Behind the scenes with the Obama transition team

This message is to Stan M, who ever you are. I just read a blog you did when I got fired by Jim Smith. You are really an idiot and know nothing about me or the work I have done to help people for the past 30 years. I only pray that you never have anyone you care about need help with an alcohol or drug problem. By the way since jim smith fired me, baltimore county has decreased your sevices for people who need help. I guess that makes people like you happy. Well enjoy and know that I am still here, doing gods work helping people and you are still being a secret little blob or blog. You need to learn to get the facts before you try and trash someone.

Editor's note: For those who are interested in Mr. Gimbel's accomplishments, I have added a link to his latest résumé. I see a lot of important titles and weighty abstractions, but neither a qualitative nor quantitative measurement as to whether anything has been accomplished.

In the meantime, the situation in Dundalk looks worse than ever, and out here in Woodlawn, the youngsters think nothing of walking the streets in a flock, openly smoking marijuana. This and the escalating level of violence can only lead one to ask whether it is time to abandon the "war on drugs" for some other approach.

Mister Gimbel: You apparently have some cognitive problems, since you managed to post your comment to an entirely different blog entry than the one you are complaining about.

As far as your career doing "God's work" (and, BTW, I believe He spells it with an uppercase "G"), you are welcome to believe you have accomplished something. The rest of us see is a county entity that was never authorized by the county charter, that grew into an expensive proposition, and the efficacy of which nobody has ever offered quantitative proof.

As it happens I was among the founders of one of the first crisis-intervention outfits in this county, and have certainly worked with drug abusers. I do not believe in the "criminal" paradigm of most drug abuse, because it has been proven both unworkable and endlessly expensive. And I believe that government programs whose budgets grow exponentially need to prove their worth.

I have in fact lost friends and relatives to the drug and gang problems in this county. In none of those cases did the county offer any meaningful help.

One of these people is a young man who was murdered after the mother of his out-of-wedlock child joined a gang. The county has declared him a "missing person," rather than a murder victim, despite the fact that his car and clothing were found, along with enough of his blood to account for the entire contents of his circulatory system. Not only has the county failed to provide closure to his family over the murder, in their missing-person web entry, they paint this young fellow as some kind of thug himself, rather than a victim.

My identity is well known, and readily available to anyone who makes an attempt to find it. Your name-calling speaks volumes about your level of maturity and conflict resolution skills. If I were to post a link to my primary email address, or my home address and phone number, I expect that the hateful stuff you wrote would have been directed there. I prefer to make it just a little difficult for angry crackpots to attack me by way of my family.

It's too bad that neither your upbringing nor your life experiences have taught you to respect another person's right to hold an opinion different from your own.

You have done a thorough job of proving the point that I made in the original blog entry. Thanks for the help.