BUSINESS INSIDER: They Should Be Occupying K Street.

OWS protestors are highly critical of big corporations lobbying Congress and Washington DC regulatory agencies to tilt the playing field in big business favor. It sounds like they don’t appreciate the virtues of crony capitalism, otherwise known as “The Chicago Way”.

Well guess what?

Companies that are successful lobbying the Washington DC apparatus are simply playing off big government. To kill the effect of lobbying, skewer the beast and make government smaller.

Allowing companies to stay alive with government support also empowers big government. Allowing the capitalistic force of creative destruction is something the Tea Party is behind. What about Occupy Wall Street?

There are some troubling signs with Occupy Wall Street. The SEIU is busing people to join the marches. Other unions, and socialist Senator Sanders are supporting the cause.

Of course they are.

MICKEY KAUS BUSTS more bogus Solyndra defenses.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Blu-Ray.

MICHAEL WALSH: “Fast and Furious” Scandal Has Justice Department in Full Panic. With reason. Careers are already being ruined, and people will quite possibly go to jail over this.

On top of stonewalling Rep. Darrell Issa’s House investigation of the mess, Justice has floated a series of contradictory excuses:

* There was no such program.

* Even if there was, Holder never knew about it.

* Even if he should have known about it, he might not have read Breuer’s memos.

* Even if he read Breuer’s memos, he misunderstood the simple question: “When did you first know about the program, officially, I believe, called Fast and Furious?” . . .

There’s still plenty of time for Justice and the other implicated agencies to come clean. But to date, all we’ve heard is dog-ate-my-briefing-book excuses and desperate attempts to change the subject.

Just remember DoJ folks — it’s not the crime that ensnares most federal workers, it’s the coverup.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “The Dems used to be pretty good at hounding CEOs about ‘known or shoulda known’ standard of business ethics.” Indeed.

RETREAT: WaPo: Democrats shift the definition of ‘rich’ in battle over taxes. “As they head into the 2012 campaign, Democrats are changing their definition of what it means to be rich. Forget about families making $250,000 a year. Today, the party is only interested in millionaires.” The problem, of course, is that this may play better than their earlier line, but you can’t raise enough money unless you reach down well below $250,000 for tax increases. So while this sounds better, it also increases the gap between their rhetoric and their plans.

JOHN MERLINE: ObamaCare’s Growing List Of Broken Promises.

GALLUP DELIVERS MORE BAD NEWS:

In the accelerating chronicles of the Democrat’s decline, Barack Obama has just achieved a new level of disapproval among American voters:

On the 990th day of his presidency, 52% of his countrymen disapprove of the Chicagoan, according to Gallup’s latest three-day rolling average.

That means Americans now think as little of their own president as they do of Vladimir Putin, the former Russian spymaster and authoritarian tough guy who’s expected to become president again over there.

On the upside, you can spin it this way: Obama’s polling as well as a guy who’s practically certain to get another term!

JAMES TARANTO: Tea Party Envy: Be Careful What You Wish For, Liberals.

Yesterday we had a few laughs at the expense of Tea Party enviers in the media like E.J. “Baghdad Bob” Dionne and Nicholas Kristof–easy targets, we’ll admit. But let’s note that there are a few similarities between today’s raging lefties and the Tea Party–or at least the Tea Party as the left imagines it.

For one thing, the Occupiers are mostly white, as Malcolm Sacks, “a New York activist who has been participating in the Zuccotti Park occupation,” tells al-Jazeera. . . .

Meanwhile, at National Review Online Charles Cooke has video of an Occupier berating a Jewish man with anti-Semitic slurs. Cooke reports that “shortly after my video camera was switched off, [the Occupier] (inexplicably) shouted the N-word at the same man.”

Read the whole thing.

THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER EDITORIALIZES: Palin was right to forego 2012 presidential run. “It is time for Republicans to snap out of it, stop pining for a knight on a white horse and choose a nominee from among the candidates already in the race.”

ERIC HOLDER’S DUBIOUS HISTORY OF CONVENIENT AMNESIA. “In truth, I’d be very surprised if it turned out that Mr. Holder was as much in the dark as he claims. Fast & Furious was a very strange and controversial program, and there was plenty of Justice Department participation in it: ATF is a Justice Department agency; the investigation was being conducted jointly with a U.S. attorney’s office (i.e., a DOJ district office); the investigation featured eavesdropping applications, which have to go through the Justice Department; and White House officials were apparently being briefed about the program. It would be odd indeed if the AG were out of the loop. . . . I don’t want to rehash all the unsavory details; I just want to focus on the following: When Clinton’s pardon of Rich blew up, Congress held hearings. Despite the fact that he had interceded on Rich’s (and Quinn’s) behalf even before the pardon shenanigans, Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2001, under oath, that ‘Mr. Rich’s name was unfamiliar to me’ in 1999, when Quinn first beseeched Holder to help Quinn try to convince SDNY prosecutors to drop the charges. Holder elaborated that he had ‘gained only a passing familiarity with the underlying facts of the Rich case’ when, in the ensuing months, he helped push for the pardon. He claimed that he had been too busy to inform himself about the case of the criminal for whom he was lobbying — a man who had been on the FBI’s top-ten list of wanted fugitives.”

SURE, WHY NOT? What We Really Need is Anti-Corporate Anarchy, With Our ‘Organizers and the Law Team’ Writing Our Demands. “Anarchy — you keep using that word. I do not think it means…No, actually, you’re using absolutely spot-on, even if you don’t know it.” It’s not anarchy until it’s been through the approved committee process.

But really: If you’re not protesting against President Goldman Sachs, you’re not protesting against “Wall Street.” You’re just a hack. Sorry. “The modern anarchists are just the far-left’s muscle. Look at when and where they show up, who they march with and for, and how carefully the press ignores them and their acts.”

SHAKEUP: ATF officials reassigned in latest Fast and Furious fallout. Anything that inflicts pain on a rogue agency is good — even flatworms are smart enough to turn away from painful stimuli — but we need to see people losing their jobs, and probably going to jail, over the misconduct that has taken place.

And we need a competent, honest special prosecutor on this, ASAP.

WASHINGTON POST FACT-CHECK: The DNC’s ridiculous attack on Mitt Romney’s Social Security stance.

IT’S LIKE “GROUNDHOG DAY,” BUT WITH HIGHER TAXES: Democrats Propose Another Surtax on Millionaires.

Since the current trend is a 4-5% hike on high-earners every time new spending is required, that seems to indicate that Democrats have only about five bites left at the apple. Then they’ll be out of money for new programs. That’s assuming, as they seem to, that rich people don’t care about money, and will not change their behavior in response to higher tax rates. If that assumption is wrong, then they reach the end of this particular rope much sooner.

Presumably the next step is people who make over $250,000 (which is, indeed, the group already targeted by the Medicare surtaxes). But this group contains a lot of solid Democrats who do not, in my experience, think that the socially just marginal tax rate on such incomes is 80%.

Hey, I’ve got a few revenue-enhancement proposals of my own. Of course, capping the mortgage-interest deduction and eliminating the deductibility of state property and income taxes will hit blue states harder, but hey — shared sacrifice, right?

TIMING IS EVERYTHING: Pitch-Perfect Palin. “Last night, Sarah Palin’s statement — and her breaking news interview with Mark Levin — stressed some extremely important ideas. As such, her not running might well be among the least important topics she touched on. Yes, I know that’s the news that everybody was waiting for — but what interested me most was what Palin said about her vision for America and how she said it. It was crafted very intentionally –and it was simply pitch-perfect. . . . In her written statement — and her immediate follow-up interview with Levin — she made it clear what was important. Saving the country is all that matters, and the first step required for that task is to totally reverse our current course. Of course, that includes removal of the current occupant in the White House.”

