A truly bizarre story of manipulation and human frailty. These folks are plain nuts.

Inside Manhattan’s secret ‘cult’

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Former "Congregation for the Light" member Paul Arthur Miller said members of "the Light" couldn't have artwork or trinkets in their homes unless it contained an owl or a cross with an "X" on it. Photo: Helayne Seidman

It’s a secret society that claims that its followers descended from a “master Aryan race” on Atlantis and that ­humans once lived on the moon.

Homosexuality is banned, corporal punishment encouraged and members atone for bad karma in past lives. Young women, denied higher education, are often married off to older men in the group, former members say.

Some male devotees have ­undergone weapons training to prepare for the end of the world, which is coming soon.

But this doomsday cult isn’t hidden away in some rural ­bunker — it operates out of a brownstone in Murray Hill.

Every Thursday evening, dozens of congregants line up on East 35th Street for the group’s weekly meeting. Their leader of the flock, Tom Baer, 73, preaches from the center of the room, reading from pieces of paper. Members don’t have religious texts to follow along and aren’t allowed to take notes.

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Congregation for the Light meeting place at 160 East 35th Street in Murray Hill.Photo: J.C. Rice

In official documents, the 200-member, tax-exempt church is called Congregation for the Light. To members, it’s just “the Light.”

The group has about 200 members in New York, and there are congregations in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Baer and ex-followers say.

“It’s the cult next door to every New Yorker, and no one even knows that it’s there,” said an ­exiled member.

The former worshipper, a Manhattan woman who spoke on the condition of ­anonymity because she fears retribution, joined the group in 2003 while dating a man who was raised in it.

“I totally wanted to know what was going on,” she said, adding that her boyfriend assured her it was “nothing creepy . . . just the basic tenets of all religions.”

The deeper she got, the more skeptical she became.

Baer spoke to her of battling evil people in lucid dreams and how cancer and other illnesses were the result of karma, not health habits, genetics or environment. She noted Baer’s repeated, odd mispronunciation of “awry” as ­“ow-ree.”

The Light dates back to at least the 1960s and has met in Murray Hill since the ’70s, though members are taught that the church dates to the 19th century. Much of what the group believes is shrouded in secrecy, though former members say it has a lot to do with karma, reincarnation and the end of the human race.

The former worshiper was shocked that attendance at weekly meetings was mandatory; absences for vacation or higher education were not excused. When she asked a fellow member if her teenage daughter would ­attend Harvard or Yale, the woman responded: “What are you talking about? She’ll go to a local community college. She has to attend Thursday-night meetings.”

She was warned not to share the Light with others, and she kept her membership secret from her closest friends.

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73-year-old Tom Baer has ruled over the Light since 2001.Photo: J.C.Rice

“Everything is ambiguous,” she said. “And if you ask, you’re told, ‘You just don’t remember. You’ll remember when you’re supposed to . . . Try to control your dreams, and tonight you’ll remember a symbol.’ ”

But she wouldn’t stop asking questions.

During a meeting at the end of the year, ­everyone was handed a white ­envelope — except for her. The next day, she joined her boyfriend, who had since become her fiancé, and his parents for dinner.

The food wasn’t even served before her ­fiancé’s mother stood at the table and announced: “If you think you’re marrying him, you’re nuts. I remember you from 10,000 years ago, and you tried to bring down the Light.

“We are launching a spiritual intervention to save his soul.” the would-be mother-in-law said.

Shattered, the young woman was driven home and told never to speak to her fiancé again. Two months later, he was married off to a fellow Light member.

The white envelopes had been invitations to a special meeting to sabotage her engagement to the man who brought her into the Light in the first place.

“I felt like I was in a movie,” she recalled. “I didn’t realize the kind of power Tom [Baer] had. That the Light had.”

Paul Arthur Miller was 18 when he found himself among a dozen young men in a secluded nook of the Adirondack Mountains. He had received instructions on what to pack for the three-day trip reserved only for elite members of the “Light Patrol.”

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Former “Congregation for the Light” member Paul Arthur Miller with approved owl memorabilia in his home.Photo: Helayne Seidman

The troop was led by two ­believers, ex-Army paratroopers who taught the youngsters how to track footprints, the basics of camping and other survival skills.

He didn’t realize the training would include firing M14 automatic rifles into an abandoned junk heap or training in hand-to-hand combat in preparation for the apocalypse.

“The belief is that Planet Earth will be ending soon and we would have to defend our people and safeguard our food and supplies,” recalled Miller, now a ­58-year-old West Village writer.

“They changed the doomsday date at least twice,” he said. “We were told it was imminent, weeks or months. People in the cult wouldn’t have dental work done because they thought, ‘Why bother?’ ”

Miller was born into the group and worked 17 years for Baer’s furniture company in Harrison, Westchester County, which employed many Light members. “I felt like a prisoner,” Miller said. “I felt like an indentured slave.”

He stayed through the tenures of two Light leaders across 30 years — each with his own agendas and “personal beliefs.”

Morris Kates, chairman during the 1960s and ’70s, taught Miller that once the world ended, people would be reincarnated on ­another planet called “Nay.” There, they would be one gender — and have no stomachs.

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Former Light leader Joseph DentonPhoto: Helayne Seidman

Joseph Denton, Kates’ successor and a former Southern Baptist, tried banning the Internet and some TV.

Baer took the reins when Denton died in 2001. He had married into the Light in the 1960s after hitching a ride with a West­chester-bound follower and meeting his future wife.

Miller said the three leaders had one thing in common — they tried to erase his homosexuality, which they considered “a hangover from the Roman Empire.” He was ordered to date women in the Light.

After one meeting, Kates cornered him and said, “Who is this guy who comes to stay with you on weekends? Is he a faggot?”

Miller was ordered to dump his boyfriend and to begin dating a woman in the Light. He saw her on and off for five years to keep up appearances

Despite this, Miller said he was a favorite of Kates, who used to announce during weekly lectures, “Paul and I have been friends for thousands and thousands of lives.”

The meetings would begin in the brownstone’s ground-floor auditorium around 7 p.m., when Kates announced, “Greetings, friends.”

‘THEY’RE BRAINWASHED. THEY’RE OBSESSED … YOU WERE ALWAYS TOLD IF YOU LEAVE THE LIGHT, YOU’RE SUBJECTED TO EVIL.’

 - Paul Arthur Miller, former member

The teachings are rooted in 19th-century England, ex-followers and Baer say, where a husband and wife — known only as “the Wyeths” — woke from the same dream and wrote down the karmic tenets and symbols they remembered.

“They don’t give you any sources. There’s no dogma you can reference. It’s just word of mouth,” an ex-member said. “You just believe what you’re told.”

The Light chairman instructs followers to obsessively look for symbols in dreams and their everyday lives.

Ex-members told The Post they couldn’t even have artwork or bric-a-brac in their homes unless it contained one of the signs, which include an “owl,” or watcher protecting Light members, and a cross with an “X,” the group’s greeting sign.

“They’re brainwashed. They’re obsessed,” said Miller, who is writing a screenplay on his experience in the Light. Members aren’t allowed to associate with “know-nots,” the term for people who aren’t in the Light.

“You were always told if you leave the Light, you’re subjected to evil . . . because you don’t have protection,” Miller said.

Miller finally worked up the courage to leave the group in the 1990s. The last straw was a member spying on him as he dined with a male suitor.

“How dare you be seen in a restaurant frequented by the Light with that blatant homosexual?” the member seethed.

Miller left a letter in Denton’s mailbox notifying him he was done. His parents left six months later. “My dad [later] apologized for getting us into this thing,” he said.

He is estranged from his three sisters, who are still in the group.

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An old photo provided by ex-member Paul Arthur Miller of Congregation for the Light members.Photo: Helayne Seidman

“I didn’t start living until I left the Light,” Miller said. “I want people to know it’s OK to leave, to reclaim their independence of thought and pursue their own life dreams.”

Another ex-follower, who requested anonymity, said he was booted from his home at age 15 because he questioned the teachings and refused to throw away his Black Sabbath records.

“They believe in a master Aryan race . . . that lived on Atlantis,” he said, adding that black, red and yellow races existed, but a blue race was wiped out. “Once you get to a certain level, they start to tell you these things.

“They think they are otherworldly,” he added. “They carry themselves like they’re robotic . . . they’re not of this earth, everything else is filth and [they] don’t want to associate.”

He endured brutal beatings by his parents, who he believes were instructed by Kates. “I had this reputation of being a bad kid when I wasn’t,” said the ex-member. “I was an abused kid.”

His mother was told she was Kates’ daughter on Atlantis 10,000 years ago and believed she was a high priestess of the Light.

“Everybody is brainwashed in this thing,” he said. “They’re conditioned to think and behave in a certain way, and it starts in childhood. Children are taught to fear.” The Light also teaches that children aren’t human until they reach the age of 13, he said.

The Light’s solution to his sister’s rebelliousness was to marry her off to a church bachelor in his 40s. “She was a gorgeous 19-year-old, and they married her off to this schlub,” the ex-member said.

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Paul Arthur Miller wipes away tears telling stories of his time with “the Light.”Photo: Helayne Seidman

He said he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder because of his upbringing in the group.

“If they want to clear their name of suspicion, they need to start answering questions,” he said. “They should maybe have a sign out in front of their building if they’re listed as a church.”

Another ex-member said he and his mother were forced to put money in a wooden box by the entrance before they jumped ship in the late ’70s.

He remembers Kates announcing the group would incorporate as a church to get tax breaks. Shortly after, the member was kicked out for marrying a Catholic woman who refused to join the Light.

“There was always so much turmoil when someone chose a partner from the outside world,” he said, adding that parents often married their children off to other members in the group.

“It was not uncommon for girls as young as 18 marrying … men who were quite a bit older,” he said.

The exiled follower said that it took many years for him to get over the experience and that he has never shared more than superficial details with his adult children.

“It still stands out as the worst time of my entire life,” he said. “But I was . . . fortunate enough to have people still in my life that loved me and helped me through it.”

Baer, a charming and sharply dressed man who uses a cane and believes he was an Apache in a past life, denies the group is a “cult.”

“We’re not a religion. We’re what a church should be,” said the Ohio native. “The principles are to have a decent, sane and healthy life and to be responsible for our own actions.

‘WE’RE NOT A RELIGION. WE’RE WHAT A CHURCH SHOULD BE.’

 - Tom Baer, leader of Congregation for the Light, denying claims from ex-members

“You can’t do that in one life,” he added. “It’s impossible.”

Baer denied that the group supports corporal punishment, but said, “If I want to spank my kids, it’s no one else’s business . . . Even Jesus said, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’ But it’s not what you do first.”

The preacher said that children aren’t indoctrinated until they are teens and that if a child dies before age 13 it’s because they committed suicide in a previous life.

Congregation for the Light runs a nonprofit named after Kates, who died in the late 1970s. The foundation’s address is at a Brooklyn auto shop.

The group’s revenues were $116,860 in 2012 and $338,429 in 2011, tax forms show. The documents reveal a vague accounting of expenses, which include $84,000 for “totally physically and mentally disabled, total care, assistance for nurses’ aides.”

Baer, who lives on an upper floor of the Light’s brownstone, said the nonprofit gets 10 percent of its funds from donations and the rest from estates when members die. The group pays for members who are down on their luck and for their home care.

“It’s not a cult. It’s not a scam,” Baer said. “You can come 3,000 times and you’re not going to have to pay a dime.”

Islamists slaughter another tribe in Iraq...what a wonderful example of Islam they set.

Islamic State: Militants kill 50 from Iraqi Anbar tribe

Militants from Islamic State (IS) have killed at least 50 members of an Iraqi tribe in western Anbar province, officials and tribal leaders say.

The men and women from the Al Bu Nimr tribe are reported to have been lined up and shot in retaliation for resisting the jihadists.

A number of people from the same tribe were also found dead in mass graves earlier this week.

IS militants control large areas of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

Meanwhile, AFP news agency quoted the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying that at least 100 IS fighters had been killed in three days of fighting for the strategic Syrian border town of Kobane.

On Friday, some 150 Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters crossed from Turkey to join Syrian Kurds who have been defending the town against IS for six weeks.

The Observatory says that more than 950 people have died in the battle, more than half of them from IS.

Deliberate strategy

A local official told the Associated Press news agency that the Sunni Muslim tribesmen and women were killed on Friday in the village of Ras al-Maa, north of the provincial capital Ramadi.

Faleh al-Issawi said many members of the tribe had to flee their homes near the town of Hit last month when it was captured by IS.

The Al Bu Nimr tribe had joined the Shia-dominated government's campaign against IS.

There have been many other such killings, as pressure mounts on the tribes to swing one way or the other. 

Analysts say mass killings are also a very deliberate strategy by IS to spread terror in their opponents.

One local official, Sabah Karhout, described the killings in Anbar province as a crime against humanity and called for more international support for Sunni tribes fighting the militants in Anbar.

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the killing of Sunni tribesmen in Iraq by Islamic State fighters was the brutal "reality of what we're dealing with" in the conflict.

The US carried out an air drop of food supplies, the first of its kind, to the Al Bu Nimr tribe just a few days ago.

IS has taken over large parts of Anbar province as it expands its territory, currently about one-third of both Iraq and Syria. 

The BBC's Jim Muir says the recently-formed Iraqi government is trying to win the Sunni tribes over, seeing them as a key element in the fight against IS, which in turn is trying to deter them from that course. 

But Baghdad has not yet succeeded in persuading the bulk of the tribes to turn on IS.

The tribes want guarantees that they will be given a serious degree of devolution for their areas and a real say in national decision-making, our correspondent adds.

These scientific studies show that airport Ebola screenings are largely ineffective. How political correctness is killing us. Intentionally?

These scientific studies show that airport Ebola screenings are largely ineffective

The debate over whether the Obama administration should ban flights from Ebola-stricken nations has been raging for weeks, fueled by fears of an outbreak in the United States and a lot of election-inspired finger pointing.

The Department of Homeland Security last week imposed new travel restrictions for anyone arriving from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, requiring those passengers to come through one of five major U.S. airports in Atlanta, Chicago, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.

Those travelers now have to submit to temperature checks and questioning. But scientific studies published by the National Institutes of Health have shown that similar protocols were largely ineffective during an outbreak of Swine Flu in 2009, as Government Executive pointed out in an article last week.

A study of screenings at Australia’s Sydney Airport during the Swine Flu pandemic found that fever was detected in 5,845 passengers during the roughly two-month period covered by the analysis. Only three of those individuals ended up having the virus, which is known in the scientific community as H1N1.

Researchers determined that 45 patients who acquired the illness overseas would have “probably passed through the airport” during the roughly two-month period covered in the study. That means the screeners likely missed the vast majority of individuals who arrived at the facility with Swine Flu, despite grabbing thousands of travelers who showed signs of fever.

The report said only 0.5 percent of H1N1 cases in New South Wales, Australia, were detected at the airport, whereas 76 percent were identified in emergency rooms and at general-practice medical centers.

Ultimately, researchers concluded that airport temperature checks were “ineffective in detecting cases of [Swine Flu].” Similarly, a study of fever screening in Japan during the pandemic determined that “reliance on fever alone is unlikely to be feasible as an entry screening measure.”

Indeed, temperature checks didn’t work for Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died from Ebola this month after arriving in Dallas. Duncan did not have a fever when he landed in Texas on Sept. 28, and he said he had not been in contact with Ebola patients in his native country, although that later proved to be a false statement.

The Australian study concluded that officials should consider “more effective interventions, such as contact tracing in the community.” The findings are in line with what federal officials have said: That the best way to prevent Ebola from spreading is to identify everyone whom infected individuals have contacted.

Obama’s Border Policy Fueled Epidemic, Evidence Shows. American kids died to fulfill Obama's political goals

Obama’s Border Policy Fueled Epidemic, Evidence Shows

Posted By Neil Munro On 11:29 PM 10/31/2014 I

The deadly EV-D68 enterovirus epidemic, which struck thousands of kids this fall, was likely propelled through America by President Barack Obama’s decision to allow tens of thousands of Central Americans across the Texas border, according to a growing body of genetic and statistical evidence.

The evidence includes admissions from top health officials that the epidemic included multiple strains of the virus, and that it appeared simultaneously in multiple independent locations.

The question can be settled if federal researchers study the genetic fingerprint of the EV-D68 viruses that first hit kids in Colorado, Missouri and Illinois to see if they are close relatives to the EV-D68 viruses found in Central America.

Jayden Broadway, 9, was diagnosed with EV-D68 in early October (http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/enterovirus-spreads-across-the-nation/)

Officials ”have to do the genetic analysis” to disprove or prove the link, Nora Chapman, an enterovirus scientist at the University of Nebraska, told The Daily Caller.

But there’s already more than enough statistical evidence for American citizens to demand that scientists test the viruses to see if Obama’s progressive border priorities spread the dangerous contagion throughout the country during 2014.

So far, that virus has been found in nine American kids who died from illness, has apparently inflicted unprecedented polio-like paralysis in roughly 50 kids, and has put hundreds of young American kids into hospital emergency wards and intensive care units throughout more than 40 states.

A series of government researchers, health experts and academics refused to comment, or else urged self-censorship, when they were pressed by TheDC for statistical and scientific data that would exonerate Obama and his deputies.

“I would just steer away from that— it is not helpful, so why bring it up,” said Lone Simonsen, a professor at George Washington University’s Department of Global Health and the research director of the university’s Global Epidemiology Program. “A better angle [is] ‘We’re just learning what this outbreak is all about,’” she told TheDC.

Columbia University researcher Rafal Tokarz, one of the nation’s top experts on the EV-D68 virus, declined to comment to TheDC about the impact of Obama’s border policies. “I cannot comment… and at this time it would not be appropriate for me to do so… I would really rather not comment,” he said in email conversations.

The issue is dangerous for scientists because it could spike existing public opposition to the unpopular effort by Obama, Democrats and business-backed Republicans to increase the migration of foreign nationals — including many foreign scientists — into the United States. That inflow is a top priority for the Democratic leaders, who have the power to make life difficult for grant-dependent American scientists who discover politically damaging information.

Eli Walker was EV-D68′s first casualty this year (photo: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/new-jersey-preschooler-dies-from-enterovirus-d68/)

That sensitivity showed up Oct. 16, when a top staffer for Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a champion of increased immigration from Latin America, denounced the evidence for an Obama-disease link: “Rush [Limbaugh], don’t let facts dissuade you! Enterovirus outbreak likely not coming from immigrants,” Guttierez communications director Douglas Rivlin tweeted, while linking to an article that tried to stigmatize investigations into any possible link.

On Oct. 29, The New York Times produced a vague article about EV-D68′s possible role in the paralysis cases, headlined ”Doctors Mystified by Paralysis in Dozens of Children.” The article quoted Mark Pallansch, who heads the viral diseases unit at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying “we don’t have a single clear hypothesis that’s the leading one at this point.” He also said that American kids have less than a one-in-a-million chance of being paralyzed. The Times ignored the possible link to Obama’s border policy.

But public trust in government would nudge upward if there is strong scientific evidence against the widespread concern that Obama recklessly loosed the EV-D68 epidemic. The Snopes.com site  tried to debunk the idea, but could only reject it as “problematic.”

