OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: Quality of Life

It has never NOT been an issue in American life; for, with the opportunities available, modernity has placed a focus not just upon “living”, but upon a more grand concept:  That of “living well”.

The cemeteries and unmarked graves of silent history’s fallow grounds are filled with unstated sorrow and grief; and while modernity now knows of wealth and luxuries beyond the wildest imaginations, the past has known great poverty and suffering.

Prior to the age of refrigeration, much of every day was obsessed with preparing the next meal.  Between work just to eke out a living and considering what the next meal would be, survival was the point of existence — until the rise of the “middle class” upon the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Quality of Life?  Was that even a concept conscious for consideration?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where that medical condition will no longer allow you to perform all of the essential elements of your job, the concept of “quality of life” must by necessity enter into the equation.

The endless cycle of work-to-weekend and back to work, where the weekend is merely for purposes of resting those chronic medical conditions in order to have some minimal energy-level to make it into work — well, you know the routine, and that vicious cycle is certainly without any “quality” to the life one leads.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits are meant to rescue you from the loss of quality of life.

Contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and let not your life reflect a period of history which was supposed to remain quiet in the fallow grounds of past burial grounds.

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.

 

FERS Disability Retirement: The Law and Modernity

Recent Supreme Court decisions have, at the very least, engendered interest among the non-lawyer population of this country.  The concept of “stare decisis” — of the legal principle of determining points in litigation according to establish precedent — has been turned upside down and cast aside.  Is this a good thing?

Furthermore, there are now grumbles that recently-appointed justices “lied” to senators during their confirmation hearings, but no lawyer believes that such a charge can rise to the level of perjury.  Why?  Because if you ask a lawyer the question, “Do you agree that case-X is established law?” — the answer will always have 2 parts; first, the stated part: “Yes, it is established law and therefore should not be overturned.”

Then, the second, “unstated” and “silent” part — “Unless, of course, I find that when I am on the bench and a new case comes before me, that I find case-X to be unconstitutional, in which case I have no choice but to reverse and overturn the precedent.”

And so the law is as elastic as the best gymnasts qualifying for the Olympics.  Why the great hubbub?  Because society relies upon precedents, because precedents — whether you agree with them or not — provide a foundation of stability and reliability.

It would be as if a Federal Circuit Court Judge were to find all precedents on FERS Disability Retirement to be wrongly decided, and reversing every one of them.  Now, that would be a disaster.

Fortunately, that is unlikely to happen, and so, for Federal and Postal employees who have found it necessary to begin the process of initiating the Federal Disability Retirement application process, you may want to contact a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, where the Law and Modernity still rely upon the stability of stare decisis.

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 for Federal Government Employees: Encouragement

Can one have too much of it?  What happens if it is sparingly dispensed?  Is there a balance where it is “just the right amount”?  Is giving or receiving encouragement like the way porridge is made in The Story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?  Can “too much” destroy, just as “too little”?

Of course, there are different “kinds” of encouragement — one, for example, which is specific to a certain deed, action, project, etc., as in recognizing a person for a specific accomplishment.  Then, there is the form applied when an individual encounters a problem, difficulty, a blocking of forward progress, etc — in other words, it is not encouragement for having met a goal or having accomplished something, but to try and persuade the individual to keep trying, to persevere, etc.  Further, there is the “pep talk” — of giving encouragement in a general way, neither to persuade to persevere nor as a recognition of accomplishment, but just in general to prop up the attitudinal positives in order to become more productive, etc.

And, there are surely many more “types”.  Encouragement, however, is difficult when a medical condition intervenes — although, it is probably a time when it is most needed.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job — it may be time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.  Sometimes, encouragement must be sought for in a different arena, a change of scenery, etc.

If discouragement has become the pattern of daily life, consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer and consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement — it may be the spoonful of porridge that is “just right”, as an encouragement in and of itself.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The Gap Between

Sometimes, it is wide and unable to be closed; in other instances, the distance is just enough to present a challenge, but by no means unreachable; and in rare instances, we shrug our shoulders because of the insignificant width encountered, as if the irrelevancy is too unimportant to even bother with.

Why is it that we so admire those who have overcome adversities of greater chasms?  If one is “privileged” with all of the inherent advantages of life, and one succeeds, is it because the expectation of success was taken for granted?  On the other hand, if one is born with the proverbial “silver spoon” in one’s mouth, and fails miserably to achieve anything in life, do we disdainfully roll our eyes because we expected so much out of the person and make spurious judgments as to the inner character of such an individual?

