FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Moving Forward

Is there any other way; another direction; somewhere else?

Other societies, civilizations and cultures are satisfied with remaining static — of old ways, established villages, the way things “have always been done”.  Not here in the U.S.  Here, everything must be new and scintillating; whatever are the newest trends, we must always embrace and accept; whoever represent the most recent form of “newness” is the one considered “in”, etc.

Cast out the old; and of those left behind? — Well, too bad for them.  The entire concept of how we treat “the least” among us — whether of the old, the infirm, the disabled whether children or grownups — has never quite caught on.  Perhaps it is because we have no conscience, let alone consciousness of duty or obligation.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, “moving forward” is the only option left.  For, otherwise, you will be left behind to face the inevitable consequences which will only further make circumstances worse: Greater inability to do your job; manifestation of deficiency in your performance or attendance; placement on a Performance Improvement Plan (otherwise known by the acronym, “PIP”); further deterioration to your health, etc.

But what does “moving forward” mean?  What does it entail?

Consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  It is essentially taking an early retirement, but with greater, enhanced benefits.  It is the best option in a world where moving forward is the only way out, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is, indeed, the best way forward in a world where moving forward is the only option left.

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.

 

Disability Retirement from the Office of Personnel Management: Proteus

In Greek mythology, he is considered as a god of the oceans.  Homer refers to him as the “Old Man of the Sea” and is known for change, adaptation and alteration.  He can alter his shape and appearance, depending upon the circumstances surrounding.  Changing of forms, of course, becomes the essence of Plato’s philosophy, and Aristotle’s later search for that substratum which allows for continuity and stability.

Perhaps the malleability of Proteus is in response to the tumultuous nature of the oceans; one day beset with the calm of quiet tides, and in the next instance, rising and falling with fury by the storms of unpredictability.  To be able to change, adapt and become chameleon-like is to be able to withstand the vicissitudes of life’s misgivings.

That is what we have to do when a medical condition hits us, and impacts one’s career and circumstances — to be like Proteus and have the capacity to adapt and modify the pathways we have followed.  Stability is always a necessary prerequisite for success.  While wide spectrums of change may be called for in the early days of a “start-up” or initiation of a new project, at some point, a calming effect must come about in order for daily living to occur.

Similarly, while youth may allow for the exuberant embracing of daily excitement in change, middle age and beyond yearns for a greater serenity of redundancy.  When a medical condition suddenly and unexpectedly reminds us of our vulnerability and mortality, it is to stability that we cling and not for the inconstancy of the ocean’s fury.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prompts one to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, it becomes necessity to act and think like Proteus — the “Old Man of the Sea” — and to consider a change of careers precisely because an incommensurability has arisen: No longer are the medical conditions compatible with the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, and that is the proof that one must provide to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in order to fight for, and win, a Federal Disability Retirement claim.

To find out more about the further particulars of winning the Protean battle against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it is best to consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Next Steps

It is always the next steps which determine the relevance and efficacy of the prior ones; a misstep can extinguish the progress made from the ones before; a stumble can irrevocably diminish the gains already made; and a fall can destroy the foundation of past steps already taken.

What to do next? We can stumble through; brashly forge forward despite unmapped territories that can harm and destroy; and we can even try and “manage” things by taking small, incremental steps, with trepidation and lacking of confidence, hoping for good things to occur despite our best wishes and hopeful optimism.  Or, we can consult with experts and specialists in order to gain a roadmap, or even hire a guide who has been down this mountain path before, and allow for the gains already garnered to account for something, instead of blindly destroying all that we worked for by forging ahead thoughtlessly like the proverbial bull in a china shop.

That is the problem with Federal and Postal employees who try and prepare a Federal Disability Retirement application without expert legal assistance: every case prepared by the person suffering from the medical condition believes his or her’s to be a “slam dunk” case — for, if the one who suffers from the medical condition prepares and submits his or her case, it is the same person “one and all” of the person experiencing the medical condition and the one who describes the very experience, such that no amount of objectivity can maintain the necessary distance between the two.

Consulting and hiring an attorney who specializes in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, may not necessarily guarantee a “win”; but it does help to ensure that the next steps do not extinguish the prior years of investing in your Federal or Postal career, by making sure that the next steps mean something beyond the stumble, hesitation, or sudden fall.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: Distant lights dimming

How can distant lights dim when they are mere specks upon a blanketed panorama of darkness?

One looks up at the stars and we are told, of course, that the sparkling tapestry may contain those which are already vanished, and what we “see”are merely the residue of a dead or dying star.  In a universe based upon a visual-centered arena, the reliance upon sight to establish facts and verify truth-statements cannot be avoided.

That was Berkeley’s problem, as well — and one which he deftly avoided by re-defining the definition of existence by tying it inextricably with “perception”, including visual, auditory and tactile means.  Much later, and after a series of devastating criticisms launched at the entirety of empiricist tendencies that some would counter artificially manufactured unnecessary philosophical problems (but isn’t that the “fun” of philosophy — to always be left with more problems to solve than the day before?) which haunts us to this very day, Wittgenstein came along and waved aside such conundrums by relegating all such issues to mere problems of linguistic confusion.

Thus was reality divorced from the language we use to describe the phenomena that surrounds us, leaving science left standing as the Last Man and the primacy of philosophy relegated to the dusty shelves of Medieval Times.  Distant lights dimming?  No more a problem than the campfire dilemma — for, do we say that because we cannot precisely pinpoint the demarcation between light and darkness at the periphery of a glowing campfire, that therefore no campfire exists at all?  Of course not!

It is thus not the result of the physical objectivity of the world around us that confuses, but the inadequacy of language that confounds.  Yet, as Man must communicate by means of language and operate effectively within the objective world, so the development of various “language games” must by necessity evolve into greater heights of absurdity.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition impacts upon the reality of the “objective” world — entrance and introduction into the binary universe of language games and the greater world at large must also, by necessity, come together in the form of preparing, formulating and filing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application.

You have the medical condition; the medical condition is impacting your ability and capacity to continue in your present position as a Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker.  Such a medical condition may necessitate filing for Federal Disability Retirement — but understand that submitting a “paper presentation” to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether you as the Federal or Postal employee under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, requires an adequacy of language that must go beyond the reality of the medical condition itself.

And like the distant lights dimming, what actually “is” may be divorced from the language which must be carefully chosen and transcribed, lest such inadequacy fails to describe and delineate the reality of the medical condition from which you suffer.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Information: Order & Madness

In its most basic sense, isn’t that what madness is — of a lack of order, or what society deems to be so?  Eccentricity skirts the boundaries of madness; being “odd” is merely a recognition of some forms of eccentricities; and “thinking outside of the box” is to simply do things that people have already thought of, but which we fool ourselves into thinking is something new and creative, because such thought processes are what every conventional thinker thinks is the oddball perspective when everyone else thinks that the other has not yet thought about it.

Orthodoxy is oppressive to youth and foreigners precisely because tradition itself is yet unknown, and thus cannot be the sole basis by which to continue things as they were.  Leo Strauss often argued that tradition alone is a poor basis from which to argue inalienable rights; something more needs to be provided in order for a foundation of justified longevity to occur.  Is rebellion in and of itself madness?  Is sudden upheaval — of a desire and want to upend long traditions and orthodoxy — itself a form of desire to solicit and court disorder, and thus madness?

One begins to experience the fringe of madness when too much disorder and chaos enters a previously-ordered life; that’s why old people and young children cannot tolerate too much upheaval; and those in the middle, though they may be better prepared to tolerate disruption, can only do so within limits.

We hear of certain types of people and of particular characteristics and personalities who “thrive” on disorientation — of uncertainty, disruption, financial instability or physical challenges.  They get a “high” on participating in “start-ups” or going deep into debt taking “a chance” on “hitting it big”; or even of wall street traders who, in a different life and under modified circumstances, may have been gamblers or con men (some would counter that there is very little distinction between the three).  Most, however, prefer the stability of predictability, and seek order not only out of madness, but to prevent it.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition has become a continuing disruption by impeding, preventing and precluding the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it will often appear as if madness has replaced the order of the world.

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a logical step in an attempt to court order out of madness; for, in the end, the medical condition is a type of madness in and of itself, is it not?  It has all of the characteristics of madness — of chaos, disorder, disruption, and the insanity of responses from one’s Federal Agency or the Postal Service, that you are no longer the valued employee you once were; and thus does filing for OPM Medical Retirement allow for order to come out of madness.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Ducks out of place

Ducks by the pond; out in the fields of wheat and grain; of picturesque paintings of a scene upon the countryside; in parks and near still waters; or on a farm where the pastoral beauty of serenity of times now gone forever, replaced by metal, concrete, the noise of technology and the sniping fire of man’s presence.

Then, 2 ducks — presumably male and female — land upon a winter’s edge in a suburban neighborhood, and make their nesting place for a fortnight’s term.  They stay.  They wander about between hedge groves that splinter and divide, and where fences left untended allow for lines of ownership to remain fallow with the decay of summer’s drought.

The people mill about and recognize their presence, and over time a truce remains where delight of settings long forgotten pace themselves with life’s forlorn smile that yes, perhaps time has lost upon the space of unrelenting callousness, where even the ducks out of place can no longer bring back the memories of youthful days when summer was but the sands of timeless waves when laughter boiled over and pleasures were yet innocent in days beyond the garden of Eden’s gates.

And we realize that, like the ducks left out of place who came mistakenly to believe that the pastoral interludes of gardens tended in the manicured lawns of suburbia represented the quietude of yesterday’s forests and streams allowing for peace upon a winter’s day, we are the misfits of a universe left to toil in the meandering thoughtlessness of cruelty’s longing.

Then, one night, the crazy neighbor whom everyone shunned, came out in the midst of night’s yawn and shot them both with a single shotgun blast.  The ducks out of place were left to remain in the misery of their misunderstanding, that somehow nature and man could find a compromise, when compromise’s twilight had long since been forgotten.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application — to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset — becomes a necessity when you begin to recognize that, like ducks out of place, you have become the “odd man out” within a Federal agency or the Postal Service that deems you to no longer be “worth” it.

Whatever the “it” is, you have become the castigated castaway that becomes the focal point of distrust and harassment.  Do not wait to hope that accommodations will be forthcoming; in the setting of a Federal Agency or the Postal Service, the pastoral picture of a helpful agency is rare and indifferent, and the best way forward is to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, submitted to OPM in order to avoid the fate of those ducks out of place.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Different hats, many roles

We all wear them, don’t we?  Husband, parent, worker, co-worker, supervisor, babysitter, grandparent; or, to remain neutral and non-sexist, wife, mother, worker, co-worker, supervisor, babysitter, grandparent, etc.  There, we have dispensed with any allegation that we have not been fully “balanced” in our perspective, allowing for an all-inclusive approach so that no one feels left out.

Yet, if you closely scrutinize the “list” that was previously posited, you will find the slight nuance of a difference between the two – instead of the neutral “parent”, the word “mother” was unscrupulously inserted, and those who are hypersensitive may want to shout, scream and otherwise pour out a stream of invectives in alleging that such a differentiation in the distinction between “parent” and “mother” reveals an underlying motive, unseen and concealed baseness that betrays a discriminatory or biased intent in the writer of such a list.

Such subtle distinctions are supposed to “uncover” and reveal that which was previously skillfully (or not so skillfully) disguised and only subconsciously manifested in an accidental revelation not previously presumed.  But is this fair?  Does the mere wording based upon previously-accepted normative paradigms necessarily compel a conclusion of subjective intent?  Or, should it instead merely trigger an intermediate step of clarification?

Clarity, of course, is the foundation of communication, and wearing different hats in many roles can often confuse the acuity of defined roles.  For instance, does the Federal or Postal employee who is “disabled”, does he or she have certain “rights” that can be protected?  Does a request for an accommodation have to be submitted before a Federal Disability Retirement application can be filed, or is submission of a requested completion of SF 3112D sufficient to satisfy that legal criteria?  Does the “different hat” that the Federal Disability Retirement applicant play – of a “disabled applicant for OPM purposes – mean that there is now a “different role” that the Agency must play, or that OPM must recognize during the process?

We like to think that while the world around us changes, we remain steadfastly “constant” in who we are and what we stand for; but the reality is that, when a medical condition strikes at the heart of a person’s occupation, preparing a 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, requires at the outset when we have to wear different hats, the accompanying different roles will require a reassessment as to the viability of what our next steps will be, especially when preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: The Cackle around Us

Often, the noise emanating and pervading is nothing more than the raucous shrieks and glass-shattering sounds like the cackle of birds; neither intelligible nor pleasant to the ear, it fails to inform, engender pleasure, nor spur substantive advancement for the intellect or one’s emotional well-being.

People talk; talk is limitless; and the louder one talks (or so the theory goes) and endures past all others, the last voice establishes the truth of the matter.  The problem in modernity is not so much the boisterousness and overpowering continuum of noise; rather, it is the inability to recognize the lesser argument, the weaker factual basis, and the mesmerizing conduit of enjoying the sound of one’s own voice.

There is, indeed, much information “out there”; the question is not one of volume, but rather of quality in the vast overload of content dissemination. When one seeks  information, how does veracity get established?  When one chooses representation, what criteria is applied?  And when one receives answers to queries put forth, where does the confirmation begin to concretize?  The world is replete with information; what parcel of it is useful; how much of it is relevant; and to what use or pragmatic application can it be devised?  In the practical world of living, the cackle of information must be sifted through in order to survive any given ordeal.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the preparation, formulation and filing of an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management must by necessity encapsulate the issue of relevant, pertinent and substantive information.