The EV-D68 controversy is a weaker version of the Ebola fight, where Obama has opposed stringent federal and state barriers to the arrival of foreign travelers who may be carrying Ebola. The EV-D68 virus is far, far less dangerous than Ebola, but it also may be harder to counter because it has now spread throughout the United States.

There is no vaccine for EV-D68, so health experts expect more victims.

EV-D68 is one of at least 100 types of enteroviruses, although it is considered more threatening than most others.

CDC officials estimate that all enteroviruses cause between 10 to 15 million infections in the United States each year. There are no visible symptoms in roughly 90 percent of enterovirus infections, so hospitals have rarely spent the time and money to actually test for the confirmed presence of particular enteroviruses. Moreover, testing has to be done early, because the viruses are killed as patients recover. The testing that has been done, however, showed that enteroviruses were found in 49,637 ill patients in the United States from 1970 to 2005.

But there were only 26 confirmed EV-D68 infections in the United States during the 1970 to 2005 period.

There have been nearly 20 confirmed cases of EV-D68 in Ohio alone (photo: http://wdtn.com/2014/10/27/girl-paralyzed-after-complications-with-enterovirus-d68/)

Overseas, EV-D68 outbreaks are also rare. Since 2008, there’s been a few small outbreaks— 120 people in Japan, and 21 in the Philippines, for example. The Netherlands saw 10 cases in 2012, three in 2013 and eight in 2014. The United Kingdom saw three cases in 2013 and two in 2014 in young kids.

The U.S. EV-D68 infection numbers jumped after 2008, producing 79 confirmed cases between 2009 and 2013, including 47 cases in 2011.

In 2012 and 2013, multiple small enterovirus outbreaks  —- and outbreaks of the rare A-71 enterovirus —- were seen in California.

The California A-71 outbreak is suspected to have caused the polio-like paralyzation of 20 kids by February 2014, only a few of which have recovered. CDC researchers identified 23 paralysis cases from January 2012 to June 2014, with a median age of 10, according  Dr. Daniel Feikin, chief of the epidemiology branch in the CDC’s viral respiratory diseases section.

But the early 2014 California cluster is likely not linked to EV-D68, Dr. Steve Oberste, chief of the polio and picornavirus laboratory branch in CDC’s Division of Viral Disease, said Oct. 3. “We didn’t see the upswing in [EV-D68-like] respiratory illness until August,” he said.

The big epidemic arrived in August 2014.

That coincides with the big inflow of roughly 40,000 young Central American migrants in the summer of 2014.

“By August 22, our bed capacity was [occupied] beyond 100 percent,” said Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, director of the Infectious Diseases Division of Children’s Mercy Hospital and Clinic, in Kansas City, Missouri. “We had a census of 308 [victims]; one of the very first times ever that we’ve seen a census that high,” she told CDC officials in a Sept. 16 conference call hosted by CDC officials.

EV-D68 left Madison Grigsby, 8, paralyzed from the waste down (photo: http://wdtn.com/2014/10/27/girl-paralyzed-after-complications-with-enterovirus-d68/)

By Sept. 3, Kansas City had treated 500 children, almost 100 of whom were treated in the intensive care ward.

In Chicago, “We had such a crush of patients that on September 9 we had to take the extraordinary step of closing our emergency room and putting it on bypass, so closing it to ambulance admissions,” Dr. Daniel Johnson, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital, said in a phone conference.

Few of the many sick kids were formally tested for EV-D68, partly because the test is slow, expensive and not useful for doctors. That’s because EV-D68 victims get the same general treatment as other enterovirus victims.

By Sept. 8, hospitals in 12 states were reporting cases of EV-D68-like infections.

By mid-September, more tests were being conducted, and 153 patients were fully confirmed as EV-D68 victims in 18 states, including California.

By October , the EV-D68 virus was confirmed in 538 victims in 43 states, said Dr. Daniel Feikin, chief of the epidemiology branch in the CDC’s viral respiratory diseases section. Most of the victims were young children.

On Oct. 24, the number of confirmed infections reached 998. That’s 300 times the infection rate seen in the 33-year period from 1970 to 2003.

But the scale of any outbreak doesn’t reveal its source or cause.

Enterovirus D68 hits a Denver area school (photo: http://video.foxnews.com/v/3804544070001)

Epidemics happen when populations mix, or when viruses mutate and combine to overcome peoples’ evolved immune defenses, said Chapman, who is a board member of the Enterovirus Foundation.

Disease experts “assume there are many places in the world and in the U.S. where viruses are still contained” in partial isolation, she said.

A 2010-2011 survey of 3,375 ill young children south of Texas showed that enteroviruses are common in South and Central America.

The researchers collected virus samples and found 74 kids infected with enteroviruses, including 10 kids infected with EV-D68, according to the 2012 study, titled, “Human rhinoviruses and enteroviruses in influenza-like illness in Latin America.”

According to the study, 25 percent of tested children in Nicaragua had enteroviruses or similar rhinoviruses.  The researchers also “identified two cases [in Peru] of EV-A71, an [enterovirus] agent traditionally associated with hand-foot-and-mouth disease, as well as severe neurological and cardiac complications.” The primary author of the paper, Josefina Garcia, word for the taxpayers’ National Institute of Health. She did not respond to emails from TheDC.

But populations don’t share a virus unless they mix.

Severe symptoms can develop in patients with little-to-no warning (photo: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/enterovirus-spreads-across-the-nation/)

Since 2011, Obama and his deputies have allowed 170,000 adults, children and youths from Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras to cross the border and apply for green cards.

Under existing immigration law, Obama could have barred the migration and repatriated the first waves of migrants in 2010 and 2011. He did not block the flow, but instead directed federal agencies to let the growing number of migrants settle throughout the United States.

The migration was rational for Central Americans because it allows them to live, work and study in a peaceful society that provides financial support and opportunity to poor people. It can also be seen as a moral obligation for the Central American parents, because it allows their kids to attend American schools, which gives them a chance to earn a decent living in an increasingly high-tech world.

There’s also no evidence that any migrants knew they were carrying EV-D68, partly because the vast majority of adult carriers are symptom-free. That puts them in the same situation as the American adults who unknowingly carried the virus as the epidemic spread.

Under current practices, officials do not screen temporary visitors — tourists and guest-workers, mostly — for disease, said Jessica Vaughan, policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies. However, applicants for green cards are screened for a few dangerous diseases, such as tuberculosis, Ebola and some sexually-transmitted diseases, she said.

Immigration policy has been incorrectly blamed for previous epidemics. For example, a 2009 rise in pertussis cases was blamed by some people on migrants from Mexico. However,  the disease was previously common in the U.S., and Mexican vaccination policies were considered good.

The majority of the 170,000 migrants are working-aged youths and adults, who are unlikely to spend much time with American kids.

But there was also a large number of migrants aged 12 and younger.

The inflow of young kids crossing the border with smugglers or with a parent rose from a few hundred in 2011 to roughly 40,000 in 2014, as more Central Americans recognized Obama’s welcoming policy.

Five-month old Lancen Kendall was pronounced brain dead only days after being diagnosed with EV-D68 (photo: http://www.azfamily.com/news/health/Phoenix-Infant-Dies-From-Enterovirus-279500342.html)

The total inflow has to be calculated from two sets of incomplete federal data.

The first set of data shows the number of children, youths and adults who told federal officials they were unaccompanied children aged 17 or below.

In 2011, border officers “encountered” 993 of these so-called “unaccompanied minors,” said a federal report. Another 10,146 came over the border by October 2012; another 20,805 came over by October 2013; and another 51,705 came over by October 2014. That adds up to 86,049 children and youths.

But few of those migrants were kids. Nearly all were teenagers or young adults.

For example, in the 12 months up to October 2013, only 283 of the 37,759 “unaccompanied minors” were aged younger than six, according to data provided by Pew Research Center.  During the same year, 3,162 kids aged 6 to 12 arrived, yielding 3,445 under-13s in one year. Another 7,465 kids aged under 12 arrived by May 31, said Pew.

But Pew’s data from 2013 and 2014 data includes roughly 17,000 “unaccompanied” people from Mexico, who were apparently repatriated.

Still, Pew’s data suggests that only one-eighth, or 10,910 of the 86,049 “unaccompanied’ migrants, were aged 12 or under.

An October government reports that 20,805 “unaccompanied” Central Americans arrived in 2013, and 51,705 “unaccompanied” people arrived in 2014. That’s 72,510 “unaccompanied” people in 2013 and 2014. If one-eighth were younger than aged 13, then roughly 2,500 under-13s arrived in 2013, and 6,500 under-13s arrived in 2014.

The inflow of roughly 9,000 under-13 children from Central America were guided by smugglers or relatives to the Texas border, and then handed over to U.S. border agencies. Obama’s agencies knowingly relayed most of these 9,000 “unaccompanied” kids to their parents or relatives living illegally in the United States.

But a second set of federal data shows that a much larger number of children arrived in so-called “family units” in 2013 and 2014.

These groups consist of at least one adult and at least one child. The vast majority of the “family units” consisted of one women and one or two young kids from Central America.

Roughly 14,855 people came over in 2013 in “family units,” and another 68,445 “family unit” people arrived in 2014, according to federal data. That’s a total of 83,300 “family unit” people, with roughly 40.000 under-13 kids in two years. Only a few hundred migrants were immediately sent home, even though the president has the authority to repatriate them. Instead, Obama’s deputies released nearly all of the parents and kids to travel where they wished, pending their eventual appearance in court.

When the two sets of data are combined, a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that 9,000 Central American kids aged 12 and younger arrived by September 2013, and 40,000 more arrived by August 2014.

New York has dozens of confirmed EV-D68 cases (photo: http://video.foxnews.com/v/3781483062001)

The Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services has released a list of states where it sent the unaccompanied children and youths. The states included Missouri, Colorado, Illinois and Iowa. But the federal government does not say where the much-larger number of people in “family units” decided to settle during 2013 and 2014.

Immigrants’ advocates said they settled in the many cities that already have resident populations of Central Americans.

The spread of EV-D68 has been very different from the usual flu epidemics, in which new strains annually sweep across the country from coast to coast, or from north to south.

For example, the H1-NI strain of flu first emerged in Mexico in 2009, and swept through the United States from the south to the north, said Dr.  Nelson, a professor at the Johns Hopkins university. The flu “often moves across the country [but] its doesn’t always move in the same direction,” he told TheDC.

But the EV-D68 outbreak is very different, and is compatible with the population-mix option described by Chapman.

On Sept. 12, CDC officials described the outbreaks as geographically separated. “To further characterize these two geographically distinct observations, nasopharyngeal specimens from most of the patients with recent onset of severe symptoms from both facilities were sequenced… [and] identified [EV-D68] in 19 of 22 specimens from Kansas City and in 11 of 14 specimens from Chicago,” the CDC reported.

The European version of the CDC suggested in late September that the epidemic appeared independently in several locations. “An epidemiological link across the clusters reported in several U.S. states has not yet been established, and it cannot be ruled out that the virus is circulating independently in several locations,” said the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. That paper was reviewed by Susan Gerber, head of the CDC’s respiratory virus division in CDC’s viral disease office.

The EV-D68 epidemic suddenly appeared in Missouri, Colorado and Chicago in the second week of August, sometimes even before schools opened.

The schools opened Aug. 5  in the city surrounding the Colorado hospital.  The outbreak was noticed Aug. 8, once a number of kids were hospitalized with enterovirus-like symptoms tripled, and some were paralyzed. “The majority of our cluster [of paralyzed kids] has shown minimal improvement at this point,” Dr. Kevin Messacar from Children’s Hospital of Colorado, said Oct. 3.

Just several days after schools opened Aug. 11 in Missouri’s Kansas City, the local children’s hospital saw a spike in enterovirus patients. The hospital notified the CDC on Aug. 19 about the problem, which it first noted on Aug. 8. Just after Aug. 21, the Children’s Mercy hospital put out an an alert asking if other hospitals were seeing the same crush of sick kids. “From the emergency medicine listserv, we got multiple [responses] — approximately 10 — that right off the bat said ‘Yes, we are seeing the same thing,’ and we similarly had responses from colleagues on the Emerging Infection Network,” said Dr. Jackson.

Chicago schools opened Sept. 20, but the infection had been noticed a month earlier. “On August 23, CDC was notified by the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital in Illinois of an increase in patients similar to those seen in Kansas City,” according to a report by the CDC.

The epidemic quickly appeared at many other hospitals.

Tabatha Vassey’s 4-year old attended the same preschool as Eli Walker (http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/enterovirus-cases-spread-to-43-states/)

In Chicago for example, Loyola University Medical Center also had eight cases in the week starting Aug. 18, also before school opened. In the next week, Loyola had 25 cases and another 40 in the first week of September. “It’s the main problem of our pediatric floor right now,” Anne Dillon, a hospital spokeswoman told the Chicago Tribune in early September.

Iowa had an outbreak in Des Moines starting mid-August, just before the schools opened Aug. 20.

The outbreaks also appeared in many states, sometimes isolated from the first outbreaks.

By Sept. 8, EV-D68 was found in Utah alongside Colorado, and in Kansas and Oklahoma, between Missouri and Colorado. The disease was found in Iowa and Kentucky, alongside Illinois. But it was also found in Michigan and Ohio, due east of Illinois. And it was detected further south, in Alabama and Georgia.

“Kinley Galbreath, from Hamilton, has spent the past three weeks in intensive care at Children’s of Alabama, where she remains on a ventilator– paralyzed from her arms to her legs,” reads an Oct. 8 TV report from Alabama.

“Her mom, Kim Nichols, has remained by Kinley’s side since the [five-year-old] little girl was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with the potentially fatal respiratory illness enterovirus D-68.”

Speaking exclusively to ABC 3340, the mother said: “As she was getting ready to doze off, she said ‘Mommy, my hands are going numb,’ and by that point she started to lose movement in her neck.”

“On the third day is when she lost movement from her legs down,” her mother continued. “The only thing she’s had control of has been her toes. And that’s what she wiggles to let me know something’s wrong. And she’ll blink her eyes for yes, and won’t blink her eyes for no.’”

There are three genetically distinct subtypes of EV-D68. These subtypes are technically called “clades” and all three are apparently contributing to the 2014 epidemic.

TheDC asked Oberste — the top CDC official — if all three clades are involved in the epidemic.

“In the current outbreak, there is one major group/clade which contains the vast majority of viruses, a minor group/clade that is related to the major group, and an outlier group/clade that has only a few viruses in it,” the CDC replied.

That’s critical information, because viral epidemics are usually powered by one new variety of a familiar virus. For example, the annual flu epidemics usually consist of a new mutation of an older flu virus. Because it is new, it bypasses immune responses that people acquired during prior flu waves, and then quickly jumps from person to person across the United States.

If confirmed, the presence of many strains would be further evidence that a population movement triggered the outbreaks, said Eden Wells, an assistant epidemiology professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.

The single-virus explanation was offered by Tokarz in the Oct. 2 issue  of The New York Times. A “hypothesis of mine is that the strain that’s circulating now probably is a novel variant,” he said.

But Tokarz’s suggestion that the epidemic is powered by a single mutated strain is undermined by Oberste’s admission that the epidemic has three strains.

When CDC officials were asked by TheDC to explain this multi-city, multi-strain anomaly, they waffled: “There is no evidence that unaccompanied children brought EV-D68 to the United States; we are not aware of any of these children testing positive for the virus,” Oberste replied.

Oberste’s declaration that the CDC has not found a link is very different from saying that there is no link.

Chapman, of the Enterovirus Society, is agnostic. The epidemic may have been caused by a combination of population mixing and the emergence of a new mutation in a single strain of EV-D68, she said: “It is probably both.”

Emily Otrando, 10, died less than 24 hours after coming down with EV-D68 (photo: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/enterovirus-cases-spread-to-43-states/)

Viruses mutate at predictable rates, allowing scientists to track the virus’s changes, geographic movement and, sometimes, their precise origins.

This year, more than 50 American and African scientists tracked the movement of the Ebola virus from Guinea into Sierra Leone in May 2014. The study examined viruses from 78 patients in Sierra Leone, and determined that the virus arrived in the country among mourners who attended a funeral in neighboring Guinea. The virus samples from the dead were first killed, then fragmented into billions of pieces, then mixed together, and then reassembled and detailed by gene-sequencing machinery in Cambridge, Mass.

In 2009, CDC scientists used similar technology to trace the H1-N1 virus back into Mexico. “Of the Mexican cases, 18 have been laboratory confirmed… as Swine Influenza A/H1N1, while 12 of those are genetically identical to the Swine Influenza A/H1N1 viruses from California,” the World Health Organization reported in April 2009.

Tokarz has done similar work with the EV-D68 virus, and used a 2012 article to show the variety of strains within its three major clades. “The diversity within each of the three primary clades appears to have arisen only recently, with [origin dates] of 1997 and 1999 for clades A and C, respectively, and of 2007 for clade B,” he wrote in a 2012 article.  Tokarz also looked to EV-68 outbreaks in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America — but not southern America —and reported that “based on the data currently available, the USA appears to have been a source for much of the [international] EV-D68 diversity that we have sampled,” he wrote.

Theoretically, scientists can use the same fingerprinting techniques to track the viruses in the 2014 epidemic back to their sources, said Chapman.

But the EV-D68 family of viruses mutates rapidly, and many strains are already widespread in the population, so it may be difficult to track the 2014 epidemic back to its origin, she said.

Finding the source via genetic fingerprinting may be difficult, said Wells: “Viruses do change often enough, so it it made be difficult to say what came first… I’m not certain we’ll find a smoking gun.”

So far, the CDC has mapped the complete genome of one EV-D68 virus taken from a U.S. victim, and has partial maps of viruses from several more U.S. patients, said Oberste, the CDC’s official. The gene maps are available at the CDC’s Genbank website.

“We are currently assembling all available EV-D68 sequences so we can analyze the relationships” among the various strains, Oberste told TheDC. “We are working on a comprehensive analysis for publication.”

But officials waffled when TheDC asked if they would compare the U.S. 2014 strains to the Latin American samples collected in the 2012 survey.

“The regions of the virus genome that were sequenced in the [2012] Virology Journal paper are not the standard genome region for enteroviruses (and they are not regions that provide sufficient resolution to look at detailed relationships), so the Latin American viruses cannot be directly compared with our current data,” he said.

In prior outbreaks, when there was political consensus for an investigation, researchers actively looked for untested virus samples and reanalyzed older virus samples to complete the fingerprint matching.

So, Which Is It?

There’s plenty of evidence from government agencies and from doctors that the epidemic suddenly appeared in many places after the arrival of the 40,000 young migrants in the summer of 2014, and that it included many strains of EV-D68.

Scientists likely can use gene-sequencing technology to disprove or prove any genetic link with the EV-D68 samples found in Latin America, or differences to viruses found in the United States before 2009.

“It is early to draw conclusion or to make associations, certainty about causation…[although] I totally understand why people are trying to reach for associations,“ Wells said.

But that’s not a priority for the government-funded researchers. “The interest right now is to understand the behavior of the virus and whether or not this virus has changed its infectiousness or its virulence, its severity, since the previous years… that’s No. 1,” said Wells.

“Our issue is not to say ’It came from here or there or wherever.’”

Let's not be shy about it. This is what Democrats knew would happen and they welcome it.

EXCLUSIVE–IMMIGRATION CRISIS: 94% OF BORDER CROSSERS SKIP COURT HEARINGS OVER 11-WEEK PERIOD

Thousands of family units that recently entered the United States illegally failed to appear before immigration judges between July 18 and October 7 of this year.

Documents from the Executive Office of Immigration Review provided to the House Judiciary Committee this week and exclusively obtained by Breitbart News offer a brief snapshot into the failure of certain undocumented immigrants who've been released into the United States to appear in immigration court. 

According to the EOIR documents, in that two-and-a-half month period from mid-July to early October, immigration judges across the country rendered 3,885 decisions on removal cases dealing with “aliens” in family units. Of those decisions, 94 percent (3,661) were made “in absentia,” or the alien’s failure to appear resulted in an order of removal. 

The document also showed that 9,874 cases were still pending over those months. 

Also during that same brief snapshot of time, there were 9,274 first hearings scheduled for unaccompanied minors. An EOIR document shows that of the 9,170 cases that appeared before a judge, there were 7,330 adjournments, 436 venue changes, and 1,404 decisions rendered.

Of the 1,404 decisions, 1,229 unaccompanied minors were ordered removed, 1,148 of which were made in absentia, or their order for removal resulted from a failure to show up.

This year the southern border experienced a massive wave of illegal immigration from unaccompanied minors and family units. The situation reached a fever pitch in the spring and summer months as the government strained to cope with the influx.

Overall, the fiscal year saw apprehensions of 68,541 unaccompanied minors and 68,445 family units illegally entering the U.S. Many of the apprehended unaccompanied minors and family units were simply released in the U.S with a notice to appear in court. 

The new EOIR data comes a little over a month after the Associated Press pinned the number of family units who failed to report back to immigration agents at 70 percent. 

Doubts chip away at nation's most trusted agencies...Obama's making everything political fundamental change at work

DOUBTS CHIP AWAY AT NATION'S MOST TRUSTED AGENCIES 
BY ADAM GELLER  
AP NATIONAL WRITER

Even as Americans' trust in government eroded in recent years, people kept faith in a handful of agencies and institutions admired for their steadiness in ensuring the country's protection.

To safeguard the president, there was the solidity of the Secret Service. To stand vigil against distant enemies, the U.S. nuclear missile corps was assumed to be on the job. And to ward off threats to public health, the nation counted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, in the space of just a few months, the reputations of all those agencies - as well as the Veterans Administration - have been tarred by scandal or tarnished by doubt. Maybe a public buffeted by partisan rhetoric and nonstop news should be used to this by now. But, with the CDC facing tough questions about its response to the Ebola outbreak, something feels different. Government is about doing collectively what citizens can't do alone, but its effectiveness is premised on trust.

A year ago, with Washington shut down and trust in government near records lows, the CDC still won a 75 percent approval rating, the highest of any federal agency, a poll by the Pew Research Center found. But when CBS News surveyed Americans in mid-October, just 37 percent said the agency was doing a good or excellent job.

"I always called the CDC the shining star of the federal agencies," said Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert on health law and policy at Georgetown University. "They were regarded with very high esteem and did an extraordinarily good job of protecting the American people. That has changed and I think (doubts about its handling of) Ebola is the epitome of that change."

That likely reflects the fears stirred by the disease - while people trust public health officials ordinarily, there is a heightened sensitivity now to perceived breaches in that confidence, said Nathan Carter, a University of Georgia psychology professor who has looked at declining trust in institutions over the last four decades.

But the speed with which the agency was held up for blame also reflects the overall degradation in trust, he said. The public and elected lawmakers are far less likely now than in the past to give government officials the benefit of the doubt or the room to make mistakes.

Faith in government has been declining since the Vietnam War and Watergate, with most of that distrust directed at elected officials, said Carroll Doherty, director of political research for Pew.

The balance between trust and doubt has swung increasingly toward the latter, Carter said. "I do think it's a big problem and how to repair that trust, that's probably the biggest question."

The public's positive views of the CDC go back many years. But the results of last year's poll by Pew are particularly striking now because many of the other agencies atop the rankings then have also since been tarnished.

The Homeland Security Department won a 66 percent approval rating a year ago. But that was before the Secret Service, which is a part of the agency, was caught in a number of lapses: among them, the agency's failure to stop a man armed with a knife from scaling the fence and running into White House and the unchecked entry of an armed contractor onto an elevator with the president. In the new CBS news poll, just 38 percent of those questioned rated the Secret Service's performance as good or excellent and 43 percent did so for its parent department.

The Veterans Administration was viewed favorably by 68 percent of those polled last year. But it too has since been swept up in a scandal over long wait times for veterans seeking care and records that were falsified to camouflage the problems. In the CBS poll, just 30 percent rated the VA as doing a good job.

It's impossible to know if the public's misgivings about the agencies are just temporary setbacks, and results from different polls may not be directly comparable. Researchers point out that Americans' views of government swing back and forth, depending on what's happening with the economy and national security.

It's certainly not the first time that the CDC has been targeted for criticism. In 1976, when nearly 200 people who'd attended an American Legion convention in Philadelphia fell ill and more than two dozen died, the agency was criticized for being slow to find the cause.

Over the years, the agency has had some "rough days," said Elizabeth Etheridge, author of "Sentinel for Health: A History of the Centers for Disease Control," published in 1992. "It's not unusual for the CDC to be involved in controversies. Medicine, as you know, is not perfect."

U.S. voters have long shown a split personality when it comes their views on government. More and more people distrust a government symbolized by a deadlocked Congress. But many have continued to vest considerable trust in the agencies, programs and government workers delivering the services people count on.

"I think it's actually an enormously important disjuncture," said Marc Hetherington, a Vanderbilt University political scientist who studies voter trust. "Government has a really bad reputation, but no one wants to do away with any of it."

The nation's deepened partisan divide has further undermined that trust. Republican voters are more suspicious of government led by the current Democratic president. Democratic-leaning voters were deeply distrustful of the government when it was led by George W. Bush, researchers say.

Ahead of next week's midterm elections, polls show many voters deeply dissatisfied with government's performance and ready to place blame on President Barack Obama and his party's candidates.

But Carter said data on public trust over time is worrisome because it shows that even when events like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks rally people around the government, the peaks of trust are never as high as in the past. It points to a gradual but unmistakable degradation in the public's belief in its institutions that he finds worrisome.

If Americans' belief in their government continues to ebb, he said, its raises the inevitable question: How long before trust runs out?

Medicare pays for drugs for the dead...why not they get to vote in Chicago and elsewhere.

Medicare paid for meds after patients were dead 

Call it drugs for the departed: A quirky bureaucratic rule led Medicare's prescription drug program to pay for costly medications even after the patients were deaThat head-scratching policy is now getting a second look.
A report released Friday by the Health and Human Services Department's inspector general said the Medicare rule allows payment for prescriptions filled up to 32 days after a patient's death — at odds with the program's basic principles, not to mention common sense.
"Drugs for deceased beneficiaries are clearly not medically indicated, which is a requirement for (Medicare) coverage," the IG report said. It urged immediate changes to eliminate or restrict the payment policy.
Medicare said it's working on a fix.
Investigators examined claims from 2012 for a tiny sliver of Medicare drugs — medications to treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS — and then cross-referenced them with death records. They found that the program paid for drugs for 158 beneficiaries after they were already dead. The cost to taxpayers: $292,381, an average of $1,850 for each beneficiary.
Medicare's "current practices allowed most of these payments to occur," said the report. It underscored that the problem extends beyond HIV drugs.
Investigators found that of 348 HIV prescriptions dispensed for dead beneficiaries, nearly half were filled more than a week after the patient died. Sometimes multiple prescriptions were filled on behalf of a single dead person.
Among the examples investigators documented:
— Medicare paid $1,200 for a prescription for a 90-year-old Boston-area beneficiary that was dispensed 25 days after he died. The man had no history of HIV in his Medicare record.
— A Miami pharmacy filled a prescription for an 80-year-old beneficiary 16 days after he died. Medicare paid $1,800 for two HIV drugs. That very day, the same pharmacy dispensed the same two drugs on behalf on an 81-year-old woman who died 10 days earlier. Neither had a history of HIV in their Medicare records.
Investigators don't know what happened to the medications obtained on behalf of dead people, but some may have been diverted to the underground market for prescription medicines. The report said HIV drugs can be targets for fraud because of their high cost.
Medicare is the government's premier health insurance program, providing coverage to about 55 million seniors and disabled people. Prescription coverage delivered through private insurance plans began in 2006 as a major expansion of the program. But it's also been a target for scams.
The report did not estimate the potential financial impact across the $85 billion-a-year Medicare prescription program known as Part D. But investigators believe the waste may add up to millions of dollars.
"The exposure for the entire Part D program could be significant," said Miriam Anderson, team leader on the report. "The payment policy is the same for all drugs, whether they are $2,000 drugs to treat HIV or $4 generic drugs."
In a formal response, Medicare agreed with the investigators' recommendations.
"After reviewing this report, (Medicare) has had preliminary discussions with the industry to revisit the need for a 32-day window," wrote Marilyn Tavenner, the Obama administration's Medicare chief.
Medicare had originally maintained that the date of service listed in the billing records could instead reflect when a pharmacy submitted bills for payment. That billing date might have actually occurred after a prescription was filled, since some nursing home and institutional pharmacies submit their bills in monthly bundles.
However, the inspector general's investigators found that about 80 percent of the prescriptions for dead beneficiaries were filled at neighborhood pharmacies, undercutting Medicare's first explanation.
Investigators said they stumbled on the billing problem during an examination of Medicare coverage for AIDS drugs. That previous investigation raised questions about expensive medications billed on behalf of nearly 1,600 Medicare recipients. Some had no record of an HIV diagnosis, but were prescribed the drugs anyway.
Prescription drug fraud has many angles. The high prices of certain drugs can create an underground market. And some medications, like painkillers and anti-anxiety pills, are sought by people with substance-abuse issues.
___

Which way warmer?

Snow showers, temperatures in 30s for Halloween night

Arctic Halloween Weather: Snow in Midwest, Record Lows for Eastern U.S.

Freeze warning issued for all of northern Alabama, portions of central Alabama

The Obama administration is giving an unprecedented number of political appointees top diplomatic positions...

Career Diplomats Worried About Influx of Political Appointees at State Department 

The Obama administration is giving an unprecedented number of political appointees top diplomatic positions, a move that has long frustrated career Foreign Service officials but has become a renewed point of contention this week with the departure of Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, the only career foreign service officer in the top echelons of Foggy Bottom leadership.

Burns, who served more than three decades as a diplomat, announced earlier this week that he would be heading to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His replacement has not yet been announced. The most talked-about candidates are Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken or current Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, both of whom would be political appointees.

It’s actually the norm for a political appointee to get the deputy slot. In the in the 41-year history of that position, Burns is the exception to the rule. But career officials say their wider concern is political appointees’ total takeover of all the top State Department positions, not only at the deputy level but also at the next-highest level, the undersecretary for political affairs slot, or the “P” position.

And even Burns, a seasoned diplomat who had recently helped in secret talks to get Iran to the negotiating table over its nuclear program, recognized the prevalence of political appointees serving in the White House’s National Security Council and alluded to frustration among the career ranks in a parting letter he wrote for Foreign Policy.

“The revolution in communications technology and the increasing role of both the National Security Council staff and other agencies over successive administrations have tended to bring out the more passive (or sometimes passive-aggressive) side of the State Department,” Burns wrote.

These are the kinds of concerns that Robert Silverman, the president of the American Foreign Service Association, made up of Foreign Service officers, says he’s hearing from his members.

“They care deeply about who their leadership is. They also care deeply about who their direct supervisor is. And here in Washington, that is increasingly people from outside the system with no experience in this position who take a lot of special handling,” Silverman told ABC News.

He noted that the top positions are not only concerned with the issues that the secretary of state works on, such as ISIS, Iran and North Korea, but also more the more mundane tasks that keep the department running, like those of the passport agency or child custody cases.

“We’re not opposed to political appointees -- it’s important to bring in outsiders with fresh perspectives,” he added. “It’s just completely out of balance.”

Another reflection of that lack of balance cited by AFSA and others is the ratio of political appointees to career officers that President Obama has chosen to serve as foreign ambassadors. In his second term, 41% of his ambassadorial appointees have been political, versus 58% career. His record over both terms is 64% career, 35% political -- second only to the record of George W. Bush, for whom political appointees counted as 36% of his total ambassadorial nominations.

But State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki rejected the notion that the influx of political appointees in the top leadership positions represented a lack of emphasis on the Foreign Service.

“While it would be inappropriate to speculate about pending decisions and nominations about the Department’s senior leadership, everyone should rest assured knowing that the Secretary doesn't just respect but reveres the institution that is the Foreign Service,” she said, adding that Secretary of State John Kerry is the son of a foreign service officer and has appointed more career officers in assistant secretary positions than “at any time in recent memory.”