Likewise, why do we admire a person who began life in the gutters of disadvantages, and yet made something of him or herself?  Is it because we are all, by nature, “betting people”, and where the odds are stacked against an individual and nevertheless the underdog prevails, we admire such qualities of fortitude and success in the face of such odds?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the odds are great that you will need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

In order to close the gap between success or failure against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, however, it is best to consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer — lest the odds are stacked against you, and you need to better those odds to make them more favorable for a successful outcome.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Universal Specialization

The world didn’t just become bifurcated over-night; it then shattered into a thousand universal parts, and each required a specialization where subsections of the primary subject became sliced into lesser wholes, the parts of smaller parts, until no one now knows how to do anything without the specialized aid of the specialist in the department of specialization.

The fractured world has become one of micro-competence, where once the jack-of-all-trades individual was needed in order to run a farm, feed a family, be a doctor to the animals, as well as work as a carpenter, plumber (oh, we forgot — outhouses were used back then, with nary a trace of indoor plumbing, so strike that), and the all-around “MacGyver” guy from the 1980s series where ordinary items were easily transformed into extraordinary problem-solving implements.

Overspecialization of a society leads to alienation; taken to the extreme, it makes into each of us incompetents to even turn on the faucet.  Marx would have been aghast — for, no longer is the assembly-line factory worker alienated from the work he or she works upon by not feeling the accomplishment of the “finished” product, but moreover, doesn’t even know the purpose beyond the 4 screws that are drilled into the monstrosity because of overspecialization.

Is the world a better place because we comprehend less of the pie that constitutes the whole, and is our knowledge of it any greater merely because dissemination of information is available via the Internet?  The two are somehow connected, are they not?

Somehow, there must be some mathematical formula involved, something akin to: The Greater the X, the Lesser the Y, when factors 1, 2 & 3 interface with exponential diminution of T minus Z. Complexity, in the end, often induces greater specialization, and unfortunately that is true in the field of Federal Disability Retirement Law.  “Local Lawyers” are rarely knowledgeable enough to represent Federal or Postal employees in an OPM Disability Retirement application.

The various Stages in the process of Federal Disability Retirement Law require precise and targeted responses; and for the Federal or Postal employee preparing to “put together” a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS, it is not the right time to be the “MacGyver” type of guy; it is best to consult with a Specialist in Federal Medical Retirement Law, and prepare well for the fractured road ahead where universal specialization is a necessity in a world where horse and buggy are no longer existent except on faraway farms in Pennsylvania or other scattered places where the Amish retain the “old ways”.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Keeping it together

Living in modernity is a complex juggling act that never ends.  Simplicity recollected in former times often harken towards an idealization that perhaps never existed, where toil, labor and survival were a coalescence of a person’s life, and meaning was never divorced from what one was engaged in, the acts of striving, the struggle to earn a living.

Modernity magnifies Marx’s observation that human discontent is a result of separating man’s labor from the self-esteem of accomplishment, where the factory worker sees merely a microcosm of monotony but never possesses the self-satisfaction of any meaningful end to the assembly-line of life.

Instead, today we are a fractured sort, running like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off (and we don’t even quite understand what that means, anymore, as no one lives on a farm to understand that when a predatory owl comes swooshing down and severs the upper portion of a cock-a-doodling bird, the feet continue to pedal forward even after the headless horseman is taken away), awakening, rushing, being dazed and in a trance to view the multiple screens of a Smartphone, the laptop, the desktop and being directed by electronic voices of commandeering vehicles, parking barometers and driverless vehicles to merely observe as bystanders in a world gone mad.

Credit crunch, debt overload, children brought into the world without direction or means, and droughts, famine and wars and rumors of wars beyond; it is a burden just to try keeping it together, these days.

Promises have been made for decades plus of technology granting a reprieve both in time, effort and human toil, and the time for leisure which the totalitarianism of oppressive modernization has detailed has somehow never come to fruition.  Work, and more work; overtime; the juggling of family time, work, filial commitments and more work; and we can “have it all”, or so they keep telling us.

Email was supposed to undercut the need for the snail’s pace of the Postal Service, but now we are bombarded with an exponential quantification of that which we used to open with a mail opener, inserting carefully into the edge of the fold and slicing gently so as not to spoil the contents within; and somehow that very act of ancient and tactile connection between the eye, the hands, the metal implement and the organic material of an unopened letter gave it a personal bond of sorts, even in a mechanized office setting.  Today, it is merely one more click of a computer button to open up the electronic mail.

“Keeping it all together” – is it possible, anymore?

