WXII, Time Warner part ways

Wondered why I was getting “local news” from Pennsylvania.

WXII parent company Hearst Television was unable to reach a carriage agreement with Time Warner Cable.

W-S council to weigh in on Silk Plant Forest case?

It may be one thing when a City Council passes a resolution supporting or opposing issues such as Amendment One or municipal broadband, but —call me krazy —- it’s totally different when they weigh in on a criminal case that has forever affected the lives of two people.

With that in mind, the Winston-Salem City Council is pondering an amicus brief supporting Kalvin Smith’s federal appeal of his conviction for the brutal beating of Jill Marker, popularly known as the Silk Plant Forest case.

It’s debatable how much weight the council’s amicus brief would carry with Judge Catherine Eagles —who— in case you’ve already forgotten, presided over the John Edwards trial—-but I would question how well-informed the council is on this case. The concern is council members will be politically pressured by the Silk Plant forest Truth Committee, which paid for the report from a former FBI agent stating that Smith deserves a new trial. And as we see time and again, when someone pays you to write a report, you best deliver the right answer.

Randolph hikes school lunch price

Randolph County Schools will hike the price of school lunches for the upcoming academic year:

The school system, like others in the state, previously was able to use federal money from the free and reduced-price lunch program to supplement its entire meal program, allowing it to hold down lunch prices across the board.

The child nutrition bill signed by President Obama in December requires schools to offer healthier (and more expensive) items like more fresh produce and less whole milk. But it also requires school districts to start bringing their prices in line with what it actually costs to prepare the meals. The measure is designed to bring some nationwide uniformity to school lunch prices, which can vary widely from school system to school system. Many school systems have kept their prices lower than the actual cost of producing the meal, relying on subsidies from the federal lunch program to fund the gap.

Fifty-five percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch in Randolph County, and while the HPE article doesn’t use the term “fraud,” it still suggests the “federal program was being used to subsidize students whose families are better off than those for whom the subsidies are targeted.”

And while it might seem like a good thing that the federal government is requiring school systems to bring prices more in line with costs, note the desire to “bring nationwide uniformity to school lunch prices,” which is a downside to addressing fraud in the free and reduced price lunch program.