Carrion Luggage

In today's NY Times the paper reports on the DMI conference on the middle class, a forum that acted as somewhat of a preview of the 2009 mayoral race. What stood out for us in the report was the exchange between Anthony Weiner and Adolfo Carrion on the issue of box stores like Wal-Mart. Carrion, defending his disingenuous support for the BJ's that he helped midwife for the graveyard of the BTM, called the entry of Wal-Mart, or something just like it, as "inevitable."

Well, AC has an interesting operational definition of inevitable. Something that you dissemble about for months in public while you work assiduously behind the scenes to support has no relationship to our definition of inevitability. It appears that Carrion's definition of the process is a guise to disguise his role at facillitating the anti-union box store, all the time that he was denying that it was coming into the new mall.

All of which will be played out strongly in 2009 when AC finds that labor, small business and local neighborhood groups don't want any part of his vision for the city. By that time one thing will be certain: Carrion's ascension to the chief executive's chair will be the farthest thing from inevitable.