Then, when you consider an unwanted intruder – a medical condition both unexpected and unforeseen – is it any wonder that things quickly fall apart.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who find it difficult to continue in one’s chosen Federal or Postal career, when the medical condition no longer allows the Federal or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position, it may well be time to recognize that the fundamental basis of keeping it all together rests upon the ability to prepare, formulate and file 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.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Broken Promises

It is a surprise that we are constantly surprised by them.  Why should we be?  Do we elevate man to such a pinnacle of virtue as the angels who look down upon us with remorseful eyes?  Are there more of them today, like shattered mirrors or destroyed lives littering the highways of hopeful futures stretching out into a path of devastated backdrops in the history of unknown commoners who lay quietly in the tombs that speak not but in haunting whispers in muted graveyards long abandoned with the silence of church bells that no longer toll?

Promises are but linguistic constructs that are controlled by the good intentions of those who make them, and restricted by the constraints of social virtues that no longer exist, have been modified, disavowed and have now been deemed archaic in this modernity of relative moral standards.

Once upon a time (or so the fairytale goes), a handshake, a nod, a single word without the written confirmation, the 10-page fax to declare a deal made, or the fine-print of agreements incomprehensible – they constituted the affirmation of man’s purity of intent, motivation and virtuous underbelly unseen but for the flight of angels touching and tugging upon our conscience when evil forces attempted to lead us astray.

Now, we have found the power of linguistic elasticity.  It is no longer a “lie”, and perhaps it was always known, just as Eve realized the cunning of justification, persuasive argumentation and methodological coercion; no, broken promises no longer exist – instead, it is a mutual “misunderstanding”, failure of minds to meet, or just plain wrong-headedness on the part of the one who relied upon a promise made.

No one really believes anyone else’s handshake, anymore – and, in any event, who shakes hands these days?  What can it mean but a mere vestige of an arcane eccentricity that needs be relegated to those rustic movies where granddad and obscure relatives and neighbors would jump from frame-to-frame in old movies where a wave to the camera was the memorabilia to preserve, now replaced by thousands of Selfies stored in electronic devices neither for posterity nor discretion of family enjoyment, but for self-aggrandizement and public display for prurient intentions.

Like granddad’s smile that once reassured as the solid Rock of Gibraltar, promises don’t mean anything, anymore.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who think that assurances of accommodating medical conditions because, somehow, laws are in place that provide for that, think about it for a moment:  Without the laws, would a promise mean anything?  Further, do the laws really protect, or are they also just linguistic modalities easily manipulated?  Fortunately, however, laws can work both ways, and Federal Disability Retirement Law operates in favor of Federal and Postal employees with a standard of proof geared towards an approval – of a preponderance of the evidence.

No, the promises made by Federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service may not amount to much, and the heap of junk piles left behind by broken promises may litter the once-beautiful landscape of arcane handshakes in years past, but the availability of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits remains a reality for those Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who find that there is now an incompatibility between one’s medical conditions and the performance of one’s essential elements of the Federal or Postal job.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Law: The cruelty of our nature

Note that we are not positing that nature in general is cruel; for, in nature, predatory behaviors and devouring of one another is merely a tautological definition of nature itself, in the constant balance between prey and predator, betwixt overpopulation and dominance of one species over another, etc.  No, the “our” refers to a specific species – of the human kind.

Whether engendered and triggered within our genetic predispositions, or as Rousseau and Locke would have it, spurred on by the artificial constructs evolved from the social contract created for self-preservation, there is little denying that “our” nature is the cruelest of them all.  Little evidence needs to be pointed at in order to establish the case proving such a perspective – of wars, treatment of others, disregard for fellow members, neighbors and even strangers; no, the cruelty of our nature betrays the inherent meanness of our selves.

Yes, yes – there are always sociological and anthropological explanations – of mistreatment by a structural and inherent canopy of defiance; people left without hope for any future; lives destroyed by government regulations and other societal pressures; wars driven by sectarian and genocidal triggers further explained by economic changes and shifts of monetary and global policies; and of the rise of dominance by a few over the general populace.

There is little doubt that we are cruel because of who we are – at the top of the food chain, everyone struggling to merely survive.  Yet, it was always the belief that within us, there was a spark of the angel – of being just above the beast, and slightly below the heavenly orbs where wings of perfection remain yet to strive for.

When medical conditions erupt, necessitating the Federal or Postal employee to prepare, formulate and file 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, it is well to keep in mind the cruelty of our nature – not necessarily in ourselves, but in the capacity and human capability of acting upon it by revealing to others the vulnerabilities caught in the web of our own genetic predispositions.

Care needs to be taken in protecting privacy; never underestimate the reactions that might occur by a Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service; and always bear in mind the wisdom of Shakespeare, who recognized the cruelty of our nature, “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.  They kill us for their sport.” King Lear, Act IV, Scene i.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire