Territories of the United States
Territories of the United States are sub-national administrative divisions overseen by the federal government. They differ from U. S. Native American tribes, which have limited sovereignty; the territories are classified by incorporation and whether they have an "organized" government through an organic act passed by Congress. The U. S. has sixteen territories in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Five are permanently-inhabited, unincorporated territories. Of the eleven, only one is classified as an incorporated territory. Two territories are defacto administered by Colombia. Territories were created to administer newly-acquired land, most attained statehood. Others, such as the Philippines, the Marshall Islands and Palau became independent. Many organized incorporated territories of the United States existed from 1789 to 1959; the first were the Northwest and Southwest territories, the last were the Alaska and Hawaii Territories. Thirty-one territories became states. In the process, some less-developed or -populous areas of a territory were orphaned from it after a statehood referendum.
When a portion of the Missouri Territory became the state of Missouri, the remainder of the territory became an unorganized territory. Territorial telecommunications and other infrastructure is inferior to that of the U. S. mainland, American Samoa's Internet speed was found to be slower than several Eastern European countries. Poverty rates are higher in the territories than in the states; the U. S. has had territories since its beginning. According to federal law, the term "United States" means "the continental United States, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands". Since 1986, the Northern Mariana Islands have been considered part of the U. S. A 2007 executive order included American Samoa in the U. S. "geographical extent", as reflected in the Federal Register. All territories are except for American Samoa and Jarvis Island; the U. S. has five permanently-inhabited territories, two of which are known as "commonwealths": Puerto Rico and the U. S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea. About four million people in these territories are U.
S. citizens, citizenship at birth is granted in four of the five territories. American Samoa has about 32,000 non-citizen U. S. nationals. Under U. S. law, "only persons born in American Samoa and Swains Island are non-citizen U. S. nationals" in its territories. American Samoans are under U. S. protection, can travel to the rest of the U. S. without a visa. American Samoans must become naturalized citizens, like foreigners. Unlike the other four inhabited territories, Congress has passed no legislation granting birthright citizenship to American Samoans; each territory is self-governing with three branches of government, including a locally-elected governor and a territorial legislature. It elects a non-voting member to the U. S. House of Representatives, they "possess the same powers as other members of the House, except that they may not vote when the House is meeting as the House of Representatives". They can vote in their appointed House committees on all legislation presented to the House, they are included in their party count for each committee, they are equal to senators on conference committees.
Depending on the Congress, they may vote on the floor in the House Committee of the Whole. In January 2017, the members of Congress from the territories were Gregorio Sablan, Madeleine Bordallo, Amata Coleman Radewagen, Jenniffer González and Stacey Plaskett; the District of Columbia has a non-voting delegate. Like the District of Columbia, U. S. territories do not have voting representation in Congress and have no representation in the Senate. Every four years, U. S. political parties nominate presidential candidates at conventions which include delegates from the territories. U. S. citizens living in the territories cannot vote in the general presidential election, non-citizen nationals in American Samoa cannot vote for president. The territorial capitals are Pago Pago, Hagåtña, San Juan and Charlotte Amalie, their governors are Lolo Matalasi Moliga, Eddie Baza Calvo, Ralph Torres, Ricardo Rosselló and Kenneth Mapp. American Samoa – Territory since 1900; the U. S. controlled the eastern half of the islands.
In 1900, the Treaty of Cession of Tutuila took effect. The Manuʻa islands became part of American Samoa in 1904, Swains Island became part of American Samoa in 1925. Congress ratified American Samoa's treaties in 1929. American Samoa is locally self-governing under a constitution last revised in 1967. People born in American Samoa are U. S. nationals. A
Pueblo
In the Southwestern United States, the term Pueblo refers to communities of Native Americans, both in the present and in ancient times. The first Spanish explorers of the Southwest used this term to describe the communities housed in apartment structures built of stone, adobe mud, other local material; these structures were multi-storied buildings surrounding an open plaza. The rooms were accessible only through ladders lowered by the inhabitants, thus protecting them from break-ins and unwanted guests. Larger pueblos were occupied by hundreds to thousands of Pueblo people. Various federally recognized tribes have traditionally resided in pueblos of such design; the word pueblo is the Spanish word for "town" or "village". It comes from the Latin root word populus meaning "people". On the central Spanish meseta the unit of settlement is the pueblo; the demands of agrarian routine and the need for defense, the simple desire for human society in the vast solitude of, dictated that it should be so.
Nowadays the pueblo might have a population running into thousands. Doubtless they were much smaller in the early middle ages, but we should not be far wrong if we think of them as having had populations of some hundreds. Of the federally recognized Native American communities in the Southwest, those designated by the King of Spain as pueblo at the time Spain ceded territory to the United States, after the American Revolutionary War, are recognized as Pueblo by the Bureau of Indian Affairs; some of the pueblos came under jurisdiction of the United States, in its view, by its treaty with Mexico, which had gained rule over territory in the Southwest ceded by Spain after Mexican independence. There are 21 federally recognized Pueblos, their official federal names are as follows: Pre-Columbian towns and villages in the Southwest, such as Acoma, were located in defensible positions, for example, on high steep mesas. Anthropologists and official documents refer to ancient residents of the area as pueblo cultures.
For example, the National Park Service states, "The Late Puebloan cultures built the large, integrated villages found by the Spaniards when they began to move into the area." The people of some pueblos, such as Taos Pueblo, still inhabit centuries-old adobe pueblo buildings. Contemporary residents maintain other homes outside the historic pueblos. Adobe and light construction methods resembling adobe now dominate architecture at the many pueblos of the area, in nearby towns or cities, in much of the American Southwest. In addition to contemporary pueblos, numerous ruins of archeological interest are located throughout the Southwest; some are of recent origin. Others are of prehistoric origin, such as the cliff dwellings and other habitations of the Ancient Pueblo peoples or "Anasazi", who emerged as a people around the 12th century BCE and began to construct their pueblos about AD 750–900. Pueblos portal Ancient dwellings of Pueblo peoples Ancient Pueblo peoples Cuisine of the Southwestern United States New Mexican cuisine New Mexico music Pueblo Revolt Pueblo music The SMU-in-Taos Research Publications collection contains nine anthropological and archaeological monographs and edited volumes representing decades of research on Pueblo Indian sites near Taos, New Mexico, including Papers on Taos archaeology, Taos Archeology, Picuris Pueblo through time: eight centuries of change in a northern Rio Grande pueblo and Excavations at Pot Creek Pueblo
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and referred to as Washington or D. C. is the capital of the United States. Founded after the American Revolution as the seat of government of the newly independent country, Washington was named after George Washington, first President of the United States and Founding Father; as the seat of the United States federal government and several international organizations, Washington is an important world political capital. The city is one of the most visited cities in the world, with more than 20 million tourists annually; the signing of the Residence Act on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of a capital district located along the Potomac River on the country's East Coast. The U. S. Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the U. S. Congress, the District is therefore not a part of any state; the states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, which included the pre-existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria.
The City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land ceded by Virginia. Washington had an estimated population of 702,455 as of July 2018, making it the 20th most populous city in the United States. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's daytime population to more than one million during the workweek. Washington's metropolitan area, the country's sixth largest, had a 2017 estimated population of 6.2 million residents. All three branches of the U. S. federal government are centered in the District: Congress and the U. S. Supreme Court. Washington is home to many national monuments, museums situated on or around the National Mall; the city hosts 177 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many international organizations, trade unions, non-profit, lobbying groups, professional associations, including the World Bank Group, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, AARP, the National Geographic Society, the Human Rights Campaign, the International Finance Corporation, the American Red Cross.
A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973. However, Congress may overturn local laws. D. C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, but the District has no representation in the Senate. The District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961. Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century. One group known as the Nacotchtank maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland. In his Federalist No. 43, published January 23, 1788, James Madison argued that the new federal government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance and safety.
Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia. Known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security. Article One, Section Eight, of the Constitution permits the establishment of a "District as may, by cession of particular states, the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States". However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital. In what is now known as the Compromise of 1790, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson came to an agreement that the federal government would pay each state's remaining Revolutionary War debts in exchange for establishing the new national capital in the southern United States. On July 9, 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River; the exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, who signed the bill into law on July 16.
Formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory: the port of Georgetown, founded in 1751, the city of Alexandria, founded in 1749. During 1791–92, Andrew Ellicott and several assistants, including a free African American astronomer named Benjamin Banneker, surveyed the borders of the federal district and placed boundary stones at every mile point. Many of the stones are still standing. A new federal city was constructed on the north bank of the Potomac, to the east of Georgetown. On September 9, 1791, the three commissioners overseeing the capital's construction named the city in honor of President Washington; the federal district was named Columbia, a poetic name for the United States in use at that time. Congress held its first session in Washington on November 17, 1800. Congress passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 that organized the District and placed the entire territory under the exclusive control of the federal
Political divisions of the United States
Political divisions of the United States are the various recognized governing entities that together form the United States — states, the District of Columbia, Indian reservations. The primary first-level political division of the United States is the state. There are 50 states; each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a defined geographic territory, shares its sovereignty with the United States federal government. According to numerous decisions of the United States Supreme Court, the 50 individual states and the United States as a whole are each sovereign jurisdictions. All state governments are modeled after the federal government and consist of three branches: executive and judicial, they retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the U. S. Constitution, federal statutes, or treaties ratified by the U. S. Senate, are organized as presidential systems where the governor is both head of government and head of state; the various states are typically subdivided into counties.
Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the Census terms county equivalents in those states. Counties and county equivalents may be further subdivided into townships. Towns in New York and New England are treated as equivalents to townships by the United States Census Bureau. Townships or towns are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states in the Northeast and Midwest. Population centers may be organized into incorporated cities, towns and other types of municipalities. Municipalities are subordinate to a county government, with some exceptions. Certain cities, for example, have consolidated with their county government as consolidated city-counties. In Virginia, cities are independent from the county in which they would otherwise be a part. In some states in New England, towns form the primary unit of local government below the state level, in some cases eliminating the need for county government entirely; the government of each of the five permanently inhabited U.
S. territories is modeled and organized after the federal government. Each is further subdivided into smaller entities. Puerto Rico has 78 municipalities, the Northern Mariana Islands has 4 municipalities. Guam has villages, the U. S. Virgin Islands has districts, American Samoa has districts and unorganized atolls. Other U. S. sub-national divisions include the District of Columbia, several minor outlying islands, Indian reservations, all of which are administered by the Federal government. Each Indian Reservation is subdivided in various ways. For example, the Navajo Nation is subdivided into agencies and Chapter houses, while the Blackfeet Nation is subdivided into Communities; the Federal government maintains exclusive jurisdiction over military installations and American embassies and consulates located in foreign countries. Other special purpose divisions exist separately from those for general governance, examples of which include conservation districts and Congressional districts. According to the U.
S. Internal Revenue Service and state governments are established and recognized by the U. S. Constitution and state constitutions. Federally recognized Indian tribal governments are recognized by the U. S. Constitution, treaties and court decisions. Other entities may be recognized as governments by state law, court decision, or an examination of facts and circumstances that indicate it has the characteristics of a government, such as powers of taxation, law enforcement and civil authority; the primary political entity of the United States is the state. Four states—Kentucky, Massachusetts and Virginia—call themselves "commonwealths." The word commonwealth in this context refers to welfare, of the public. The term has no legal impact. In 1777 the 13 colonies that had declared independence from Great Britain one year earlier agreed to the formation of a confederation of states, one with an limited central government. A new national frame of government came into force in 1789, when the current U. S. Constitution replaced the Articles.
This constitution incorporates the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches, as well as concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments and of the states in relationship to the federal government. On numerous occasions the United States Supreme Court has affirmed that the 50 individual states and the United States as a whole are each sovereign jurisdictions under the Constitution. Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the federal government, Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. States, are not sovereign in the Westphalian sense in international law which says that each State has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non-interference in another State's domestic affairs, that each State is equal in international law. Additionally, the 50 U. S. states do not possess international legal sovereignty, meaning that they are not recognized by other sovereign States such as, for example, Germany or the United Kingdom.
The 50 states of the United States of America are as follows: The 50 states can be divided into regions in many different ways. The continental United Stat
Supervisor
A supervisor, when the meaning sought is similar to foreman, boss, cell coach, facilitator, area coordinator, or sometimes gaffer, is the job title of a low level management position, based on authority over a worker or charge of a workplace. A supervisor can be one of the most senior in the staff at the place of work, such as a Professor who oversees a PhD dissertation. Supervision, on the other hand, can be performed by people without this formal title, for example by parents; the term supervisor itself can be used to refer to any personnel who have this task as part of their job description. An employee is a supervisor if he/she has the power and authority to do the following actions: Give instructions and/or orders to subordinates. Be held responsible for the work and actions of other employees. If an employee cannot do the above he or she is not a supervisor, but in some other category, such as a work group leader or lead hand. A supervisor is first and foremost an overseer whose main responsibility is to ensure that a group of subordinates get out the assigned amount of production, when they are supposed to do it and within acceptable levels of quality and safety.
A supervisor is responsible for the productivity and actions of a small group of employees. The supervisor has several manager-like roles and powers. Two of the key differences between a supervisor and a manager are the supervisor does not have "hire and fire" authority, the supervisor does not have budget authority. Lacking "hire and fire" authority means that a supervisor may not recruit the employees working in the supervisor's group nor does the supervisor have the authority to terminate an employee; the supervisor may participate in the hiring process as part of interviewing and assessing candidates, but the actual hiring authority rests in the hands of a Human Resource Manager. The supervisor may recommend to management that a particular employee be terminated and the supervisor may be the one who documents the behaviors leading to the recommendation but the actual firing authority rests in the hands of a manager. Lacking budget authority means that a supervisor is provided a budget developed by management within which constraints the supervisor is expected to provide a productive environment for the employees of the supervisor's work group.
A supervisor will have the authority to make purchases within specified limits. A supervisor is given the power to approve work hours and other payroll issues. Budget affecting requests such as travel will require not only the supervisor's approval but the approval of one or more layers of management; as a member of management, a supervisor's main job is more concerned with orchestrating and controlling work rather than performing it directly. Supervisors are uniquely positioned through direct daily employee contact to respond to employee needs and satisfaction. Supervisors are the direct link between management and the work force and can be most effective in developing job training, safety attitudes, safe working methods and identifying unsafe acts Carry out policies passed down a hierarchy from the level above. Plan short-range action-steps to carry out goals set by the level above. Organize the work group. Assign jobs to subordinates. Delegate projects to subordinates. Direct tasks and projects.
Train subordinates. Enforce rules. Lead and motivate subordinates. Develop group cohesiveness. Solve routine daily problems. Control or evaluate performance of subordinates and the department - performance appraisals. Discipline subordinates."Doing" can take up to 70% of the time -. Supervisors do not require any formal education on how they are to perform their duties but are most given on-the-job training or attend company sponsored courses. Many employers have supervisor handbooks. Supervisors must be aware of their legal responsibilities to ensure that their employees work safely and that the workplace that they are responsible for meets government standards. In academia, a supervisor is a senior scientist or scholar who, along with their own responsibilities and guides a postdoctoral researcher, postgraduate research student or undergraduate student in their research project; the term is used in several countries for the doctoral advisor of a graduate student. In colloquial British English, "gaffer" means a foreman, is used as a synonym for "boss".
In the UK, the term commonly refers to sports coaches. The term is sometimes used colloquially to refer to an old man, an elderly rustic; the word is a shortening of "godfather", with "ga" from association with "grandfather". The female equivalent, "gammer", came to refer colloquially to a gossip; the use of gaffer in this way can be seen, for example, in J. R. R. Tolkien's character Gaffer Gamgee. In 16th century English a "gaffer" was a man, the head of any organized group of labourers. In 16th and 17th century rural England, it was used as a title inferior to "Master", similar to "Goodman", was not confined to elderly men; the chorus of a famous Australian shearer's song, The Backblocks' Shearer, written by W. Tully at Nimidgee, NSW, refers to a gaffer: Hurrah, me boys, my shears are set, I feel both fit and well. With Hayden's patent thu
Unorganized Borough, Alaska
The Unorganized Borough is made up of the portions of the U. S. state of Alaska which are not contained in any of its 19 organized boroughs. It encompasses nearly half of Alaska's land area, 323,440 square miles, an area larger than any other U. S. state, larger than the land area of the smallest 16 states combined. As of the 2000 U. S. Census, it had a population of 81,803, 13% of the population of the state. Unique among the United States, Alaska is not subdivided into organized county equivalents. To facilitate census taking in the vast unorganized area, the United States Census Bureau, in cooperation with the state, divided the unorganized borough into 11 census areas, beginning with the 1970 census; the Petersburg Census Area was made a borough in 2013, leaving 10 census areas in the Unorganized Borough: Aleutians West Census Area Bethel Census Area Dillingham Census Area Hoonah–Angoon Census Area Kusilvak Census Area Nome Census Area Prince of Wales – Hyder Census Area Southeast Fairbanks Census Area Valdez–Cordova Census Area Yukon–Koyukuk Census AreaThis vast area has no local government other than that of school districts and municipalities within its limits.
Many of the villages do have tribal governments, however. Except within some incorporated cities, all government services in the Unorganized Borough, including law enforcement, are provided by the state or by a tribal government. School districts in the Unorganized Borough are operated either by cities, in those limited instances when the city has chosen to undertake those powers, or through the general guidance of the state Department of Education under the auspices of Rural Education Attendance Areas. During the 1950s, when the push for the territory of Alaska to become a state was at its height, any municipal government was limited and scattered. Territory-wide, there were no more than a few dozen incorporated cities, a small handful of service districts, broken into public utility districts and independent school districts; the service districts were authorized by the territorial legislature in 1935 to allow unincorporated areas limited powers to provide services and to raise taxes for them.
The United States Congress had forbidden the territory from establishing counties. The delegates of the convention which wrote the Alaska Constitution had, in fact, debated the merits of establishing counties, had rejected the idea in favor of creating a system of boroughs, both organized and unorganized; the intent of the framers of the constitution was to provide for maximum local self-government with a minimum of local government units and tax-levying jurisdictions. The minutes of the constitutional convention indicate that counties were not used as a form of local government for various reasons; the failure of some local economies to generate enough revenue to support separate counties was an important issue, as was the desire to use a model that would reflect the unique character of Alaska, provide for maximum local input, avoid a body of county case law in existence. Instead, Alaska adopted boroughs as a form of regional government; this regionalization tried to avoid having a number of independent, limited-purpose governments with confusing boundaries and inefficient governmental operations.
The territorial service districts had amounted to this much, but were seen by many as an important foundation for the government to provide services without becoming all-powerful and unnecessarily intrusive, an argument which surfaced time and again during various attempts by the legislature to create organized boroughs out of portions of the unorganized borough. Alaska adopted the borough structure by statute in 1961, envisioned boroughs to serve as an "all-purpose" form of local government, to avoid the perceived problems of county government in the lower 48 states as well as Hawaii. According to Article X of the Alaska Constitution, areas of the state unable to support borough government were to be served by several unorganized boroughs, which were to be mechanisms for the state to regionalize services; the entire state was defined as one vast unorganized borough by the Borough Act of 1961, over the ensuing years, Alaska's organized boroughs were carved out of it. Alaska's first organized borough, the only one incorporated after passage of the 1961 legislation, was the Bristol Bay Borough.
The pressure from residents of other areas of the state to form boroughs led to the Mandatory Borough Act of 1963, which called for all election districts in the state over a certain minimum population to incorporate as boroughs by January 1, 1964. A resolution of the State of Alaska's Local Boundary Commission introduced in January 2009 spells this out in greater detail: WHEREAS, the 1963 Alaska State Legislature passed, Governor Egan signed into law, the "Mandatory Borough Act", dictating that certain regions of Alaska - those encompassing Ketchikan, Sitka, Kodiak Island, Kenai Peninsula, the Matanuska-Susitna valleys, Fairbanks - form organized boroughs by January 1, 1964. Furthermore, 21 Rural Education Attendance Areas were established by the Legislature in 1975; this created regional divisions of the unorganized borough for the purpose of establishing rural school districts. Many REAAs were absorbed into organized boroughs. A number of boroughs have been incorporated since the Mandatory Borough Act, but most were incorporated to exploit a significant potential source of taxation, such as natural resource extraction and tourism.
Many residents of the Unorganized Borough those in the larger communities which may be most susceptible to organized borough incorporatio