Gathering the proper medical document; formulating an effective Statement of Disability on Standard Form 3112A; presenting updated and relevant legal argumentation in order to persuade OPM into approving one’s Federal Disability Retirement application; these are the criteria in the pragmatic application for sifting through the cacophony of information clutter, and it matters not whether the cackle avoided represents that originating from crows or vultures; the point is to keep from being the meal of prey, and instead to prepare one’s meal of information in the quietude of thoughtful reflection, away from the disturbances of those who seek merely to hear the sound of their own voice, as opposed to the satisfying sonata of substantive and helpful information that will actually help the Federal or Postal employee secure one’s future in the preparation, formulation and filing of an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: Dawn’s Transition

In the calm of morning darkness, when the stillness of winter whispers a hushed tone of quietude just before the first break of dawn, one’s perspective falls askew amidst the shadows and desolation of winter.  Is that a rock or a dead bird, frozen in the stillness of winter’s despair?  Was the movement behind the trees a reflection, or just the first faintness of dawn’s exposure?  Perspectives are funny glazes; a once familiar landscape can be frighteningly unfamiliar within the dark chasms of one’s own mind.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the light of dawn begins to pervade, and that which once appeared strange and foreboding, takes on the familiarity of known objects, recognizable forms, and identifiable shapes.  We live by light, and light is the friend of our fanciful imaginations gone awry by fear and loathing.

Medical conditions have a similar subtlety, much like the light of dawn:  they slowly creep upon one, until the debilitating impact is revealed when just a moment before, the fear of darkness was overwhelming.  But just as the morning glow of the rising sun will bring warmth and a promise of openness, so the hope underlying any conflict in life must be placed within a context of future castings.  Hope is for the future, as light is a diminishment of a present or past darkness.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition,  present circumstances are often like the overwhelming and foreboding sense of morning darkness before the dawn of the rising sun; it portends yet of a future unknown, and a fate yet to be decided.  That is why it is important to “let go” of those things of which one has no control, and concurrently, to affirmatively take steps towards the familiarity of that which is known.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits, filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a “known” quantity.  Yes, it is a difficult administrative process and procedure to engage; yes, it is a bureaucratic morass of unquantifiable proportions; but it is a necessary step for those Federal or Postal employees who find themselves with a medical condition which begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from continuing in the positional slot of one’s Federal or Postal job.

As the allegory in Plato’s Republic tells the story of the enslaved shadows struggling in the darkness of the Cave, so the Federal or Postal employee who looks up at the opening beyond, to the light of dawn, must surely recognize that the fear and loathing felt in the shadows wavering in that moment before dawn’s glory, is but a temporary point in fate’s cradle, just before the brightness of one’s future is revealed in a time and place yet to be destined for the glory of summer.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement: Random Happenstance

A determination concerning the random nature of a material and unconscious universe can only come about in contrast to a recognition that there is a comparison to be made, to its opposite corollary — that of a teleological state where will, consciousness and deliberation of action occurs.

Thus, one can bemoan the random happenstance of events, but to complain of an inherent “unfairness” becomes a self-contradiction, precisely because to do so is to declare otherwise than to acknowledge its aimless appearance and entrance into the consciousness before one who recognizes the arbitrary realm of an otherwise impervious and unfeeling world.

Further, while inanimate objects and their movement within the universe may further establish the arbitrary catapult of nature’s actions, when human decisions, and acts engaged by animals who are clearly aware of deliberative encounters interact within the arc of intersecting symmetries, one must always consider the history of how things came about, before determining whether or not the lack of teleological consequences betrays a truly random happenstance.

Medical conditions tend to prove the point.  Why does X occur to Y, but not to Z?  That is a question which involves an underlying sense of declaring the “unfairness” of a circumstance.  Whether genetic inheritance, an excess of negative and detrimental exposures, or perhaps an aimless accident resulting in injury, most often one will never know.  Doctors can discuss the contextual historicity of origins, but in the end, the medical condition must be accepted, and engaged.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers whose lives have been impacted by a medical condition, where the medical condition begins to prevent one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties with the Federal government or the U.S. Postal Service, the time to consider the random happenstance of one’s condition, or whether there is behind it a purpose or lesson to be gleaned, is best put off for another day.

Instead, the practicalities of life’s mandates should prevail, and one such deliberative consideration is to determine whether filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, should be one of the options to entertain.   Federal Disability Retirement benefits allow for the Federal and Postal worker to maintain health insurance, continue an income based upon an annuity of 60% of the average of one’s highest 3 consecutive years of service for the first year of being an annuitant, and 40% every year thereafter, until age 62, at which point it becomes automatically converted to regular retirement; and, moreover, the number of years one is on Federal Disability Retirement counts towards the total number of years of Federal Service.

Yes, life’s random happenstance can sometimes appear unexpectedly, and seem unfair in a universe where we map out our existence from birth to death; but it is important to recognize that beyond the laws of physics allowable in the physical world of an impervious nature, there are no rules of the game except the ones we employ through devices concocted within the artifice of our own imaginations.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire