text:
I love the idea of Menial, a new anthology from the peeps at Crossed Genres coming in January. We've had plenty of anthologies about space admirals and cosmic heroes — but how about the people who actually get their hands dirty keeping the spaceship flying? The engineers, mechanics, and even sanitation workers?
Here's the official description:
MENIAL: Skilled Labor in Science Fiction presents seventeen stories about the people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty.
From the literal guts of a spaceship, to the energy-starved lands of a future Earth, to the inhospitable surfaces of other planets, MENIAL explores the stories of people who understand and maintain the building blocks of civilization. They work hard, live hard, and love hard. They're not afraid to build the future they want to live in, even knowing the often high human cost of hard labor.
Check out the table of contents — including the intriguing title "Snowball the Rabbit Was Dead" — at the link. [Crossed Genres via SFSignal]


text:
SANDY, Utah – Real Salt Lake will close its three-game home stand on Saturday, when it will host Western Conference foe Vancouver Whitecaps FC in a match presented by Rio Tinto at Rio Tinto Stadium.
Saturday's match will kickoff at 7:00 p.m. MT and will be broadcast live on CW30, ESPN700 AM and 102.3 La Gran D/1600 AM. CW30 will air its 30-minute Ford Postgame Show immediately following the match; ESPN 700 will begin its pregame coverage at 6:00 p.m. MT and will air an hour-long postgame show immediately following the final whistle.
Real Salt Lake will host Star Wars Day at Rio Tinto Stadium for Saturday's match. Fans are encouraged to dress in costume for the "May the 4th be with you" festivities, which will kickoff at 5:00 p.m. at Carnival Real.
RSL played Vancouver just three weeks ago, getting a fantastic goal from FW Olmes Garcia to tie Whitecaps FC 1-1 at BC Place on April 13. Real Salt Lake lost its last match, falling 2-0 to the LA Galaxy at Rio Tinto Stadium.
The Claret-and-Cobalt enters Saturday's match struggling with injuries – particularly up top. Leading scorer FW Alvaro Saborio (R quad tear) is out for the match, while Garcia (R adductor strain) and FW Robbie Findley (L knee hyperextension) are both questionable, leaving FW Joao Plata and rookie FW Devon Sandoval as the squad's only fully fit strikers. RSL is also dealing with injuries at other positions, with MF Cole Grossman (concussion) and DF Rich Balchan (L shoulder separation) out and DF Chris Wingert (L quad strain) questionable for Saturday's game.
RSL's health problems up top began last week, when Saborio and Findley were late scratches from the lineup against LA after initially suffering their injuries in training the day before the match. The starting tandem of Garcia and Plata was the seventh different strike pairing used by RSL in nine games this year.
Real Salt Lake is 2-2-2 all-time against Vancouver. The Claret-and-Cobalt has had a good amount of success against Whitecaps FC at home, posting a 2-0-1 record in three league games against the 'Caps at Rio Tinto Stadium. RSL's lone home tie against the Canadian side came in the 2012 regular season finale, when several of the Utah side's regulars were held out of the scoreless draw ahead of the team's playoff run.
Vancouver has gotten off to a bit of a slow start this year, sitting in seventh-place in the Western Conference with a 2-3-3 record. The 'Caps tied their last MLS match, clawing its way back from a two-goal deficit to tie FC Dallas 2-2 at BC Place last weekend. Vancouver won in the Amway Canadian Championship on Wednesday, using a mostly first-choice lineup to defeat FC Edmonton 2-0 at BC Place to advance 5-2 on aggregate into the ACC Final.
RSL will embark on an Eastern Conference road trip next week, when it will take on the New England Revolution at Gillette Stadium on Wednesday night before traveling north to take on the Montreal Impact at Stade Saputo on Saturday.
How to Follow Real Salt Lake v. Vancouver Whitecaps FC
- Kickoff: 7:00 p.m. MT at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah
- TV: CW30 (Ford Postgame Show to immediately follow final whistle)
- English Radio: ESPN700 AM (Pregame begins at 6:00 p.m. MT)
- Spanish Radio: La Gran D 102.3 FM & Juan 1600 AM
- Online: The @RealSaltLake Twitter Feed will provide live match updates
Click here to download the PDF version of the MLS Game Guide for Saturday's RSL-VAN matchup
RSL History v. Vancouver Whitecaps FC
Real Salt Lake is 2-2-2 all-time against Vancouver. The Claret-and-Cobalt has had a good amount of success against Whitecaps FC at home, posting a 2-0-1 record in three league games against the 'Caps at Rio Tinto Stadium. RSL's lone home tie against the Canadian side came in the 2012 regular season finale, when several of the Utah side's regulars were held out of the scoreless draw ahead of the team's playoff run.
Real Salt Lake has played Vancouver once this season, tying Whitecaps FC 1-1 on April 13 in British Columbia. FW Olmes Garcia put the Claret-and-Cobalt ahead with a cracking goal in the second half of that match before DF Nat Borchers was whistled late for a controversial handball in the box to setup Vancouver FW Camilo for a successful penalty kick goal.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Single phase electric motors are available with different power ratings from 0.25Kw to 3.70Kw depending on the speed selected, which is either 2 pole 3000rpm or 4 pole 1500rpm.
Singe phase electric motor, Capacitor Start – Capacitor run are for high starting torque and is suitable for machinery such as Car ramps, drills, Lathe, compressors, etc.
TCC aluminium multi-mount single phase 230V dual capacitor asynchronous motors are manufactured to the latest design. All motors conform to IEC standards and offer a comprehensive range up to 3.7KW and aesthetically pleasing design with the flexibility of a multi-mount terminal box and available in all mounting configurations.
Different mounting options available are:
B3 – Foot mount
B5 – Flange mount
B35 – Flange and foot mount
B14 – Face mount
B34 – Face and foot mount
They are suitable for applications where torque requirements are 1.8-2.5 times F.L.T.
All orders placed before 4pm will be dispatched that same day.
Who do we use?
We use some of the top carrier companies in the world, although you can use your own carrier to collect the order. Below are our main carrier companies.
For all other International shipments, costs are clearly marked on the item listing.
Please make sure the ship to address you type during checkout is correct.
We are not responsible for any wrong or undeliverable addresses.
All shipments for UK Delivery over 1.7kg are despatched by Fed Ex, TNT, DPD.
All shipments for delivery within the EU will arrive on a 2-5 delivery service depending on Country location, please check for accurate delivery times within the EU with the Flowfit sales department.
All shipments outside the EU will arrive on a 3-7 day delivery service depending on Country location, please check for accurate delivery times with the Flowfit sales department.
All smaller shipments are despatched by Royal Mail Postal service.
We take great care packaging every item to ensure safe shipment to you.
Orders are generally shipped on the day of full payment or latest next day depending on when payment is received; all deliveries require a signature on delivery.
Click here for Technical Information


text:
|Kenneth Pinkela
Good afternoon. My name is Kenneth Pinkela. I am a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army and I have HIV. I am here today just three weeks after being released from an Army prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after serving 272 days. I was not charged with infecting anyone, but with aggravated assault solely because of an accusation that I exposed someone to HIV.
I want to thank you—on behalf of my family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers, both civilian and military, all of whom have been affected by my prosecution—for having demonstrated such leadership with the passage of the criminalization resolution at your February meeting.
What did or did not happen, between me and the person who accused me, did not matter to the Army. Two things mattered: 1) I was accused, and 2) I have HIV. The prosecution's case was focused almost solely on proving that I had HIV; the military court would not allow my counsel to introduce critical evidence, as well as physical and medical evidence.
The prosecutor said, and I am quoting directly here, "where there is smoke there is fire...you are HIV positive so it must have been you."
Now I am a convicted felon and registered sex offender. My 26-year career of service and sacrifice to my Nation—including a stint as the Army's legislative liaison to the U.S. House of Representatives—is gone.
No job. No retirement benefits. No access to medical care for either combat injuries I have suffered or other health needs, like treating HIV. Not even a flag for my coffin when I die. My ability to care for my family and our future is in jeopardy. My case is pending in the military appeals process, and we pray that that process will right this wrong. But the damage that has already been inflicted on my life, family, friends and reputation can never be corrected.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) does not have an HIV specific article or statute. But individual convening authorities and military prosecutors can and do use HIV as the reason to prosecute under other articles of the code.
The UCMJ is supposed to represent the will of Congress, and of the Commander in Chief, to provide for the good order, conduct and discipline of the Armed Forces. I hope you will join me in questioning whether this kind of prosecution truly represents the will of Congress, the Commander in Chief and of the nation?"
While I realize PACHA is an advisory council to the President, I am asking that you also use the power of your bully pulpit and send a letter and copy of your resolution directly to Secretary Sebelius and to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urging their immediate attention to this injustice to those serving in the armed forces as well as to the nation.
I hope you will ask the President, my Commander in Chief, to stop these harmful prosecutions by executive order, prohibiting the use of HIV as justification for a prosecution, and protect the men and women in uniform who have HIV and serve their nation with honor everyday. I hope you will ask the Commander in Chief and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review military prosecutions based on the HIV status of the person charged and, as is appropriate, consider executive clemency, pardon or sentence reconsideration.
I am committed to helping PACHA and Members of Congress like Congresswoman Barbara Lee continue to fight to develop and pass meaningful legislation that will help protect our Nation and not discriminate people based solely on having HIV.
Thank you for your time, and thank you for your service.
Kenneth A. R. Pinkela


