FERS Medical Retirement: One Crisis Before

That is how we live: One Crisis Before.  Before what?  That is the impending question; Before we go off the edge?  Before the stability of the family breaks apart?  Before someone goes “Postal”?  Before….  Then we should ask the converse question: Is that how we should live?  If the answer is a resounding, “No!” — then, why is it that we do not change?  Is it because we feel so powerless as to submit to the impotence of our self-made circumstances?

It is like Mr. Woodhouse, Emma’s aging father in Jane Austen’s novel, who reflects that “Life is like eating one bowl of gruel to the next” — of monotony, boredom, a life filled with stressful events, until that sudden turn of events occurs.  How did we get here?  Did we ever have a choice?  It is like the saying — “We went a bridge too far…”  And the consequences of going beyond the capacity to reinforce and secure the area?  Cut off; isolated; unable to regroup.

That is how most of us live in this modern life where leisure was promised and losses were promulgated.  What we gained — greater mental stresses because everyone’s focus was turned inward — to the computer; to having the requisite daily focus and concentration for engagement of cognitive duties; of constantly being connected via Smart Phones, Email, the Internet, etc.  Did evolution ever have the time to prepare for such a world?  Or did it work upon the physical body, only, adapting to dangers once foreseen but now outdated?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from an illness or disability such that you are now one crisis before, it may be time to consider preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Contact a FERS Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin to initiate the process before it becomes a bridge too far, and one crisis before.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

Medical Retirement Benefits for US Government Employees: A Slice of Paradise

Hank Worden played Moses Harper as the irritating sidekick alongside John Wayne in The Searchers.  At the end, he merely wanted a rocking chair to sit in, and rock the days and dusks away in view of the landscape’s beauty which told the story of the human narrative: of struggle, life and death; of wars and massacres; of the history of human inhumanity.

Perhaps that was his idea of a slice of paradise.  Everyone possesses a concept of it; for some, it is simple and fundamental; for others, complex and encapsulating endless greed.  Maybe it is just a place of your own on a mountaintop; a house in a quiet neighborhood; a family, or not; or a multi-million dollar mansion with wide and endless swaths of acreage.

Whatever constitutes one’s idea of a slice of paradise, that is what we live for.  For some, also, it is the negation of something.  We take for granted our health, and when we lose it, our idea of a slice of paradise is altered profoundly: For those in chronic pain, it is the negation or lessening of that pain; for those with anxieties and panic attacks and depression, just to get through the day without a breakdown.

For Federal employees and Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS may come closest to a realistic conception of a slice of paradise: For an opportunity to have some respite from the daily stresses of the workplace and attend to the priorities which envelope one’s daily life — the medical condition itself, which reveals that the fall of Adam and Eve, indeed, sliced paradise forever and a day.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Expertise

What constitutes it, and who determines the status of when it is achieved?  We hear about people who are “experts” in this or that, referring to either experience, association or credentials, and based upon that, we accept their status of being an “expert” in the field.  Can that be undermined by personal experience?

Say a person has a Ph.D. in a given field, has worked in the capacity of that field for 30 years, and everyone in the field refers to him as the “resident expert” or “the best of the best” in the field; and yet, in a given situation calling for his or her expertise, he or she fails, is wrong, or otherwise falls short of having provided any competent input.  Does that undermine the expert’s status as an expert, or does one shrug one’s shoulders and say, “Well, you can’t be right all of the time”?  Say a “non-expert”, during the gathering of expertise and amassing of various opinions in making a critical decision, suddenly pipes up and says something contrary to what Dr. X – with-the-Ph.D-with-30-years-of-experience believes and has stated, but in the end he turns out to be right — does that make him or her the new resident expert?

There are, of course, the various logical fallacies — like the fallacy of “association by reputation” or of presumed certitude based upon past experiences (refer to David Hume, for example); but the ultimate question may come down to a simple grammatical one: is the concept used as a noun, an adjective or an adverb?  How does one “gain” expertise, or attain the status of an “expert”, and can it be by experience alone, a credential earned, or by reputation gained — or a combination of all three?

How did Bernie Madoff swindle so many people for so many years?  Was he considered an “expert” in financial matters, and what combination of the tripartite status-making byline (i.e., reputation, experience and credentialing) did he possess to persuade so many to be drawn to him?  Or, is it sometimes merely greed and a proclivity of vulnerability to a good storyteller enough to persuade one that a certain-X is an “expert”?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have come to a point in their lives and careers where a medical condition has begun to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform one or more of the critical or “essential” elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, a certain level of expertise may be necessary before preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Ultimately, it is not “expertise” or some prior reputation that is important, but the accuracy of information received and the truth of the knowledge relied upon — and for that, one should do due diligence in researching not merely the “credentials” of those who declare some “expertise” in the area of Federal Disability Retirement Law, and not even self-puffery of self-promoting success, but in addition, an instinct as to the truth of what is stated.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Early OPM Retirement for Medical Incapacity: The many tomorrows yet to come

Does hope lie fallow when the basket of tomorrows become numbered too few?  When endless tomorrows lay before one’s imagination, too numerous to count that one need not bother, does that purport to show that one has a great quantity of hope, or merely that youth’s folly allows for a carefree tomorrow where an eternity of tomorrows can never be reduced to a handful beyond a few todays?  Can time and incremental portions of divided moments be quantified in that manner?

That has always been an anomaly for the undersigned writer — the quantification of time, as in the manner that religious beliefs are scoffed at when it comes to the story of genesis.  For, those who hold to the strict construction and literal meaning of the timeline of how old the earth is, count the obscure generational extensions of people who lived in former times, and somehow declare that the world is X-amount of years old.  How one can calculate with precision that which is not explicitly stated is a conundrum in and of itself, leaving aside the issue of whether time can be quantified if the order of the planetary system and our specific galactic orbit had not yet been established.

Evolutionists, of course, contend that the world was clearly created billions of years ago.  To both, the question is:  Tell me the logical difference between the following 2 statements — 1. The world was created a long time ago, and 2. The world was created billions of years ago.  Do humans have the capacity to imagine time beyond the present moment, or perhaps yesterday or a couple of days ago?  What does it mean to say to a person, “A type of human being walked the earth 10 million years ago”?  One can barely remember where one has placed the screwdriver used last week, and yet people want to put some significance upon a belief-system that purports to quantify time.

Ultimately, the question of whether one believes that the earth is a mere 10,000 years old, or billions of years in the making, is not a factual or scientific one; it is, a political condemnation that categorizes a person’s religious belief into a bifurcated system of: Is he/she “scientific” or “religious”?  In the end, time cannot be so easily quantified; rather, it is a basis of hope and an anticipation of a future yet to be resolved.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal and Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal position, time often becomes paralyzed, much like our imagined world of dinosaurs and prehistoric images of those Pleistocene eras and beyond; and as time is unable to be made meaningful except in the here and now — by imagining the many tomorrows yet to come — preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application that lets you project a life beyond the present-day circumstances of pain, medical conditions and deteriorating health, is the singular differentiating way that humans can separate themselves from other species: with hope.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: What we have to do

In once sense of the phrase, it denotes a duty or obligation; in another, the foundational basis of a practical, pragmatic nature – of that which we do, simply because it needs to be done in order to survive, to maintain a certain standard of living, or because we believe it is the “right” thing to do.  Each individual must decide for him or herself, of course, as to the criteria by which to determine that which we have to do, and the “what” will often be placed on a wide spectrum of moral ends that are meant to justify the means by which to proceed.

What we have to do – it is also a phrase that is said when shaking one’s head, as in the whispering to one’s self in gritting one’s teeth or biting our tongue and engaging in a soliloquy of thoughtful silence, saying, “What we have to do.”

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, despite the medical condition beginning to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal position, it is a familiar refrain – of working through the pain, of trying to endure the paralyzing panic attacks or the heightened anxiety and depression that pervades, and to try and hide the medical condition and do what we have to do in order to economically survive – until it reaches that crisis point where the medical condition cannot be controlled, cannot be hidden, and comes bursting out like NFL players running through the tunnel from the locker rooms of one’s mind and body.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is just one of those other things that can be characterized as what we have to do.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have a medical condition that begins to impede and prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the filing itself of an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is what we have to do, especially if the alternative is to stay at the job or walk away with nothing, which are actually no choices at all.

What we have to do – a familiar refrain for the Federal or Postal employee, and a necessary next step if you suffer from a medical condition that impedes or prevents you from performing one or more of essential elements of your job.  After all, you’ve been doing what you have to do all of your life, and this is just one more instance of it.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Life’s mortgage

We all know well the concept behind it – of borrowing against the object itself, in order to “half-possess”, occupy and enjoy it presently against a future promise that it will be paid over an incremental period of time.  Sort of like life itself, or at least of one’s health.  Borrowed time; life’s mortgage; banking on a better tomorrow; relying upon a promise being kept based upon today’s favorable circumstances over a lengthy period of time well into a future we can never be certain about.

Yet, because the collateral is the object itself – normally, the house that is being mortgaged – the loaning institution actually doesn’t take any gamble at all, even if the value of the collateral plunges below the agreed-upon amount to be paid; one is still obligated, no matter what.

