Are active shooter drills worth it?

Posted on by Lone Candle

“These experiences suggest the lockdown drills really did help students and staff respond effectively. Evidence so far suggests children and educators in Uvalde followed their lockdown training well, and it was local police who failed to follow protocol. For now, most experts say if we’re stuck living in a society where school shootings are threats communities must deal with, then schools should plan for drills but be more conscious of how they’re executed, and take steps to mitigate needless harm.”

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“Scant high-quality research exists on the mental health risks of lockdown drills, though in 2021, Georgia Tech researchers, in partnership with Everytown for Gun Safety, published a study analyzing social media posts before and after the drills in 114 schools across 33 states.
The researchers found the drills associated with increases in depression, stress, anxiety, and physiological health problems for students, teachers, and parents, and suggested leaders rethink schools’ reliance on them. “We provide the first empirical evidence that school shooter drills — in their current, unregulated state — negatively impact the psychological well-being of entire school communities,” the authors wrote.

Other experts say the drills may even be counterproductive, given that most school shooters tend to be current or former students of those schools. The drills might spark “socially contagious” behavior, some critics warn, or deter school leaders from making other proactive safety investments.”

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““When we train students, we don’t say this is your only option. If you’re in an open area or by an exit door, your best option is to get out of the building,” she said. “The reason why there’s a heavier focus on the lockdown as an option [and the ‘L’ in Alice stands for lockdown] is because kids remember things in a very linear fashion, and the best thing a student can do is shut the door and get out of the way.””

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“Researchers say more high-quality studies are needed to understand the long-term impacts of lockdown drills and to develop more standardized approaches that could minimize risk.”

Texas Gov. Abbott’s border inspections prompt Mexico to move lucrative trade link to New Mexico

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Trucks were re-routed through Santa Teresa when Abbott’s inspections snarled commercial traffic at Texas border crossings, and now Mexico has decided to move a long-planned trade railway connection worth billions of dollars from Texas to the New Mexico crossing, The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday. “We’re now not going to use Texas,” Mexican Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier said. “We can’t leave all the eggs in one basket and be hostages to someone who wants to use trade as a political tool.””

How a Tiny Solar Company in California Might Convince Biden To Sabotage America’s Whole Solar Industry

Posted on by Lone Candle

“A tiny solar panel manufacturing firm with outsized political clout is poised to wreak havoc on the entire American solar energy industry.

And the White House, which at least theoretically supports expanding America’s green energy industries, might just go along with the madness. It’s a tricky situation for President Joe Biden to navigate, one that requires choosing between two of his top policy priorities: industrial protectionism and combatting climate change.

In February, the California-based company Auxin Solar submitted a petition to the U.S. Department of Commerce asking for a more expansive set of tariffs targeting imported solar panels and their component parts. The company alleges that American solar panel manufacturers are avoiding tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels and components—tariffs originally imposed in 2018 by the Trump administration but renewed earlier this year by Biden—by buying parts made in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam that are sometimes made with Chinese parts.

That is, of course, pretty much exactly what you’d expect any company to do. But Auxin argues that the federal government now has a responsibility to stop what it calls attempts to “circumvent” those tariffs on Chinese imports by imposing new tariffs on imports from those four other countries as well. In March, the Commerce Department launched an investigation to determine whether those tariffs are to be added.

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), those prospective tariffs would target the source of about 80 percent of America’s supply of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, the fundamental building blocks of solar panels. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in March, dozens of the SEIA’s member companies warned that the tariffs would “stall both ongoing and planned U.S. solar projects and lead to the loss of over 45,000 American jobs, including 15,000 domestic solar manufacturing jobs.” It would also mean losing about 14 gigawatts of planned solar deployment—about two-thirds of the Energy Information Administration’s target for solar deployment this year

All that, the SEIA warned, “because a single company is seeking to inappropriately exploit the law for market advantage.”

It sounds like a typical story of big business using its political clout to shut smaller competitors out of the market. But the bizarre thing about this fight is that relatively unsuccessful businesses are holding the rest of the market hostage. Because they have friends in Washington”

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“this offers a lesson about how protectionism creates perverse incentives in markets and politics. Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese solar parts and Biden’s decision to extend those tariffs have created a bizarre situation where a bankrupt solar manufacturer and an “artisanal solar boutique” might get to dictate the future of an entire industry.”