text:
- Details
- Posted in DMD Machines Solutions
- Thursday, 14 September 2017 12:14
- by Rick Dollinger
- Hits: 34428
The DM3D Direct Metal Deposition (DMD) 505D represents the next generation computer driven (CAD) systems for depositing complex metal alloy powders for rapid prototyping, manufacture and repair in industry applications. The system can be applied to the restoration of sensitive components such as turbine blades, rotating air seals, cases, shrouds, discs and stator assemblies, all of which are candidates for restoration procedures using this technology due to their sophisticated metallurgy, complex designs and high intrinsic cost.
- Rapid prototyping - from Art to Part
- Tooling restoration
- Gas turbine component repair
- Military applications
- Hardfacing
- Rotary seal and shaft repairs
- 5 Axes performance through (x,y,z,B,C) eliminates multiple steps
- Integrated with 1 to 5kW Fiber coupled laser - Diode/Disc/Fiber Laser
- Increased operator performance and productivity with DM3D's Windows based Graphical User Interface
- DMD Closed Loop Control System
- DMDCAM - 5 Axis deposition path generation software for additive manufacturing
- Integrated DMDVision System (optional)
- Flying optics beam delivery system
- Multiple powder delivery hoppers (optional)
- Production recipes for a variety of metal alloys
- Class 1 enclosure with observation window


text:
Stewart disagrees with CC's self-assessment
BALTIMORE -- CC Sabathia was asked to evaluate his season, and his nostrils flared before he wisely bit his tongue.
"I almost cussed right there," Sabathia said, taking a long pause. "Not very good. Not very good."
Sabathia took a no-hitter into the sixth inning on Friday before coughing up a three-run lead en route to New York's 4-3 loss to Baltimore, and he is always the first to shoulder the blame when things go awry.
But catcher Chris Stewart has been encouraged by Sabathia's improving velocity, which was a popular talking point early in the season but has become less so as the weather has warmed.
Sabathia has picked up about a mile per hour on his fastball each month, from an average of 90.67 mph in April to 92.32 mph in June, according to Brooks Baseball. His average fastball velocity on Friday was 93.05 mph, his best of the season.
"His fastball had a little more life on it," Stewart said. "Maybe it was the weather. It's warming up, and his body is feeling better out there. He was definitely really good out there."
That may calm the velocity concerns, but Sabathia will now enter July with an 8-6 record and 4.15 ERA in 17 starts, and having allowed a team-leading 17 home runs.
Sabathia said that he does not feel far off, which makes any issues all the more frustrating. But Stewart, informed of Sabathia's evaluation of his season, doesn't quite agree.
"He's being a little bit hard [on himself], but obviously he's not CC-like this year," he said. "Like [Friday] -- it's an ERA-inflator, but there's nothing much you can do. He's had a couple of those games this year.
"He's un-CC-like maybe numbers-wise, but as far as intensity and the way he goes about it, he's the same guy. It's just tough that his numbers aren't with him this year."


text:
Sanitary Assembly: Food Hygiene Syringe
Product Used: LCS50 series linear slide
Assembly process of a food hygiene syringe, which is used to test the cleanliness of a food preparation surface: SMAC is involved in moving the main part of the syringe from pick up position moving 180mm to the drop-off point. Cycle time demand: 1.1 seconds.
Objective: Customer was using a mixture of pneumatic turntables, valves and slides to achieve the 180mm displacement of the main syringe tube. Pneumatic equipment was breaking down as regularly as every six days. Production rate was low around 20-30 a minute, 1500 per hour, 36000 per day 24 hour shifts. When running, there were a lot of complaints for late deliveries. They wanted to increase production rate by reducing down time for constant repairs.
Solution: LCS50-250-35, linear slide unit with 250mm stroke was selected. Just in the first week SMAC improved their production rate by 6%. A month later they had produced more than ever before, averaging 52-55 per minute, equates to 3300 per hour, 79200 per day (24 hours a day) about double the production rate. No air supply need for the SMAC actuator.


text:
NASCAR driver Kasey Kahne is here at the Jalopnik/Deadspin Manhattan office today. We were going to have him intern for us — fetching coffee and stuff, but he just had knee surgery. So instead, he's here answering your questions.
So go ahead, ask him anything. He'll be here in the comments until 11:00 AM EST answering them.


text:
On a muggy July afternoon, Matthew Romero hit the yard of the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility for the first time. He was looking forward to an hour of exercise in a metal cage. After spending 37 days locked down in a two-man cell, taken out only two to three times a week for a ten-minute shower, you would be, too.
At 31, Romero has been tangled up in the justice system for almost a decade, on theft and burglary charges in Denver dating back to 1995. He received probation at first, but failed drug and alcohol tests bounced him from halfway houses to prison. Last spring he became one of 128 Colorado inmates sent to Tallahatchie, a private prison located outside of Tutwiler, Mississippi. The Colorado Department of Corrections considers these prisoners to be "special management cases" because of suspected ties to gangs involved in a wave of riots that flashed through the state's prisons last winter.
It's a label Romero disputes. He has no history of violence, he insists, no write-ups for fighting or rioting -- not until the day he stepped on the yard in Mississippi.
According to standards established by the American Correctional Association, even maximum-security inmates are supposed to have a minimum of five hours a week of recreation outside their cells. But those standards aren't always followed at private lockups such as Tallahatchie, which had kept the Colorado prisoners locked down since their arrival. Romero had waited weeks for his first hour of rec, and it quickly turned into an hour of wreck.
He saw the trouble coming. Thirty-two Colorado prisoners were placed in the brand-new recreation cages, two men to a cage. The lone guard who was supervising them soon left his post. Two inmates started shaking the doors of their pens, which were secured with chain and a lock. After a few good kicks, the locks broke.
"After that, it was like a chain reaction," Romero says. "Before you knew it, all the doors were open."
Armed with the chains, some prisoners started breaking windows, and other inmates threw things out to them from their cells. A porta-potty in the yard was set ablaze. A few rival gang members began mixing it up. He stayed in his recreation pen as long as he could, Romero says, but when he realized that no one was going to let the non-combatants back inside the building, he figured he was safer in the yard with the rest.
"The unit manager opened a door and looked out," he recalls, "but then he shut the door on me and four others."
The prison's official report on the uprising states that the inmates refused orders to return to their pens and were subdued with "chemical agents" and "specialty impact munitions." But Romero and other prisoners say the riot squad didn't show up for hours -- and when it did, the prisoners quickly submitted to plastic handcuffs and a trip back to the cell blocks.
"We were stripped naked and sprayed with gas from under the crack of the door," Romero says. "We stayed in the handcuffs for several hours and were left in the cells for three days with no mattress, no blankets, nothing but a roll of toilet paper."
Guards also subdued inmates who weren't in the yard at the time, including two who "gained control of a broom and were refusing to relinquish the broom," according to the incident report. One guard fired approximately sixty rounds of pepper balls -- small capsules containing oleo-resin capsicum, an inflammatory agent derived from cayenne peppers -- through a food slot into a cell holding two inmates; the projectiles can cause severe bruising at short distances and aren't recommended for use in confined spaces.
In all, the fracas resulted in four inmates requiring outside medical attention.
Dozens of prisoners were charged with multiple disciplinary infractions. For leaving his pen, Romero was found guilty of attempted escape and sentenced to thirty days of administrative segregation, or 23-hour-a-day lockdown -- which didn't change his situation much at all, since he and the other Colorado prisoners were already considered to be ad-seg cases.
To some officials, the busted windows and scorched toilet were ample proof of why Colorado had sent this group of troublemakers out of state. "As soon as they got out in the yard, their behavior confirmed why we had removed them from population," says DOC spokeswoman Alison Morgan.
But Romero says the mini-riot that broke out that afternoon was actually a protest, however disorganized, of the miserable conditions at Tallahatchie. Opened four years ago by the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest for-profit prison operator, Tallahatchie is one of the few private lockups that will accept maximum-security or ad-seg inmates, and it's become the dumping ground for hard-to-manage prisoners from three states. The Colorado contingent had previously attempted a hunger strike to call attention to a long list of grievances with the facility, from poor food and lack of medical care to alleged brutality -- but, like most hunger strikes, it was largely ignored.
Even the rampage in the yard failed to attract much notice outside of Tutwiler. It was overshadowed by a much more serious disturbance that had erupted the night before at the Crowley County Correctional Facility, one of CCA's four prisons in Colorado. Hundreds of inmates rioted for hours at Crowley, setting fires and gutting buildings, battling SORT teams armed with tear gas and rubber bullets, and generally raising hell (see story). Prison staff abandoned their posts early in the conflict, leaving two guards and a librarian to fend for themselves. But the inmates weren't looking for hostages; they were more interested in settling scores among themselves (one prisoner was savagely beaten and stabbed) and ripping the place apart.
"These guys wanted to make a point," says former DOC inmate Lee Burke, who served five years at Crowley but was released a few months before the riot. "Not a single one of them tried to escape. They broke into the maintenance warehouse to take tools to destroy the facility."
The mutiny at Crowley was started by recently arrived inmates from the state of Washington -- who, like the Colorado men at Tallahatchie, were greatly distressed at being stuck in a private hoosegow more than a thousand miles from home. But Crowley, unlike Tallahatchie, is a medium-security facility, and the Colorado inmates who joined in the destruction included many low-level, non-violent offenders -- the more typical clientele for private prisons, which generally take the "cream of the crop" of a state's overflow convicts rather than its troublemakers.
Advocates of privatization say that "facility disturbances" -- prison-speak for riots -- are a fact of life even in the best-run prisons, and that CCA has had no more than its share of them. But the circumstances surrounding the Crowley bust-up and ongoing security issues at Tallahatchie suggest otherwise. The problem may have less to do with the type of inmate housed there than with the way for-profit prisons are managed.
Caught in a budget squeeze and reluctant to parole even non-violent offenders, Colorado's prison system has failed to keep up with its rising inmate population, which now stands at 18,700 and is expected to increase by another 4,000 by 2008. To relieve overcrowding, the DOC has come to rely heavily on CCA, which has become the sixth-largest prison system in the country, housing more than 62,000 inmates in twenty states. Despite a longstanding policy of keeping its highest-security prisoners in its own system, Colorado is now using the private contractor to handle its special management cases as well. Prisoners say the Mississippi experiment is a formula for more violence, given the mounting evidence of CCA's deficiencies -- including substandard conditions, inadequate training, high turnover, understaffing and chronic security lapses.
Going private was supposed to save Colorado a bundle of money and reduce the violence in state prisons. But cut-rate corrections is like cut-rate surgery: You get what you pay for.
Sometimes what you get is a cage with a cheap lock.
A decade ago, the state's solution for unruly inmates was the Colorado State Penitentiary, a 504-bed control-unit prison designed to house "the worst of the worst" in total isolation. When it opened in 1993, CSP was hailed as the latest thing in behavior modification of incorrigibles and was widely studied by prison officials from other states interested in building their own costly supermax prisons.
In its early years, CSP was used so capriciously that it featured one unit of female prisoners guilty of such dire crimes as "verbal abuse" and "smoking in the hole." But before long, CSP was filled to capacity with gangbangers, escape risks and seriously violent offenders. (Twelve percent of its current residents have been diagnosed as mentally ill.) A 252-bed addition in 1998 hardly made a dent in the waiting list.
One reason for the crunch was the overall growth of the prison population, but there were other factors, too. Largely because of its aggressive anti-gang policy, Colorado tends to classify more of its prisoners as administrative-segregation -- its highest custody level, replacing the old "maximum security" designation -- than do most other states. The tag now applies to 7 percent of the DOC's population, roughly double the national average. And a bottleneck has developed within CSP itself, which was originally intended to offer an eighteen-month disciplinary program; now the average length of stay there is 31 months.
Critics of the supermax approach contend that it intensifies the problem it's trying to address. "Once they get in, they don't get out for years," says Christie Donner, director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. "It becomes the path of least resistance for the administration, but it also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The research shows that the consequences of long-term solitary confinement are anti-social behavior and an increase in propensity for violence."
Donner acknowledges that the DOC needs to isolate prisoners for various reasons. Still, she believes the department relies too heavily on branding its problem prisoners ad-seg rather than using "disciplinary segregation" to put them in solitary confinement for a fixed period of time as punishment for a specific offense.
"Like incarceration in general, the more you use it, it has a diminishing deterrent effect," she says. "Once you've been through it and you're no longer scared of it, what are they going to do with you?"
Last year the DOC's efforts to build a second, $80-million supermax, known as CSP II, were stalled when Donner's group sued. The lawsuit, which challenges the use of certificates of participation to get around state restrictions on multi-year debt, also tied up planned construction at the new Fitzsimons campus of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, but the supermax expansion was the prime target.
A string of gang-related rumbles at three state prisons earlier this year sent officials scrambling to find more ad-seg beds. Blocked by litigation from building another CSP, they began to consider what the DOC has always insisted is a last resort -- shipping inmates out of state -- in order to remove suspected gang leaders from their "power base."
"When we had to move twenty guys out of Fremont [prison], it had a domino effect throughout the system," says DOC spokeswoman Morgan. "There were five additional incidents after that. You reach a point where you're just scrambling the pot. You're not isolating the problem; you're just shifting it to another facility."
Although the DOC has shipped excess prisoners to private facilities sporadically since the early 1990s, it had never tried to export high-security prisoners before -- and with good reason. Few contractors are equipped to handle such inmates, and a state law forbids the DOC from placing inmates in private prisons unless they're classified as medium-security or less. But officials found a loophole in the law: The definition of "private prisons" in the statute referred only to such prisons located in Colorado. With the blessing of the Colorado Legislature and the attorney general's office, the DOC decided it had a green light to ship its biggest headaches out of state.
"I don't have a problem doing this," state senator Dave Owen, a Republican from Greeley, told his colleagues. "I wish we could move them to Alaska and dig a hole."
The state's initial choice for its ad-seggers was the Guadalupe County Adult Detention Center, a county jail in south Texas. Previous attempts to warehouse Colorado inmates in Texas jails had erupted in riots and lawsuits ("This Jail for Hire," August 8, 1996), but Guadalupe's housing offer was hard to turn down: a mere $43 per inmate per day, considerably less than the $69 a day it costs the DOC to house the average medium-security inmate.
Yet the Texas deal quickly unraveled. In selling the move to the Colorado media, the DOC had emphasized the dangerous, disruptive character of the "gang bosses" who were being moved out -- men like Miguel "Spanky" Quirino, who'd killed a rival gang leader in a turf war, and Ramon "Munchie" Lopez, who'd killed a sixteen-year-old at Red Rocks. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards took a close look at their records and said no, thanks: A Texas law forbids county jails from taking inmates who have a pattern of institutional violence or escape attempts.
Curiously, jail officials in Guadalupe County tried to contest the decision by arguing that Colorado's "bad boys" weren't nearly as bad as the DOC wanted the folks back home to think. Many of the prisoners were up for parole soon, and some hadn't directly participated in riots at all.
"Through our contacts in Colorado these disturbances were explained to us as 'gang-related' in-fighting and took little or no force to quell," jail administrator Debra Jordan wrote to Terry Julian, director of Texas's jail-standards commission. "When these situations occurred, officers responded and the inmates complied immediately.... The media has turned this into a 'sensational' story and over exaggerated the danger, if any, to our facility."