It is sort of like life’s challenge itself – of the promise of a promising life based upon an anticipated health that will last until the day when one is suddenly gone.  But life doesn’t always work that way, just as the mortgage, lien and promise of financial growth doesn’t quite always fold out as planned, like the scrolled blueprint that keeps trying to roll back into an obscured cylinder with each attempt to lay it flat.

Sickness occurs; health deteriorates; the 30-year mortgage that was promised at the onset of the contract signed doesn’t unfold as anticipated, and sometimes a default occurs – like the health that deteriorates and the career that must be ended.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit accorded to all Federal and Postal employees under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, based upon the idea that recognizes that while a long-term commitment to a career is reasonably anticipated, there are instances where such a commitment may need to be modified in the event of failing health.  Unlike the bank’s position in a mortgage-relationship as lender-to-borrower, however, it is not quite all that one-sided.  There are options still open.

Thus, because Federal Disability Retirement requires only that a person be unable to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s position being occupied, the Federal or Postal employee is allowed to go out into the private sector and work at a job somewhat dissimilar (so long as there are “essential elements” which are not identical to the former Federal or Postal position), and make up to 80% of what the former Federal or Postal job pays currently.

For, in the end, life’s mortgage is unlike the home mortgage where the lender holds all of the proverbial cards; at least for the former, the great thing is that the reliance is upon the capacity of man’s ability, and not upon the fine print hidden within the banker’s contract.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: Paradoxes

Quine, probably the greatest logician since Bertrand Russell, notes that paradoxes often occur as a result of presumed beliefs otherwise left unstated, and once they are “fleshed out” through query and made explicit via closer scrutiny and analysis, the portion which befuddles often disappears.  Confusion within a language game, of course, is often a large part of it, and certain unstated preconditions and assumed facts otherwise implicit and hidden will leave the stated portion incomplete such that others must come along and unravel the mystery.

In a similar vein, statements made as “necessarily” so also retain unstated presumptions.  Thus, if we claim that “the sun will rise tomorrow”, we are asserting that it is “necessarily so”.  If a child asks, “Why is that so”, we will often revert to nothing more than Hume’s response that because it has always risen in the past, and the revolution of planets and rotation of the earth around the sun has been a reliable compass upon which we can depend, it is the regularity of events in the past that determine the necessary expectation of repetition for the future.

It is, then, those unstated or “hidden” presumptions that made certain statements and claims unclear, and the job of an attorney is to clarify that which is left in a muddle.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where it becomes necessary to file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the questions surrounding paradoxes and necessity can be important.

Medical conditions can certainly be paradoxes.  Without explanation, they can debilitate, progressively deteriorate and impact a person’s ability and capacity to continue on as before.  Even with a medical diagnosis, prescribed course of treatment and sometimes surgical intervention, they may remain a befuddlement because of a lack of knowledge or explanation.

Having such a medical condition may nevertheless require that the Federal or Postal employee file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits because the Federal or Postal employee is no longer able to perform one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job.  The filing itself becomes a “necessity”.

The gap between the paradox of the medical condition and the necessity of filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes quite clear: Necessity does not equal entitlement, and the paradox must be proven.  In doing so, implicit facts must be explained and explicated, and more than an argument of “because it has always been so” will have to be put forward to persuade OPM of the viability of one’s case.

To that extent, do not allow for concealed and presumed “facts” to defeat your Federal Disability Retirement application, and never allow your statement of facts to remain a paradox, lest it become “necessary” to engage further steps of appealing the Federal Disability Retirement process in pursuance of an approval from OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: The reservoir of vitriol

Do you ever wonder at the seemingly inexhaustible volume of time people spend on expending and expiating their reserve of malice, hatred and sheer meanness of being?  Time and energy spent on gossiping about others; of planning conspiratorial devices to undermine fellow coworkers, or to initiate harassing administrative sanctions and bureaucratic snafus in order to make life tougher, more miserable and uncomfortable for someone else.

More modern cars have a warning indicator informing the driver that the low fuel has resulting in the use of the “reserve tank”; for those whose carelessness can result with inaction ad infinitum, perhaps the depletion of such should require a further reservoir, and on and on — except for the impracticality of finding room for further gas tanks.   Ultimately, it all amounts to the same source, doesn’t it?  Whether you call it a “reserve tank” or from the primary one, depletion results from the aggregate of all, and the warning is merely a reminder to the clueless, and an excuse to nudge.

Similarly, at what point does a reservoir for vitriol need a warning indictor to light up for the source of such malice?  Or is human nature such that his or her depth of evil is irrepressible, and possesses an infinite chasm of depravity?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have suffered at the hands of an agency or the U.S. Postal Service, through harassment, intimidation and sheer vitriol, and merely because the Federal or Postal employee has committed the crime of suffering from a medical condition and therefore is unable to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, it is time to consider the innate nature of human malice, and determine whether it is even worth staying in an environment and atmosphere of negative returns.

Yes, careers are important, but at what cost?  Of course financial certainty provides a semblance of comfort, but to what end?  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a step not just to “get away”, but further, to reach for a goal in which health and human sacrifice are not exclusive possessions of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.  Understand the essence of human depravity; the reservoir of vitriol is inexhaustible, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the malice of man is only beginning.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Court of Sycophants

The word itself is a linear sequence of consonants and vowels which delight the linguistic palate of parallelism between sound and meaning; rolling off of the tongue, it begins with the soft purr of the ‘s’, then slides midway into the harsh and guttural clash of a germanic cough, as if something untoward has been stuck in the center of one’s throat which needs to be cleared, like phlegm gathered in the mucous membranes of the respiratory passages; then flows to the end and drifts off into a quietude of irrelevance, disregard and dismissal, as the pointed meaning of application coincides with the diminishing utterance of fading signification.

In feudal times, when kings and princes of minor fiefdoms pockmarked the divided provinces of Europe and Asia, the gathering of sycophants pervaded each hour with daily tributes of flowery adjectives added effortlessly in conjunction with backstabbing motivations; the smiles of agreement and infusion of words to puff up the royal kingdom were offset by the murderous rage hidden in the dark corridors of dungeons where the abyss of human cruelty and malevolence resided with unfettered and ravenous appetite.

Does the modern presence of such and the like represent a fading vestige of that former calumny of bacterial servitude, or merely a reflection of the true nature of man’s essence?  The court of sycophants does not exist merely in dusty books of historical irrelevance; it survives in small pockets of sibling rivalries where inheritances are favored by means of embellished compliments combined with fading cognitive capacity for recognition of the distinction between words and sincerity; and in workplaces where no hostages are taken when one’s livelihood is at stake.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are intimately familiar with the darkened hearts of sycophants, there are more colorful words used to describe them — as in the kissing of another’s behind; but whether one uses the original one or a replacement of a more informal vernacular, the meaning all amounts to the same.  Especially, when a medical condition begins to impacts the Federal or Postal Service employee’s ability and capacity to perform at the same level as before, the wide range of sycophants begin to make their appearance.

Somehow, denigration of others is believed to elevate one’s own status and stature, and indeed, the feudal court of sycophants was based upon that system of favoritism and derisive discourse.

For the Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition, however, such that filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes necessary, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the escape from the constant backbiting and backstabbing becomes necessary not only to maintain and further one’s health and well-being, but is also a recognition that one has lost the favor of the court itself, and it becomes incumbent upon the Federal and Postal employee to recognize that the Court of Sycophants has been powdering the nose not of the king’s face, but of the emperor whose clothes has disappeared and where the cheeks which quiver with frolicking laughter are at the wrong end of the anatomical map.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Narrative for the Ages

The Age of Modernity is too cynical to believe; or, at the very least, too arrogant not to disbelieve.  It was once thought that information is all that is necessary to propel humankind into a state of sophistication, but time has revealed that Orwell’s reverse effect merely compels us to rely upon devices more and more, and that neither knowledge nor greater wisdom is gained by the wide dissemination of data and content.

We want a “cause” to believe in; yet, each day, we encounter those who allegedly toiled throughout their lives for just such a motivating core, only to find a shell of a person, neither interesting nor interested, and grubbing for amassing of life’s toys, like everyone else in the neighborhood.  Is it, in the end, true that the one who “wins” is defined by the last person standing with the toy and a smile?  We seek for the narrative which fits, and one which declares truth for all ages; but whether we would even be able to recognize “the One” if we passed by it, is doubtful.  This is a time for reflection and re-dedication to one’s core belief-system, despite the world’s agony bereft of such a centrality of intuition.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who must contemplate changes in the coming year because of a medical condition which is impacting the Federal or Postal worker’s ability and capacity to remain in the Federal or Postal position, the narrow focus of formulating one’s statement of narrative on SF 3112A is an important microcosm of effective conveyance.  The questions asked on SF 3112A are simple enough; but the narrative which the Federal or Postal employee must prepare, formulate and submit, will determine the future course and causal impact in getting an approval of an OPM Disability Retirement application.

Prepare it carefully; formulate it thoughtfully; submit it only with wise counsel and guidance, wherever and whatever the source.  Yes, perhaps one’s narrative on SF 3112A is not as “grand” or “timeless” as the narrative for the ages of which we seek; but for the individual life of the Federal or Postal employee who is searching for answers for an uncertain future yet to dawn because of a medical condition, the significance and importance may be just as great.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire