San Fransisco GP.. Aaron Peskin plays dirty pool

It was sad to hear that the San Fransisco GP won't happen next year. It was even more shocking to hear that SFC LLC owed over $80,000 to the city from the 2004 edition. However, as I read the latest article, article I was disturbed to read this graf:

Both San Francisco Cycling and Newsom's office told The San Francisco Chronicle that the company shouldn't be blamed for the delay in payment because the Department of Public Works only sent the final 2004 bill this month.

Race operations director Jerry Casale called misleading charges that San Francisco Cycling had failed to pay its 2004 bills, leveled by supervisors Daly and Aaron Peskin during the November 14 Audit and Oversight Committee meeting.

"We were faxed the final and adjusted SFPD bill for $89,924 for the first time on November 10, 2005, just one working day prior to that meeting," Casale told The Chronicle. All other city charges had been paid before we got our ISCOTT permit for the 2005 race. It wouldn't have been issued otherwise. And then they said we were late and purposely avoiding payment. That's simply not true."

followed up by

Peskin, meanwhile, said the city is simply getting rid of "a bad actor that has repeatedly refused to pay its bills, or pay them on time."

I did some research and found that this type of tactic isn't unusual for peskin. I checked his own website and I wouldn't exactly call his endorsements unequivcable.

My experience is that you can tell alot about the quality of argument by the methods used to fight prove this arguments. It may come out that SFC LLC has had a history of being late. But, the specific argument used by Peskin was that they were late on this specific bill which they clearly are not. And if he knew they were late and the exact ammount, then I think it's fair to assume that he also knew that the bill had just been sent. And even if he didn't, his later quote indicates he doesn't care much for whether the actual charge is true or not.

One thing Peskin is credited for is intellectual honesty. I am sorry, but he clearly does not demonstrate that. If he did, he would admit that he made a misleading statement, and either present other evidence to support his position or change it.

He did neither.