You can listen to the audio here.

JOHN HAWKINS interviews Rick Perry on illegal immigration.

THE HILL: Club for Growth warns GOP against vote on China currency.

The Club for Growth has warned Republicans against signing a petition to force a vote on China currency legislation.

The well-funded conservative group has said it will score as a “key vote” any signatures to a discharge petition to force a House vote on legislation meant to punish China for manipulating its currency to lower the price of its exports to the U.S.

The Senate moved forward on China currency legislation this week in a bipartisan vote, and a similar measure was approved by the House last year, with 99 Republicans voting yes.

Mr. Hawley, meet Mr. Smoot.

DAN PRIMACK: They Should Be Marching On Universities, Not Wall Street: “Take a look at We Are the 99 Percent – a website on which protest sympathizers share their tales of economic hardship. Very few of them mention banks, or even bank bailouts. The vast majority of them, however, do mention college debt.” Universities are major Democratic constituencies, and as such unlikely to be targeted.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Univision Takes The Low Road Against Marco Rubio.

NEVADA G.O.P. moves caucuses up to January 14.

READER DOUGLAS BASS WRITES: “How many of their parents were anti-vaccine activists?” Mumps Outbreak Reported On Cal Campus.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Senate Appropriators’ Secret War Against Oversight. “In the last seven months, Congress has failed to send a single cut identified by GAO to the president’s desk. Even worse, instead of cutting the spending identified by GAO, the Senate Appropriations Committee is now proposing to slash funding for GAO itself.”

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: THE JOBS AGENDA: “I don’t know what Steve Jobs’s politics were, I don’t much care, and in any case they are beside the point. The late Mr. Jobs stood for something considerably better than politics. He stood for the model of the world that works. . . . That old Motorola cinderblock would cost about $10,000 in 2011 dollars, and you couldn’t play Angry Birds on it or watch Fox News or trade a stock. Once you figure out why your cell phone gets better and cheaper every year but your public schools get more expensive and less effective, you can apply that model to answer a great many questions about public policy. Not all of them, but a great many. . . . I was down at the Occupy Wall Street protest today, and never has the divide between the iPhone world and the politics world been so clear: I saw a bunch of people very well-served by their computers and telephones (very often Apple products) but undeniably shortchanged by our government-run cartel education system. And the tragedy for them — and for us — is that they will spend their energy trying to expand the sphere of the ineffective, hidebound, rent-seeking, unproductive political world, giving the Barney Franks and Tom DeLays an even stronger whip hand over the Steve Jobses and Henry Fords. And they — and we — will be poorer for it.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns in Tools & Home Improvement.

Plus, new 20-volt power tools from DeWalt.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I have some of the 20V-Max DeWalts and they are awesome–really the best cordless tools I have ever seen. However, what they are not is 20V tools by any reasonable definition of that term. They are 18V tools in the sense that 18V is their operating voltage when you pull the trigger. Thus the asterisk you see on every use of the term on the DeWalt website.

* Maximum initial battery voltage (measured without a workload) is 20 volts. Nominal voltage is 18.

Hmm.

TEST-DRIVING THE Fisker Karma Hybrid. “The Fisker Karma is a standout luxury and performance vehicle, period. It does double duty as head-turning grand touring machine and fuel-sipping hybrid, making it the first vehicle of its kind. Henrik Fisker designed an arresting sedan with bulging Vette-like fenders, Batmobile stretch, and a sumptuous, ergonomically sound, supremely comfortable cabin. Considering the momentous tasks of starting a car company and producing a car with new technology that actually works, the Karma deserves a pat on the back.” The gas engine is kinda noisy, though. But it is an amazingly good-looking car.

UPDATE: Arnold Kling writes: “When you report on Fisker, you should note that Fisker received a $500 million loan guarantee from us taxpayers, just like Solyndra.” Well, that would make me less likely to buy it — though at this price, the whole question is pretty notional anyway . . . .