In fact, while the group shipped out of state includes many bad actors, there are others whose paperwork suggests that, like Matthew Romero, they won their pariah classification primarily on the strength of their tattoos and suspected gang status rather than any violent activity.
"He got several write-ups, but not for anything violent," says Romero's mother, Paulette Tafoya. "They were saying he was in a gang. I don't know; maybe he has to be with a group to be protected, you know? I told them Matt was never gang-affiliated when he was on the streets. They were very rude to me. They just said, 'Well, he's in a gang now.' They had already made up their minds to ad-seg him. "
Some prisoners say they were ad-segged because of an altercation with another inmate -- a dispute of a personal nature that hardly rises to the level of a riot. Alfredo Garcia, for example, claims that he was minding his own business in CCA's Huerfano County Correctional Facility when he was given a new cellmate -- a man who'd gone to prison for shooting Garcia's sister and cousin. An assault charge ensued.
"He was in a minimum facility, ready to come out," says Garcia's aunt, Elsie Mecillas. "He'd been doing his time, no regressions, no setbacks. Then they put this guy in there, the last guy they should ever have put in his cell, and now he's in segregation. They set him up for failure; I really believe that."
Texas officials, though, considered the Colorado contingent to be about as innocuous as toxic waste. The DOC was forced to turn to the only other bidder for its strange cargo: CCA's nearly vacant meat locker in Mississippi.
In gasping rust-belt towns and battered farm communities, the economic choices are often limited: Die slowly, or take the industries nobody else wants. Youngstown, Burlington, Las Animas -- these are the places where the Corrections Corporation of America comes calling, offering jobs and shiny new prisons.
In the case of Tutwiler, Mississippi, pop. 1,364, CCA didn't have to do any wooing. The town fathers came courting CCA. Soybeans and cotton were no longer the providers they once were, and by the late 1990s the dominant feature of the town's main street was its boarded-up storefronts. In one of the poorest counties in the poorest state in the country, with per capita personal income of $17,185 a year, a new prison was something to be welcomed with cheers and bright banners.
In addition to hiring much of its staff locally, CCA pays the county $300,000 in property taxes a year. The company also agreed to include a new county jail in the prison complex, replacing one that was condemned. When the 1,400-bed Tallahatchie prison is full, it more than doubles the size of the town.
The prison hasn't always been full, though. After Alabama pulled its inmates out of Tallahatchie last spring, there were staff layoffs and rumors that the place would shut down. But a change in Mississippi's law, approved by newly elected governor Haley Barbour, allowed CCA to seek out maximum-security prisoners from other states. An influx of 600 convicts from Hawaii, including several who'd been involved in riots in prisons in Arizona, turned things around. Then came 128 more inmates from Colorado, at the sumptuous price of $51 a head per day.
Town meetings quickly put to rest locals' fears about these new, tougher inmates who were coming into their county. There was no cause for alarm, CCA officials told them; whatever these exotic visitors might dish out, the prison was prepared to handle it. "I think most of them are ready to start changing their behavior so that they can earn more freedom," Tallahatchie warden Jim Cooke told a reporter from the local Clarksdale Press Register last May.
The new arrivals had no opportunity to respond to Cooke's reassuring words. Colorado's ad-seg inmates have few privileges and little contact with the outside world. They can't even communicate with the media about their situation, except through letters. Two years ago the DOC banned all media interviews with ad-seg inmates, making hundreds of prisoners and entire facilities virtually off-limits to reporters. The DOC recently denied Westword's request to interview prisoners at Tallahatchie, and CCA also refused a request to tour the facility and interview Warden Cooke.
But inmates have tried to air their grievances anyway -- through hunger strikes, the July disturbance in the yard, complaints to DOC officials who monitor the prison, and letters to loved ones and reporters. They say they're locked down most of the time, two to a cell; apparently their "disruptive" character isn't sufficiently violent to require single-celling. The monotonous menu is often served cold, and canteen items are expensive, particularly for inmates who aren't allowed to hold jobs or participate in most programs. Although the situation seems to have improved somewhat since the summer, the prisoners still describe the staff as inexperienced and quick to use force.
"This is the third time that I have been sent out of state," says Greg Ewing, 41, who's been doing time for armed robberies and kidnapping since he was nineteen. "This is the worst I've ever seen. They have staff who don't even know how to use handcuffs."
"Inmates are getting beat on and gassed," reports Alfredo Garcia. "One time I was watching them beat on an inmate that they brought from another pod. Officers yelled for everyone to stop looking. Then officers proceeded to spray gas into a few cells, and one officer pointed a gun at me."
According to Garcia, trays of food sit outside the cells for hours. "Sometimes they force us to get on the ground or on our knees just to receive a meal," he says. "The food trays are stacked on top of each other, so food is always stuck to the bottom, and [guards] scrape it off with their bare hands."
Medical care is also a sore point. Ewing, for example, says he's waited months for an EKG ordered in October. And inmates claim that their complaints about the situation go largely unaddressed. "We have followed the grievance process, and nothing changes," Matthew Romero says.
The DOC has monitors visiting the prison at least once a month. Their reports indicate that some inmates are satisfied with the food. During a surprise visit, DOC director Joe Ortiz reportedly encountered one inmate who said he preferred Tallahatchie to Colorado's prisons. But the reports also note ongoing issues with inmates being charged for medical services and not receiving them, a lack of programs and library books, food not kept at proper temperatures, and a disciplinary process that doesn't follow Colorado requirements of due process.
Colorado officials were particularly alarmed by the staff's response to the July riot. The guard who'd pumped sixty rounds of pepper balls into a cell had been caught on videotape. In October, Ortiz wrote a letter to CCA president John Ferguson demanding an end to the practice: "While the PepperBall System may be appropriate for use in areas other than confined spaces, you are advised that until further notice, use of the PepperBall System in CCA facilities where Colorado inmates are housed will be suspended."
In a written statement provided in response to questions from Westword, CCA spokesman Steve Owen declined to address several specific inmate complaints but insisted that training, medical care and food service at Tallahatchie meet or exceed American Correctional Association standards. Food is kept hot, he wrote, servers wear "appropriate gloves," and the prison plans to offer GED classes for the Colorado inmates: "CCA has been and will continue to work closely with our customer to address any outstanding concerns."
Warden Cooke has assured locals that the flimsy locks on the recreation pens were replaced with sterner stuff. Cameras have been installed in the yard, and a second guard now supervises the area when inmates are exercising. But in recent months, there have been at least two other security breaches at Tallahatchie, giving prisoners who have little to do besides mouth off an opportunity to get at each other.
In October, staff discovered that prisoners in one pod had stuffed eighteen of twenty cell-door latches with toilet paper. In many cases, the maneuver prevented the mechanism from locking, allowing the inmates to slip out on the tier and thump or be thumped.
Last month, a phone installer accidentally hit the "group release" button in a control center, opening all the cell doors in a pod housing rival gang members. More than two dozen inmates began fighting. Several were injured. One was stabbed multiple times before guards sent the warriors scurrying with blasts of pepper spray.
The riots at Crowley and Tallahatchie last July had little effect on CCA's bottom line. The company reported that third-quarter revenues rose 11 percent to $295 million, thanks to higher occupancy levels and new management contracts.
These days, Tallahatchie is three-fourths full, with 680 Hawaiians, 121 Colorado prisoners and a shipment of 128 maximum-security inmates from the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman who arrived this fall. Strapped for funds, Mississippi has turned over more than 2,000 prisoners to CCA's care, including inmates at two state prisons managed by the company. The Magnolia State has become almost as important a client as Colorado, which now has more than 2,700 inmates in CCA prisons.
State officials say the only alternative to using private lockups is an expensive one: building more prisons. But studies prepared by the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition and other opponents of privatization suggest that the apparent savings involved in paying a contractor fifty bucks per miscreant per day are misleading. The rate doesn't include transportation, case-management oversight, non-routine medical care, the cost of monitoring the prisons, or the state's burden of defending lawsuits; once these costs are factored in, the private route doesn't seem like much of a bargain. One CCJRC analysis found that the indirect costs boosted the per diem rate to close to $64 -- close to the average cost of housing an inmate in a state prison.
Of course, some of the hidden costs of going private can't be calculated at all. Prisoners who have strong family connections on the outside are less likely to return to prison than those who don't, and shipping inmates out of state severely strains those ties. Relatives of Colorado's Tallahatchie prisoners say they can't afford to visit the inmates with any regularity -- if at all. Some can barely afford the $13.50 collect phone calls they receive every week or two.
"I can take a call every two or three weeks," says Paulette Tafoya, Romero's mother. "I talked to him on Thanksgiving, and he was really down. He said, 'Mom, I don't know how much more of this I can take. I feel like I'm going to lose it.' I worry about him night and day."
"We could barely see him here, let alone over there," says Elsie Mecillas, Alfredo Garcia's aunt, who'd been preparing to drive from Denver to Walsenburg to visit her nephew when she found out he'd been moved to Burlington, then Mississippi.
Even family members who manage to make the trip wonder what good it does. Susan, the wife of a Tallahatchie inmate who asked that her real name not be used, traveled to Tutwiler in September. Her husband was brought into a visiting room in shackles, and she talked to him from the other side of a glass screen. She had a very different impression of the prison than the Colorado monitors, who've described it as clean and orderly.
"The facility was disgusting," she says. "The room smelled like urine. There were cockroaches crawling across the glass. It was a good-ol'-boy kind of place."
Susan and her husband have been together for seven years. For most of that time, he's been in prison on an assault charge. His release date is only a year away, and until the past few months, Susan thought the marriage would survive his incarceration. But then he got ad-segged after a melee in the chow hall at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility last March and was on his way to Texas, then Mississippi.
"To be honest with you, I'm ready to file for divorce," she says. "This move has separated us completely. It's not a relationship anymore. It's just a hardship."
She doesn't believe her husband is in a gang and doesn't know what he did to earn a trip to Mississippi. Nor does she know when he'll be back; prison officials say they have an eighteen-month program for prisoners to emerge from ad-seg, and her husband is up to "Level Six," but it all seems nebulous and poorly defined. (Nineteen Tallahatchie inmates were moved back to Colorado in October and replaced by another nineteen prisoners from this state.) She knows that the DOC has to take measures to maintain order, but the for-profit aspect angers her. On the roads outside of Tutwiler, she saw crude signs -- like the ones farmers use to advertise fresh produce for sale -- announcing jobs for corrections officers and nurses at the prison.
"These people are being bartered at $51 a day," she says. "There's something ethically wrong with that." Private prisons, she notes, have no financial incentive to help a prisoner succeed in becoming a productive member of society; their profit margin depends on filling beds.
- Local
- Community
- Journalism
Support the independent voice of Denver and help keep the future of Westword free.
It's essentially the same argument that prison reformers make: If state prisons committed more resources to education, job training, drug and alcohol treatment and other efforts to keep offenders from returning, they might have less need of the private operators.
But within the DOC, ad-seg is all the rage. In addition to CSP, the department has turned over 220 beds at its massive Sterling prison to administrative segregation and is in the process of converting the Centennial Correctional Facility to all ad-seg, all the time. And if that isn't enough, there's still room for the budget-minded traveler at Tallahatchie, though it's filling up fast.
"They know that if they present it as a public-safety issue, they can get away with it," Susan says, "when what they're really trying to do is save a few bucks."
For related stories visit our "Crime & Punishment" archive.
Keep Westword Free... Since we started Westword, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Denver, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering Denver with no paywalls.


text:
Guinea-Bissau rejects amnesty for coup leaders
Lawmakers in the tiny West African nation of Guinea-Bissau have rejected a proposal that would have given amnesty to all the military officials involved in last year's coup.
Human rights activist Luis Vaz Martins applauded Tuesday's vote, which with 40 votes in favor fell short of the 51 needed. He said it's a clear sign that the country's citizens want an end to the coups that have long roiled Guinea-Bissau.
The latest power grab took place in April 2012, when the army arrested former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior weeks before a runoff presidential election he was expected to win.
A transitional government has been running the country until elections that are scheduled for November, though observers have warned the vote could be postponed.


text:
Super Rugby is poised to move forward with a four-conference model in 2016 – with two based in South Africa.
Australian Rugby Union boss Bill Pulver has revealed the announcement of an expanded and restructured model to take to broadcasters is only a fortnight away.
On the eve of an important meeting with provincial chief executives, Pulver has backed a Super 18 model for 2016 where Australian and New Zealand conferences would remain the same.
Australia's five teams would play two less "local derby" matches in a 15-game regular season but would strengthen their Anzac ties by increasing their four matches against Kiwi rivals to five.
Significant changes will be made in South Africa with their six teams, including the recalled Southern Kings, put in two pools with a new Argentine team and a final side, which the ARU hopes will be based in the Asian market.
Those two four-team conferences – including an overseas expansion team in each – will only face one of the two Australasian conferences each year, which reduces fears of an increase in travel.
"It's likely to be a four-conference model and this will be finalised in the next couple of weeks to be announced," Pulver said.
While the ARU chief executive is supporting SANZAR's in-principle expansion plans, they're unlikely to be applauded by his provincial counterparts.
Pulver has been under pressure from the franchises and the players' association to pull Australia out of South Africa-driven plans to increase Super Rugby from 15 teams to 17 or 18.
Political pressure for more black participation saw SARU demand the Port Elizabeth-based Kings, who were relegated last season, be reinstated for good.
With South Africa providing almost half of the broadcast revenue, governing body SANZAR has listened to their powerful voice, and New Zealand are opposed to breaking the partnership.
Plans for less local derbies in Australia – dropping from eight to six, and meaning one less home game every second year – has upset state officials who believe it will see them go bust.
Pulver said he understood the concerns but backed the proposed changes as the best model to improve the competition and importantly boost broadcasting revenue.
"I'm more than happy to go along with it," he said. "I think it will be a terrific structure for the game."
Queensland Rugby Union chief executive Jim Carmichael hoped Australian officials remained open-minded about expansion plans to ensure the best result for the cash-strapped code.
"We don't have a preferred model, as yet. We have a preferred position, and that is not to prejudice Australian interests in the competition moving forward," Carmichael said.
"I'm okay to come to the table and hear alternative views as long as we are able to review those and ensure it ultimately delivers for Australian rugby."
While the Reds, NSW Waratahs and Brumbies are unhappy about the loss of derby matches, Pulver said less was more for the Melbourne Rebels and Western Force.
"In Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra they work very well," he said. "In Melbourne and Perth those two franchises aren't too excited in home derbies."
Original story on Sydney Morning Herald


text:
Regular readers of this column may or may not be aware, but I do not live in Maine.
I have certainly not hidden the fact that I live in Washington, D.C., but I rarely mention it because, quite frankly, it's usually more trouble than it's worth. The news tends to make many people dismissive of what I have to say, being nothing more than the musings of somebody "from away."
This week, however, I hope residing elsewhere actually lends more weight to my opinion.
I returned home to Bangor this week to see my father who was recently diagnosed with a possible case of lung cancer. Due to the nature of this visit, I have already seen more friends and family than I usually do, and one message is repeated at virtually every encounter: "You need to move home."
I miss my family terribly, and living as far away as I do has been very hard. My son has cousins he barely sees. I have lifelong friends who are still here. I miss the quiet roads, houses that have lawns, friendly people and scenic beauty. I miss the local food and spending time in the outdoors. Hell, I even miss the tourist traps.
If there is anyone who should be a poster boy for enthusiastic citizenship of the Pine Tree State, it is me. So why did I move? Why does everyone else leave?
Answering that question, genuinely, is the key to actually reversing the outmigration of young people from Maine, which is the single most important public policy challenge facing the state. Demographic winter is coming.
The most obvious reason many of us leave is the one most ignored by policymakers. I wanted to move because my friends did. There is a basic desire by many of the youngest, smartest kids who grow up in Maine to prove to themselves that they can cut it somewhere bigger and faster.
The areas that Maine has focused its identity on in the past are no longer the attractive career choices young people are making en masse.
Then there is the natural tendency of young people to want to experience more of the world and a need to grow beyond the place where they grew up. The moment I moved away, I was exposed to more cultures and ideas than I could have ever dreamed of, and it was exciting.
Of course then there is entertainment. Like it or not, the young want enjoyable things to do, social options and vitality. They also want to be around other young people.
Moving back to Maine for me would mean leaving the ability to walk from my office to a baseball game or dining at some incredible restaurants. It would also mean leaving an area overflowing with people my age and coming to one much, much older.
It may seem superficial, but those things are exciting for many young people. I've taken my 6-year-old son to about 50 baseball games, and that is not something I can say about myself growing up.
Then there's money. The youthful are at the bottom of the economic ladder everywhere and can simply make more money outside Maine. At the start of one's career, having a family, car payments, student loans, a mortgage and living expenses mean that earning more money is the difference between making ends meet and going bankrupt.
Young people need good paying, aspirational careers in industries that match their interests. They want a youthful culture. They want a little excitement. If those things are not available, many who would prefer to stay home will leave.
Yet hope for change remains. Boston used to be a dying city, full of aging people, racial strife, dilapidated buildings and a depressed economy. Now it is the New England anchor for so many of the young people who leave Maine.
Even in Bangor, the tired, boring ghost town that I grew up next to is now bustling with activity. Main Street seems alive again, with bars and shops that people actually want to visit. There are outdoor concerts, and businesses are popping up all over the place. There are more young people than I ever remember seeing.
It can be done, with smart policymakers who focus on the right things: an emphasis on targeted economic development and diversification. Creating incubators for in-demand jobs for young people would be a start. Trying to create a few "anchor cities" that attract a youthful culture with both the right jobs and things to do would be another.
Basically, there is a need to craft real incentives that will make kids want to stay in Maine. And this can be done without sacrificing the rural character and quiet personality of Maine.
Had those things been done in the past, there is a very real chance that I never would have left. Develop them now, and Maine is almost guaranteed to get me back.


text:
CORONAVIRUS: Latest updates here. Our 100% buyer guarantee applies to future purchases too!
CORONAVIRUS: Latest updates here. Our 100% buyer guarantee applies to future purchases too!
Unfortunately, we don't have any information about upcoming performances of this show. Maybe we can interest you with something similar from the options below...
Closed November 15, 2019
The 17th anniversary tour of this swingin' Christmas concert extravaganza!
Ex-Stray Cats frontman Brian Setzer is one of those geniuses who keeps the Earth properly spinning on its axis through his wildly innovative guitar-playing and off-beat humor. Launched in the 1990s, the Brian Setzer Orchestra is an 18-piece swing and jump blues band made up of Setzer himself (natch) as well as a whole cacophony of talented musical accomplices.
The BSO's Christmas Rocks! tour is an annual extravaganza of the band's top hits as well as classic Christmas songs, plus inspired guitar work by Setzer himself. Expect a wild evening from one of music's great guitarists and vocalists. Now in its 17th anniversary year, the 2019 tour promises to be a huge celebration of the band's success!
A must-see for fans of big bands, jazz, and rockabilly, this Christmas show harks back to the heady days of rock and roll!
Performance date: 15 November 2019
Suitable for the whole family
7 reviews, average rating: (5.0 Stars)
Barbara Costa : "ROCKED New Jersey inside out!!!!!!"
Brian & his orchestra ROCKED from the moment they took the stage to the... more
Best concert I've ever been to. Brian's music is so good and clean. He... more
Sound good to you? Share this page on social media and let your friends know about Brian Setzer Orchestra: Christmas Rocks at State Theater.
I want email news and updates for events in my area! Read how we protect your data.
Please note: The term State Theater and/or Brian Setzer Orchestra: Christmas Rocks as well as all associated graphics, logos, and/or other trademarks, tradenames or copyrights are the property of the State Theater and/or Brian Setzer Orchestra: Christmas Rocks and are used herein for factual descriptive purposes only. We are in no way associated with or authorized by the State Theater and/or Brian Setzer Orchestra: Christmas Rocks and neither that entity nor any of its affiliates have licensed or endorsed us to sell tickets, goods and or services in conjunction with their events.


text:
Hi all....
I'm sure that most regulars on this forum will turn those noses up at the thought of a steel base conservatory... but in this situation this is what has been decided - Parents know best apparantly - but I've been roped in to do the manual labour.
The base requires 5 concrete pads - 450mm X 450mm x 450mm cubes.
We're going to have to use drymix 25kg bags - due to access restrictions etc...
I've a had a quick look at the Hanson stuff (can anyone recommended (better) alternatives - and it seems I have a choice of 2 of their products.
One quotes 40N/mm2 for compressive strength and and the other 20N/mm2.
Its a full height glass conservatory, not dwarf wall, and with fully glazed roof, not polycarbonate.
So would 40N/mm2 be overkill ???


text:
Last year, we wrote about Satoshi Dice, a Bitcoin-based online "slot machine." This month, at least one company hopes to introduce Bitcoin-based poker. The move could help to re-open online poker to American gamblers in the face of vigorous efforts by the US government to shut down online poker sites that serve Americans.
Online gambling has been illegal since 2006. But of course that hasn't stopped American Internet users from looking for ways to play on overseas websites. In recent years, the government has used a variety of tactics to crack down on overseas sites that cater to American customers.
A key vulnerability of offshore gambling sites is the need to get cash to and from American gamers. Until recently, the only practical way to do this was via traditional financial networks that are subject to regulation by the US government. Indeed, a ban on the use of credit cards for betting was a key provision of the 2006 online gambling ban.
But Bitcoin's peer-to-peer design and global reach effectively puts it beyond the reach of the feds. And its pseudonymous design gives online gambling sites plausible deniability: they might suspect that some of their users are based in the United States, but there's no practical way to verify the nationality of any specific Bitcoin depositor.
Businessweek reports that a Calgary company called Infiniti Poker is planning to accept Bitcoins for deposit when it opens for business later this month. Founder Michael Hajduk says his primary motivation is to speed up the payment process—Bitcoin payments can clear in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks—but he acknowledges another consequence is that it will also make it easier for American gamblers to play on his site.
"Because we're using Bitcoin, we're not using US banks—it's all peer-to-peer," Hajduk told Businessweek. "I don't believe we'll be doing anything wrong."
If Bitcoin-based poker catches on, it could further increase demand for the cryptocurrency. During 2012, the market price of a Bitcoin rose from $4.75 to $13.50.
Disclosure: I own some bitcoins.


