decide to stop throwing around, as the mood strikes them. We’ll just be grateful for their liberal largess.

We all pay a little bit more for our lattes and Windows so Microsoft and Starbucks can put their name on the celebration of a revolution fought to abolish taxation without representation – and make the decision to do so, or not, without asking any of us.

Kind of ironic, don’t you think?