The economy has driven many businesses to close this year, but it will never bring down the business Towson University siblings, Sarah Donald and Frank Donald have.

For the last month, Sarah Donald and her brother Frank Donald have stopped in the middle of roads, pulled off the shoulder of I-95 and even gotten out of their car in the pouring rain to collect abandoned hubcaps. After they collect them they bring them back to their house and polish them to make them look as new as possible.

“Depending on how they look all cleaned up depends on how much we will sell them for, but we’ve set a limit at $10,” said Frank Donald.

As the expenses of going to Towson University began to pile on, Sarah Donald began to struggle to balance school and work. She found herself having no extra money left after all her bills were paid. Then, by luck she got an idea.

“It all started by coincidence,” said Sarah Donald. “A friend had asked me if he could have the hubcap laying in my front yard. I suddenly got the idea that there might be a business in there.”

Since March, the two have sold 13 hubcaps for a total of $72 dollars. They have 21 more that they are currently trying to sell.

“I realize this doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but we’re getting there,” said Sarah Donald. “I just really wanted to do something to get some extra money and I couldn’t find another job because no one is hiring.”

While it isn’t entirely true that no one is hiring, the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation reports the Baltimore-Towson regions unemployment rate has jumped from 3.6 percent in February of 2008 to 7.6 percent in February of 2009.

In a poll of 20 Towson students, all 20 of them admitted that finding a job in this economy is in the top three of their concerns after graduating from college.

“All I ever hear on the news is a how businesses aren’t making it through this recession,” said Stephen Wilhelm, a Towson student who was involved in the poll. “I’m a business major and I think about it everyday.”

The two siblings are just keeping barely making it while balancing school, a job and a somewhat active social life to their standards.

“I want to be a police officer or maybe even an FBI agent, but for right now this is a great way to make some extra money,” said Frank Donald.

Fire Collapses Wall on Baby

One alarm fire causes wall to collapse on baby in the high-rise projects of North Aisquith Street.

The fire started when Arnetta Sands, of apartment 10 B, was spraying insecticide from an aerosol can with the stove on. The spray hit the heat from the stove and combusted into a big ball of smoke.

The wall between the two apartments couldn’t withstand the heat and collapsed on the baby’s crib in the next apartment. Firefighters removed the portion of the wall off the crib.

Fire investigator Thommen said the fire was accidental and the condition of the baby is unknown at this time.

Three Men Rob the Greenmount Ave. Provident Savings Bank

Three men robbed the Greenmount Ave. Provident Savings Bank at gunpoint Wednesday afternoon.

On 12:22 Wednesday, three black males entered the Greenmount Ave. bank armed with .22 caliber rifles and ordered the two customers to lie down on the floor. One robber pointed the gun at the manager of the bank while another jumped the counter to break into the teller’s cages.

The robbers shoved an undisclosed amount of cash into pillowcases and fled into the alley on the north side of the bank where police later found the rifle. There were no injuries or arrests resulting from the incident.

The men were last seen wearing a red hat, a red football jersey, a fishnet shirt and red tennis shoes.

Writing Assignment 2

Not your ordinary father of three, Lou Tagliaferro is a painter by day and a paramedic by night.

“There is nothing more important than family, and providing for them is the most important thing in my life. You can sleep when you’re dead so why not work when everyone else is sleeping,” said Lou.

Lou spends his days in the peaceful surroundings of walls that need revamping. When the sun goes down, he chooses to clean off the paintbrush and takes on a much less peaceful profession. He works for a private ambulance company, which makes its rounds in Baltimore City streets. Lou takes pride in helping other people and he wouldn’t change a thing about his long days.

“Times are tough man, I get to spend time with my kids and that’s all that matters. I feel like no matter what happens I put everything I could into helping the people in my life, whether I just met them or have known them my whole life,” Lou said.

Not everyone has the opportunity to hold two jobs during these tough economic times, and some have to turn to desperate measures to provide for their family.

The New York Post released a cartoon by Sean Delonas, of a dead chimpanzee, shot by two policemen in turn symbolizing that a monkey wrote the stimulus package.

In the cartoon a monkey lay dead with two bullet holes in his chest. "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," said the caption.

What was the New York Post thinking? No matter what it symbolized they had to know that the cartoon was going to cause controversy, or maybe, controversy was exactly what they wanted. Maybe papers are not selling.

Here is my thought on this whole situation. Sorry, to all of you who like Reverend Sharpton, but he is just as racist as anyone else. I acknowledge that most of what he does is in good intention, but for this world to become free of racism, like Al Sharpton wants, this kind of thing has to come to an end. We need to get to a point where stupid cartoons are just that, stupid cartoons.

As people we need to let things change and evolve. We are not the same today as the society we were when slave owners ruled America. We all have the same rights, kind of, but that's for another post.

With this being said maybe I'm just to naive to understand because I'm white and I feel as if I'm opening Pandora's Box with all the above statements. Where can we drawn the line? In my opinion there should be no line. Are we really free if we have to hold back on our expression of the contents of a stimulus package because maybe they might offend somebody?

In Delonas mind there was no racial issue in this cartoon. In Sharpton's mind there was. If there is ever going to be a line drawn put it there; between the opinions of two very different men. They are opinions and should be taken as such. Isn't there some kind of amendment that states this; oh yea, the first one.

Freedom is what America was built on. How free are we if we are killed by our own opinions. This world is on a steady spiral into a world where freedom may as well be buried deep in the ground with a tombstone that says,"What happened to us?"

I agree with the message in this cartoon. The Stimulus bill may have well been written by monkeys. The fact that there is a President of a different race should not be a factor in this. But, of course Reverend Sharpton jumped all over the opportunity to take on the New York Post and make this an issue.

Before he jumped all over the symbolism of this cartoon being racist, maybe he should actually look at the intangibles of the Stimulus Bill itself and the fact that there were more people than just Obama who worked on the package.

It may help some people who really need it, but in reality it is helping people who wrote checks bigger then they could cash. People who, with their income, took out a loan they essentially couldn't afford.

If you're going to take my money from me I want to help someone who really needs it. Someone who isn't struggling right now becuase of greed, but because they lost their job simply because the economy is bad. I could be wrong but I feel like the Stimulus Bill is bailing out a ton of greedy people who took to much when it was there and is not going to help the people who made did not mistakes, they were just victims of this economic downfall.

The New York Post released a cartoon of a dead chimpanzee, shot by two policemen symbolizing that a monkey wrote the stimulus bill.

In the cartoon a monkey lay dead with two bullet holes in his chest. "They'll have to find someone else to write the next Stimulus Bill," said the caption.

The cartoon represented two recent news stories, the Stimulus Bill and the shooting of a chimpanzee who attacked a women in Connecticut. Tying them together, author Sean Delonas, used the dead chimpanzee to represent the authors of the Stimulus Bill.

Reverend Al Sharpton, had a different view of the meaning of this cartoon. "The cartoon in today's New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys," said Sharpton.

In reply to Sharpton, "The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist," The New York Post replies.