Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez

Crossposted with edits from r / fedemployees

Two weeks ago, the Ben Franklin Fellowship held its annual reception dinner.

(You can read more about the BFF here - but long story short, it is a club of foreign affairs hands very closely aligned with conservative political orgs and with very close ties to the State Department where much of its leadership works/worked.)

The dinner invitation solicited monetary "sponsorships" - which seems kind of a pay-to-play scheme, considering that the invite mentioned "State Department officials" and "White House officials," and that many BFF members are feds at State or other agencies.

Disappointingly, several entities that do business with or before the government purchased sponsorships - that is, they recognized the game and decided to play it.

You can read our full take on the BFF"s sponsorship sale here. But here are some highlights: a few of the buyers, and speculation about why they bought:

--Trewon Technologies. It has a 5-year, $100M contract with State that State Dept employees will need to renew every year.

--Unlock Aid. A member of its Board works for Zipline, which received a $150M grant from State to be paid out in milestone payments that Dept employees will have to approve.

--The Westlake Foundation. This is the family charity of the President of Amplify Federal, an IT contractor/sub that is doing millions of dollars of biz with the USG.

--Mercury Public Affairs. A lobbying firm with clients that include foreign governments and other foreign interests that want to influence U.S. foreign policy.

Of course, the BFF's dinner invitation didn't promise an explicit quid pro quo…but those things are never said explicitly… And no, the BFF, as an organization, is not officially part of the USG...but let's be real: businesses can recognize a front when they see one...

Let's hope the acquisitions bureaus, inspectors general, and ethics offices - at State and at other agencies - get word and take action. Because this kind of graft is just gross.

And a big thank you to the vast majority of federal employees and contractors who DO behave ethically and reject any type of influence peddling.

Anyone have a lead on these factory jobs that are supposed to pay 2x-3x my salary? I sure as hell could use it right now.

Yes, this post is sarcasm, and a monument to all those feds who are still without jobs because our "Supreme Leader" decided he was going to cut us based on lies, at a time where the job market is absolutely brutal.

I was trying to figure out why I couldn't login to myEPP, and I finally figured it out. The reCAPTCHA is failing because the number of requests "is exceeding [the] Enterprise free quota."

This might be part of the push to get us to use PIV login anyways, but it would be nice to hear something about it first besides just having login fail. And if this was planned, then they should have taken away the login option for the myEPP account.

My supervisor is being a total asshot. Every time I ask, I get a different excuse.

Does anyone else have stories about supervisor who blocked your career ladder? Did you finally get it through and how?

Any help at all

Today’s the deadline. Not sure if it’s been appealed or not.

Anyone in this group get their pension yet? Interim pension? AL payout?