text: Job Discussion Forums :: View topic - Speed School of English Get TEFL Certified & Start Your Adventure Today! Job Discussion Forums"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Students and Teachers from Around the World!" FAQ Search Memberlist Usergroups Register Profile Log in to check your private messages Log in Speed School of English Goto page Previous 1, 2 Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Poland View previous topic :: View next topic Author Message montymanJoined: 31 May 2004Posts: 1 Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2004 7:03 am Post subject: Firstly to Alex, I want to say to Alex, that I think that you are confusing SPEED CALLAN SCHOOL with some others in the Warsaw area. The school I worked at only operated in Bielsko Biała, Tychy, Gliwice, Wrocław and I think now in Opole. I think that you are making wrong remarks about a school that is not even affiliated with schools you are speaking of. Do your homework buddy, I still have friends who work at the SPEED CALLAN SCHOOL, but not at the one you are suggesting. I just want to say that I was a teacher at one of the Speed Callan schools for two years, returning home last July; thoroughly enjoying my time at the school and in Poland. I also want to say some of the comments are unfair about the Callan Method. Here is some information that may be useful for you in making a decision. Prior to arriving to Poland I had almost zero experience in teaching ESL. I still remember the day when I arrived and felt nervous about the whole thing. I was given thorough training which at the time got me by in the first few weeks and this was followed up over the time while I was there with further in house training. Teachers who I worked with had weekly meetings (sometimes fortnightly) to clarify anything we were unsure of about teaching which was good, and there were always open channels of communication between your superiors. You were asked to get involved in other aspects of the school which wasnt a Callan format which included Cambridge First Certificate and Advanced Certificate preparation courses, immersion weekends, activity days ( skiing, hiking etc) conversation classes, teaching younger children and giving lectures on vast ranges of topics, all of which I did and enjoyed immensely building my skills further. I know that some teaching methods are and can appear after time a little difficult to teach, but it also comes down to how you operate as a person and what the reasons are for teaching. Using the method in our school was not entirely fixed. We were able to play with it. Also there were other things that we introduced into the sessions to give a more rounded and complete class. I know that the true orthodox method is to adhere to a rigorous brainwashing format, whereby people rote learn and parrot off sentences, finishing the method in 1/3 of the time of other forms of learning; but this is especially good for people who have never spoken a word in English. It was so nice to see terrified first timers in the school and then after a double period, walking away saying some small simple sentences in English. I know that our employer was quite happy for us to use it as a platform. For example, using a word to be taught but introducing it in many ways, not just asking the question printed in the book. This created more stimuli for the more advanced student to make them listen and digress into a slightly longer answer which involved free thought but also broke up the teaching for the teacher. Of course, you would have to act out words which were fun and this too would create a fun environment for the students and for you. I think that too many people come to Europe especially Eastern Europe and expect everything to be the same as the rest of the world and I have to say it is not. Poland is very different to rest of Eastern Europe in many ways. One reason I think is because the country has close to 40 million people and is having trouble finding its feet in regards to joining the EU. Another small one for me personally was in regards to tourism and breaking into this lucrative market. This small hurdle when trying to explore the country along with language barriers can make it harder for people to settle in. But its possible, I did! I only benefited from my time and made many good friends both Polish and from other parts of the globe. What I did there took me further into teaching and have completed a CELTA course and now working in my own country as an ESL teacher for a university. I hope that this has cast a different view of the Callan method and the Speed Callan School for you and others that may be interested. Cheers Chris Back to top ChrisJoined: 28 Jan 2003Posts: 116Location: Melbourne, Australia Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2004 7:11 pm Post subject: I find it really funny that all three of the people who posted really wonderful things about Speed Callan school just opened their accounts on Dave's the day before they posted their messages. Anyway, after I wrote my previous post about Callan, I met a woman who worked at the Speed school in, I believe, Gliwice. She told me honestly that she didn't really like the method, but Callan paid well and that yes, there are other things to do in addition to teaching the method. Also, the guy who replaced me in Poland when I moved to Germany in Feb worked at a Callan school in Tychy for 2 years. He loved using it. I guess it just all depends on your style of teaching. He had never taught before. Back to top biffinbridgeJoined: 05 May 2003Posts: 701Location: Frank's Wild Years Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 11:50 am Post subject: my 5 bob's worth Behaviourism has long been castigated as a defunct approach to language teaching/learning by everyone except the U.S. army.To hear people defend boring,repetitive methods with comments like 'people can have basic conversations after only a few months'(like they don't elsewhere),is to simply avoid the issue that there are more efficient methods/approaches.The Berlitz way,similar to Callan's as Scot 47 pointed out,requires little more than a native speaking parrot to follow it.Sure ,do drills and repetition where necessary but what about tasked based learning etc.?At Callan you are simply selling a package and brand name because you ain't doing what's best for the students. Sorry. Back to top misteradventureJoined: 18 Aug 2003Posts: 246 Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 6:57 pm Post subject: CALLAN Schools in Poland Figured the debate had gone long enough without fresh blood. Please excuse my typing; I am at a pay-by-the-minute machine at a ritzy hotel in Croatia with a German keyboard and funky Hrvatska characters jumping in on occasion. First, not only do I personally know people who have worked at CALLAN schools, I have done so myself. Biggest mistake of my career. For example, the school in Krakow (great town, hard to find decent work as a newbie, folks- keep looking!) requires you to sign a contract making you pay them for training you to read from a book if you leave early, following your unpaid training. (CELTA not withstanding) Make sure the school is in breach of contract in the beginning and you can bail if need be. No point in suing you when the legal system is 2 years behind as it is. Of course, you cant sue them either. The one in Zory, (TOWER or something) lost their entire teaching staff when the employer failed to inform them that their BONUS was actuallz in lieu of salary, as no paying students were attending over the xmas holidays... and he was holding some of their salary back until the next payday and generally being a schmuck. And that their training was unpaid, although they were required to be there, etc... Nevermind that most small towns in Poland roll up the pavement at 10pm, when most schools have their last classes. As for the SPEED system of schools, they share notes and contracts with the other CALLAN schools in Poland, such as the one above. The system is so simple (I was approached by an investor to start a CALLAN method school as a newbie,even!) that most native speakers could teach with only an 8th grade education. Whatever you do, go in with an open mind and an escape plan. Dont get trapped with a one way ticket and no options. Keep up the good work, Chris. I didnt notice the "new accounts" raving about the CALLAN system. Back to top OzBurnJoined: 03 May 2004Posts: 199 Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:41 pm Post subject: Re: my 5 bob's worth biffinbridge wrote: Behaviourism has long been castigated as a defunct approach to language teaching/learning by everyone except the U.S. army.To hear people defend boring,repetitive methods with comments like 'people can have basic conversations after only a few months'(like they don't elsewhere),is to simply avoid the issue that there are more efficient methods/approaches.The Berlitz way,similar to Callan's as Scot 47 pointed out,requires little more than a native speaking parrot to follow it.Sure ,do drills and repetition where necessary but what about tasked based learning etc.?At Callan you are simply selling a package and brand name because you ain't doing what's best for the students. Sorry. Behaviorism is a school of psychology, not a method for teaching languages. It has a great deal of value, which you could perhaps discover if you spent a few hours studying it before condemning it. That people may "castigate" something has nothing to do with its inherent value. Whether a teaching method is boring is subjective. Whether it is repetitive is unimportant. What matters is whether it works. Few things are as boring as failure, and no failure hurts as much as a repeated failure. The term is "task-based" learning, not "tasked based" learning. Back to top CaliJoined: 29 Apr 2003Posts: 15Location: Canada Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:34 pm Post subject: I guess I will have to think twice Guess I will have to thing twice about working for them. Thanks for all the input. Back to top Display posts from previous: All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Poland All times are GMTGoto page Previous 1, 2 Page 2 of 2 Jump to: Select a forum Where to Begin----------------General DiscussionNewbie ForumCurrent Events ForumTechnology ForumOnline Teaching Forum Africa Forums----------------General Africa Forum Asia Forums----------------CambodiaChina (Job-related Posts Only)China (Off-Topic)Hong KongIndiaIndonesiaJapanMalaysiaPhilippinesSingaporeTaiwanThailandGeneral Asia ForumVietnam Caribbean Forums----------------General Caribbean Forum Europe Forums----------------Czech RepublicFranceGermanyGreeceItalyMacedonia and the BalkansPolandRomaniaRussia & C.I.S.SpainTurkeyUkraineUnited KingdomGeneral Europe Forum Latin America Forums----------------ArgentinaBrazilChileColombiaCosta RicaMexicoMexico (off-topic)PeruGeneral Latin America Forum The Middle East Forums----------------BahrainEgyptIsraelKuwaitOmanQatarSaudi ArabiaUnited Arab EmiratesGeneral Middle East Forum North America Forums----------------General North America Forum Oceania----------------Australia/New Zealand You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum This page is maintained by the one and only Dave Sperling. Contact Dave's ESL Cafe Copyright © 2018 Dave Sperling. All Rights Reserved. Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group Teaching Jobs in China


text:
My new iPad sucks. The legislator who sits across from me also has a new iPad. His sucks, too.
Because they will not connect to the House of Representatives' wifi.
My scratched and battered iPad Gen 1 connects to the House wifi like it was born to do it. (Which, I believe it was.) However the newer model appears to be pickier about who it associates with. It will connect to my home wifi without a quibble. But at work, my lovely aluminum piece of tech art is not an iPad, it's just a pad.
I have never pondered the uselessness of an iPad that won't go on the internet until recently. Before I got stuck with one, I never considered the possibility of an internetless iPad, not anymore than I spent time day-dreaming about the possibilities of tap-dancing ducks. It just didn't seem likely. Now that I have experienced it, I have to admit that I think a tap-dancing duck would be more useful than an internet free iPad.
I use these things to read bills, follow the agenda on the House floor, check my email and write short to longish memos and notes. My iPad is a life-saver at work. In fact, the reason I own an iPad is because they are so great for a legislator's job. I would rather have an iPad than a computer while on the House floor any day.
But, when it won't connect to the House wifi, all that usefulness goes bye-bye. An iPad without the internet is ok if you want to watch movies, listen to music and write things that you plan to print or email later. In other words, an iPad without the internet is great for ocean or continent-crossing flights. But while we're voting on bills in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, (which is why I own the thing) it's worthless.
I gather from reading about it on the internet, that Apple has been trying to fix this little problem for quite some time now. My advice to them is to crank up the effort. Without the internet, their shiny toy rapidly loses its sheen.
In the meantime, I'm going back to my elderly Gen 1 iPad. If they don't get this fixed soon, I'll see if I can find someone dumb enough to buy an iPad that won't go on the internet.
I miss you Steve Jobs.


text:
Watch CBSN Live
Since his election in 2016, President Trump's team has undergone some dramatic shifts in personnel.
Here's a look at who Mr. Trump has tapped for his team since he first took office.
Credit: Getty
Mr. Trump chose Pence as his running mate in July 2016.
Pence also took over leading the transition team after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was ousted from the role.
Pence was elected governor of Indiana in 2013 and before that served in the House of Representatives.
Kushner, a New York real estate developer who is married to Mr. Trump's daughter Ivanka, was a key adviser during the campaign and remained influential after the election.
The president put him in charge of the new White House Office of American Innovation to overhaul government using ideas from the business world, and also asked Kushner to help broker a Mideast peace agreement.
Ivanka Trump took on an official, but unpaid, White House role in late March 2017.
President Trump's 35-year-old daughter contributed significantly to her father's campaign, transition, and now, his presidency. She already had an office in the White House, but taking on an official role meant she has to comply with ethics rules.
Pompeo served as CIA director for the first year of the Trump administration, and in March 2018 the president chose him for secretary of state to replace Rex Tillerson. Pompeo was confirmed by the Senate on April 26.
Pompeo, previously a Republican congressman from Kansas, was a member of the House Intelligence Committee and a former Army captain.
William Barr was confirmed as attorney general by the Senate on February 14, 2019.
Barr served in the same position once before, from 1991 to 1993, during the first Bush administration.
Credit: Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images
President Trump announced on Friday, March 6, 2020 that North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows would replace Mick Mulvaney as White House chief of staff.
Meadows was chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus from 2017 to 2019.
Credit: Getty Images
Mark Esper was confirmed on July 23, 2019, replacing replacing acting secretary Patrick Shanahan, who withdrew his name from consideration after reports of domestic violence incidents involving his family surfaced.
The Pentagon had been without a Senate-confirmed leader since December 2018, when former Defense Secretary James Mattis stepped down following President Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
Esper previously served as Secretary of the Army.
Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
On September 18, 2019, Trump announced via Twitter that O'Brien would step into the role vacated by John Bolton.
He had been serving as Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs in the Trump administration since 2018. In 2005, O'Brien was appointed by President George W. Bush as an alternate delegate to the United Nations General Assembly.
Credit: Michael Campanella/Getty Images
Steven Mnuchin was confirmed as treasury secretary in February 2017 by a vote of 53-47.
Mnuchin served as the national finance chairman of the Trump campaign. He also spent 17 years working for Goldman Sachs.
The former U.S. Ambassador to Germany was tapped by President Trump in February 2020. He replaced Joseph Maguire, who had been served as acting director since August 2019, following the resignation of Dan Coats.
Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty
Andrew Wheeler, who was serving as deputy administrator of the EPA, assumed the role of acting EPA administrator after Scott Pruitt resigned on July 5, 2018.
Prior to his deputy nomination by President Donald Trump, Wheeler worked as a lobbyist with a client list that included Murray Energy, one of the nation's largest coal mining companies.
Credit: EPA photo/Eric Vance
The U.S. Senate confirmed Gaynor to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency on January 14, 2020.
Gaynor was the acting FEMA administrator in 2019 and the deputy administrator in 2018. He has more than 11 years of experience in emergency management.
Credit: FEMA
President Trump nominated former pharmaceutical executive Alex Azar to lead the Department of Health and Human Services on Nov. 13, 2017.
Azar had served as general counsel of HHS and later as the department's deputy secretary during President George W. Bush's administration.
Following his time at the department, he rose to become president of Eli Lilly USA, a global pharmaceutical company. If confirmed, Azar would replace Tom Price, who resigned in September.
Credit: Eli Lilly via Wikimedia Commons
President Trump chose Under Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf to serve as acting secretary of the department following the departure of Kevin McAleenan in November 2019.
Wolf played a role in crafting some of the most controversial immigration policies rolled out by the Trump administration.
Credit: Alex Brandon / AP
Mr. Trump named Kellyanne Conway as counselor to the president on Dec. 22, 2016.
Conway, a political strategist and pollster, helped turn Trump's campaign around while serving as campaign manager. She's been serving as a senior member of the Trump transition team.
Haspel was confirmed as CIA director on March 17, 2018. She replaced Mike Pompeo after he left the post to become secretary of state.
The first woman to head the CIA, she was also first female CIA officer to serve as deputy director and before that served the agency overseas and in top management posts. Haspel once ran a secret CIA prison where terror suspects were waterboarded, and helped carry out an order that the CIA destroy its waterboarding videos.
Credit: CIA
Donald Trump married Melania, a former model from Slovenia, in 2005.
As first lady, she has focused on the issue of combating cyber-bullying, launching a campaign called "Be Best."
Television pundit Larry Kudlow accepted President Trump's offer to head the White House National Economic Council on March 14, 2018.
The announcement came just days after Gary Cohn announced he was stepping down.
Kudlow, a regular on CNBC and other outlets, is an economic analyst who worked in the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration.
Credit: Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images
Carson was confirmed by the Senate as the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on March 2, 2017.
Carson was raised in an impoverished area of Detroit and later became a renowned neurosurgeon. He drew national attention when he ran in the Republican primary race, and later endorsed Mr. Trump.
The 65-year-old has no previous policy experience in the field of urban development, and has never held elected office.
Credit: Reuters
Mr. Trump chose Perdue to lead the Agriculture Department in January 2017.
Perdue is a farmer's son who built businesses in grain trading and trucking before serving as the governor of Georgia from 2003 to 2011.
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia was ceremonially sworn in at the White House on Sept. 30, 2019.
Scalia – the son of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia – spent most of his career as a corporate lawyer.
He replaced Alexander Acosta, who resigned amid controversy over his handling of Jeffrey Epstein's secret 2008 plea deal when Acosta was U.S. Attorney in Florida.
Ross was confirmed by the Senate as commerce secretary on Feb. 27, 2017.
Ross is an investor and former banker, experienced in buying failing companies and reviving them. He is worth an estimated $2.9 billion.
The Senate confirmed Elaine Chao to serve as transportation secretary on Jan. 31, 2017.
Chao served as labor secretary under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. She was the only Cabinet member to serve through his entire two terms in the White House, and the first Asian-American woman ever to hold a Cabinet-level position.
Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
DeVos' nomination as education secretary was confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 7, 2017.
DeVos had become one of Trump's most controversial Cabinet picks, and she only garnered 50 lawmakers' votes. Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote.
The philanthropist and education activist, who has strongly supported charter schools and vouchers, served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000.
Dan Brouillette was confirmed on Dec. 2, 2019 to replace former Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
Brouillette had served as deputy energy secretary since 2017. He previously worked for the department under the administration of former President George W. Bush. In between, he was an executive at the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) and the Ford Motor Company.
Credit: Jon Gambrell / AP
Robert L. Wilkie was confirmed as Veteran Affairs (VA) secretary on July 23, 2018. Wilkie, a former assistant secretary of defense under President George W. Bush, received bipartisan support in the Senate.
Wilkie replaced David Shulkin, who was fired amid ethics allegations and internal rebellion at the department over the role of private care for veterans.
Credit: Michael Brochstein/ SOPA Images/ LightRocket via Getty Images
General Mark Milley was named Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to replace General Joseph Dunford, whose term expired in October 2019.
Milley previously served as U.S. Army Chief of Staff. He was a Green Beret and commanded troops in Afghanistan.
Credit: Andrew Harnik / AP
Kelly Craft was confirmed as the new ambassador to the United Nations on Aug. 1, 2019. She replaced Nikki Haley, who stepped down from the position at the end of 2018.
Craft, a longtime GOP activist from Kentucky, previously served as U.S. ambassador to Canada.
Washington lawyer Pat Cipollone replaced Donald McGahn as White House counsel in December 2018.
Cipollone worked at the Justice Department in the 1990s, as counsel to then-Attorney General William P. Barr.
Credit: Stein Mitchell Cipollone Beato & Missner LLP
Mr. Trump chose Clayton to head the Securities and Exchange Commission on Jan. 4, 2017.
Clayton is a Wall Street attorney with experience in corporate mergers and public stock launches.
Credit: Sullivan & Cromwell via YouTube
Ken Cuccinelli, who had been leading U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) since June 2019, was named acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in November 2019.
Cuccinelli has been a vocal defender of President Trump's crackdown on illegal and legal immigration.
Credit: Jose Luis Magana / AP
Lighthizer was named as U.S. trade representative on Jan. 3, 2017.
Lighthizer was previously a deputy U.S. trade representative under President Reagan, and has since worked as a trade attorney in Washington, D.C.
Credit: From Bob Dole oral history on YouTube, Oct. 18, 2007.
Mr. Trump named Navarro to lead the newly created White House trade council on Dec. 21, 2017.
Navarro is a business professor at the University of California-Irvine. In his book, "Death by China," he endorsed a hard-line approach toward U.S. economic relations with China.
Credit: University California-Irvine
Mr. Trump selected New York bankruptcy attorney David Friedman to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Friedman was a Trump campaign adviser whose views align with the Israeli far right.
Credit: AP
Branstad was named to the post of U.S. ambassador to China on Dec. 7, 2016.
Branstad served as governor of Iowa from 1983 to 1999 and again since 2011, making him the longest-serving governor in American history.
Bloomberg reported that Branstad is a longtime friend of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
President Trump announced in June 2018 that Rear Adm. Douglas Fears would replace Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, who had left the post after less than a year.
Credit: U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security
Dan Scavino (center) was named as White House social media director on Dec. 22, 2017.
Scavino managed social media during the Trump campaign. He previously worked as the general manager of the Trump National Golf Club.
On March 6, 2020, Trump announced on Twitter that Mick Mulvaney would be stepping down from chief of staff duties to become the U.S. Special Envoy to Northern Ireland.
Mulvaney served as the acting White House chief of staff from December 2018 through March 2020. The former South Carolina congressman was elected to the House of Representatives as part of the tea party wave in 2010.
Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
Perry notified President Trump on October 18, 2019 that he planned to step down as energy secretary after serving more than two and a half years. He announced via Twitter that he wrapped up his final official duties at the White House on November 25, 2019.
Perry served as governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015. He ran unsuccessfully for the White House in the 2012 and 2016 Republican primaries.
Perry previously suggested that the Department of Energy should be abolished.
On September 10, 2019, President Trump announced via Twitter that John Bolton would no longer serve as National Security Advisor, effective immediately.
Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations, had held the job since March 2018, replacing General H.R. McMaster.
Bolton is known to be a hardliner on the Iran nuclear deal and on North Korea. He was Mr. Trump's third national security advisor in just over a year.
Credit: Joshua Roberts / REUTERS
President Trump nominated Alexander Acosta for labor secretary on Feb. 16, 2017, a day after the president's previous pick, Andrew Puzder, withdrew his name from consideration for the post.
Acosta resigned on July 12, 2019 amid controversy over his handling of a secret 2008 plea deal for accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when Acosta was U.S. Attorney in Florida.
McAleenan served as Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security following the departure of Kirstjen Nielsen in April 2019, and stepped down at the end of October 2019.
He previously served as Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner and took over at DHS with orders from President Trump to clamp down on migrants crossing the the U.S.-Mexico border.
President Trump named Patrick Shanahan acting defense secretary following the resignation of James Mattis. Shanahan withdrew from consideration for the permanent defense secretary position on June 18, 2019, the same day the Washington Post published a story about alleged incidents of domestic violence from 2010 and 2011.
Credit: Defense Department website
Kelly took over as White House chief of staff in the summer of 2017, replacing Reince Priebus. In early December 2018, President Trump announced that Kelly would be leaving by the end of the year.
Before that, Kelly, a retired Marine Corps General, had been serving as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Joseph Maguire was named acting Director of National Intelligence in August 2019, following the resignation of Dan Coats, and served until February 2020. Maguire previously served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / AP
On December 15, 2018, President Trump announced on Twitter that Ryan Zinke would be leaving his post as Interior secretary at the end of 2018.
Zinke's tenure at Interior was marked by investigations by the department's Inspector General and the Justice Department over his spending and other issues.
He is a former Navy SEAL commander and decorated Iraq veteran.
Mattis resigned as defense secretary in December 2018 after nearly two years in the job, citing disagreements with the president. His deputy, Patrick Shanahan, was named to take over as acting defense secretary Jan. 1, 2019.
Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general and decorated war veteran, has been a vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal and a skeptic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Haley was confirmed for the post of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations on Jan. 24, 2017. She stepped down from the position at the end of 2018.
She was the first woman to be named to Mr. Trump's Cabinet. Before that, Haley, a Republican, served as the governor of South Carolina since 2011.
Kirstjen Nielsen was confirmed to lead the Department of Homeland Security in December 2017. She announced she was leaving in April 2019 as President Trump pushed for harsher action on immigration.
Nielsen is a cybersecurity expert who previously served as deputy White House chief of staff and as a top aide to John Kelly when he was in the Homeland Security position.
McGahn was announced as an assistant to the president and White House counsel on Nov. 25, 2016; he left the position in October 2018.
McGahn was general counsel for the Trump campaign and was working on the transition.
Coats was named to the role of director of national intelligence on Jan. 5, 2017. He announced plans to resign on July 28, 2019 after reports of rising tensions and policy differences with the president.
Coats was a U.S. senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999, and again from 2011 to early 2017 when he retired.
Sessions was confirmed as attorney general by a vote of 52-47 in a bitterly divided Senate and served in the role for nearly two years.
Sessions came under fire from President Trump after he recused himself from overseeing Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation.
On Nov. 7, 2018, the day after the midterm elections, the president requested and received Sessions' resignation.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders left her role as White House press secretary at the end of June 2019.
Huckabee Sanders was named as the press secretary on July 21, 2017, hours after Sean Spicer resigned from the post.
She had previously served as deputy White House press secretary and before that as a senior advisor for Trump's presidential campaign.
Flynn was chosen on Nov. 18, 2016, for the role of national security adviser but resigned on Feb. 13, 2017, less than a month after President Trump took office.
Flynn came under fire for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his talks with the Russian ambassador, including discussions of U.S. sanctions.
The former Army lieutenant general was a registered Democrat, but became a critic of President Obama and campaigned aggressively for Mr. Trump. He served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014.
Pruitt was confirmed 52-46 as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal agency he repeatedly sued to during the Obama administration, when he was Oklahoma's attorney general.
Pruitt came under fire from environmentalists due to his close ties with oil and gas companies and statements he's made casting doubt on climate change.
He resigned on July 5, 2018, following intense scrutiny for a series of questionable ethical decisions and his spending.
Shulkin was confirmed to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs on Feb. 13, 2017 by a unanimous vote in the Senate. He was fired by the president on March 28, 2018.
Shulkin previously served as the VA's undersecretary for health and spent more than two decades in hospital management.
U.S. Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster (L) was named national security adviser in February 2017 to replace Gen. Michael Flynn, who was ousted for withholding information from Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia.
On March 22, 2018, Trump announced that McMaster would be replaced by former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.
Bill Shine, former co-president of Fox News and Fox Business Network, served as an assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff for communications from July 2018 until March 8, 2019.
Shine resigned from his White House position to become a senior adviser to Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.
A close ally of Roger Ailes, Shine was accused in lawsuits of helping Ailes cover up allegations of sexual harassment, although he was never directly linked to wrongdoing.
In a letter dated August 5, 2019, Huntsman announced his resignation from this post, effective October 3, 2019. His resignation comes amid rumors that he is considering running for another term as governor of Utah.
President Trump nominated Huntsman to serve as ambassador to Russia in March 2017.
Huntsman, 56, served as the U.S. ambassador to China under President Obama and as the U.S. ambassador to Singapore under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He also served as governor of Utah from 2005 until 2009, and he ran for president as a Republican in 2012.
McMahon was confirmed as head of the Small Business Administration on Feb. 14, 2017. On March 29, 2019 she announced she was leaving to take a role at a pro-Trump PAC.
McMahon and her husband, Vince, founded and built World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).
Cohn announced that he was resigning from his role as Director of the National Economic Council and chief economic advisor to President Trump on March 6, 2018.
Cohn had urged the president against imposing steep tariffs on steel and aluminum, which President Trump announced the week before.
He had been with the administration since the beginning. He was formerly the president and COO of Goldman Sachs.
Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, served as secretary of state until March 13, 2018, when President Trump ousted him after months of reported tensions and public disputes.
Before his confirmation, some leading lawmakers voiced concern about Tillerson's business ties to Russia and his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who honored Tillerson with the Order of Friendship in 2013.
Icahn was named to the role of special adviser on regulatory reform on Dec. 21, 2016 and left that role the following August.
The billionaire investor offered advice to Mr. Trump on economic regulations, but was not a federal employee and had no specific duties in the administration.
Hicks was officially named White House communications director on Sept. 12, 2017, after filling that role in an interim basis since Anthony Scaramucci's departure in July.
She announced her resignation on Feb. 28, 2018, a day after testifying for nine hours before the House Intelligence Committee as part of its investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
Manigault was named as an assistant to the president and director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison on Jan. 4, 2017.
In December 2017, the White House announced that Manigault "resigned ... to pursue other opportunities" and that her last day would be Jan. 20, 2018.
Manigault, a vocal Trump supporter during the campaign, gained fame as a contestant on season one of "The Apprentice."
Price, a Republican representative from Georgia, was confirmed as health and human services secretary Feb. 10, 2017, by a Senate vote of 52-47.
He resigned on Sept. 29, 2017, amid scrutiny over his use of private planes at taxpayer expense and three days after Senate Republican leaders decided not to hold a vote on a bill to repeal Obamacare because they didn't have the votes to pass the bill.
Price, an orthopedic surgeon by trade, served five terms in Congress and was chairman of the House Budget Committee.
He has led the charge to repeal Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, saying it doesn't give patients or doctors adequate health care choices.
Scaramucci was named White House communications director on July 21, 2017. But on July 31, President Trump removed him from the position after Scaramucci's widely publicized rant criticizing other members of the president's team.
Prior to Scaramucci's appointment, Sean Spicer had been serving as both communications director and press secretary. Spicer resigned from the Trump administration on the same day Scaramucci was brought on.
Mr. Trump announced Bannon's appointment to White House strategist on Nov. 13, 2016, setting off a firestorm of criticism. After a turbulent time in the White House, Bannon's tenure ended on Aug. 18, 2017.
Bannon headed the right-wing Breitbart News for almost five years before becoming CEO of the Trump campaign. Critics decried Bannon's role in encouraging the "alt-right" movement and white nationalist supporters.
One of Mr. Trump's first personnel choices was to name Priebus as the White House chief of staff on Nov. 13, 2016. Priebus had served as the chairman of the Republican National Committee since 2011.
But after just six months in office, on July 28, 2017, Trump tweeted that he had named John Kelly to replace Priebus as White House chief of staff.
Spicer was named as press secretary on Dec. 22, 2016. He resigned on July 21, 2017, shortly after President Trump selected Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director.
Spicer had essentially been serving as both communications director and press secretary but had stepped back from press secretary duties in the weeks before his resignation.
Previously, Spicer served as communications director of the Republican National Committee since 2011.
Dubke resigned from his role as White House communications director in May 2017.
Previously, Dubke served as a partner for the political advertising group Crossroads Media, which describes itself as "the premier Republican media services firm." Dubke also led the Virginia-based Black Rock Group, a strategic communications and public affairs firm.
Credit: Mike Dubke
Walsh was named deputy chief of staff on Jan. 4, 2016, but she left her post in March to join an outside political organization supporting the Trump agenda.
Walsh was serving as the chief of staff for the Republican National Committee before joining the White House staff.
The president-elect nominated Puzder as labor secretary on Dec. 8, 2017. but Puzder withdrew from consideration two months later.
Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns fast food chains Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, came under fire for business practices including his company's racy advertising and his opposition to raising the minimum wage. He also admitted that he and his wife had employed an undocumented immigrant for housework, and faced negative headlines about his messy public divorce from three decades ago.