Woodchuck of the western U.S. / THU 12-31-20 / vivre ability to live elegantly / James Merritt pioneer in American lithography

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As with yesterday's puzzle, I can't complain about the concept too much. This is standard NYTXW rebus fare: a rebus puzzle cued by a punny revealer that contains "small" or "little" or else "boxes" or something. Here, very literal: types of businesses (specifically, the abbrevs. that might follow a company name) are made "small" and put into individual boxes. Honey, I shrunk the companies. And there it is. Pretty plain, as rebuses go. Of course, if you've never seen a rebus before, this isn't going to seem plain at all, but trust me, this is about as plain as a rebus gets. For me, the theme was dreary, because in general, all things bizness and biznessssspeak make me want to leave the room. Drains the life out of, well, everything. Maybe if our economic system were more fair and transparent, my feelings about the wonderful world of modern business would be different. But nothing is more boring to me than news about BITCOINBARONs or whatever. And these abbrevs—are you ever excited to see INC in your puzzle? LLC? It's the slag heap of crosswordese showing up at your house trying to get you to come out and play some rebus games. No thanks. And then the puzzle got it in its head that I might enjoy *bonus* theme material like BARON DIP POOLED NESTEGGS. . . SIGH. This is a topic I care about not at all. As I say, conceptually, it works ... well, mostly. It's a little ugly to have the rebus squares be actually business-related at first (MARGIN CALL, BITCOIN), but then not so much (MELTDOWN) and then not at all (SPELLCHECK). Feels like the puzzle went off the rails. Fizzled out. Also, the rebus elements, besides being a mass of dullness, also involve repetition, which is normally (as I've said recently) a huge no-no. This is what the abbrevs. stand for:

INC = Incorporated

CO = Company

LTD = Limited (UK)

LLC = Limited Liability Company :( 

First of all, "Company" is so generic that it doesn't really go with the others. The others are all abbrevs. that follow a comma in a company name, whereas CO. ... does not do that. And it's just two letters. *And* as you can see it's duped in LLC, i.e. the "C" there stands for "company." Notice that the "Limited" of LLC is also a dupe (of LTD, which stands for "limited"). There's not enough variety, and not nearly enough joy, to make this kind of thing fun. 

I liked WALT DISNEY, in that I was able to get it off the rebus square alone, without looking at the clue. It's a solid answer, too, but I just like when my brain groks the pattern quick like that. I don't actually care too much for the Disney corporation or the man himself. Here, I'll let his niece, Abigail Disney, talk about him (from The Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 25, 2014) (she's responding to the fact that Meryl Streep had said some unfavorable things about her uncle):