Federal Disability Retirement: The Sound of Fury

It is the partial title of Faulkner’s classic, of course — The Sound and the Fury — of the emptiness of shadows, or attempting to regain what once was, of reputation and dignity.

Much of life today is filled with the sound of fury — for what; about what; for what reason, is anyone’s guess.  But there is fury all around — against the government; against people who have opposite viewpoints; against life itself.  Whatever the sound of fury sounds like, we can hear it on talk radio, in political speeches, in Twitter and other Social Media outlets.

There are sounds, and then there is fury, and the two are different, which is why Faulkner’s title tells the full story, whereas in today’s circus of unhappy lives, the “half story” of the sound of fury is so much more apt.  For, so much of the furor and the sound of fury is about nothingness, but as passion sells and the greater sound of fury persuades and fills the void where reason and rationality once prevailed, so the sound of fury is what dominates modernity.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who voice the sound of fury against the unfairness of life when a medical condition begins to impact your career, remember that Federal Disability Retirement benefits under the FERS system is available as an option to merely voicing the sound of fury.  It is a benefit which you earned when you became a Federal employee and earned a minimum of 18 months of Federal Service.

Contact an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of initiating an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS — not necessarily with any sound of fury, however.

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.

 

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Disability Retirement: Sufficiency

There is always a measure of subjectivity involved, of course.  Following the Council of Trent, the issues which prevailed as a response to the Protestant Reformation involved Church doctrine and clarifications needed concerning issues involving “sufficiency” of grace, whether the human will could engage in acts of the “Good” without it, and so many other interesting minutiae of proper wording which is now irrelevant in this postmodern era.

What is sufficient; what qualitative or quantitative determinations meet that criteria; is there an objective set of rules and regulations requiring sufficiency, and how is it determined to have been met?

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, “sufficiency” of information is a critical criteria to be met in every Federal Disability Retirement case.

There has been no “Council of Trent” to clarify what would meet the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s criteria for what constitutes sufficiency of medical and other information; although, there have certainly been many “edicts” issued, both by OPM and the Federal Courts, as well as by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (the “MSPB”).

What is sufficient; how is it determined; who decides on the issue; what can be done to meet the criteria — these are all questions which can differ from case-to-case because of the inherent uniqueness of each case.

Contact an OPM Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement benefits and avoid the proclamations issued concerning heresies and violations of doctrinal clarifications, whether by the Council of Trent or by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

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.

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The Stress Test

It is meant to determine the vulnerability of structural foundations, or to gauge whether, under certain extreme circumstances, it will withstand catastrophic levels of pressure for safety and soundness.  Distress triggers the ultimate test; and whether a breaking point can be established is always a fear — of how low or high, and of what tolerance the test itself will reveal.  Objects, composite elements meant to reinforce; and most of all, people — to the extent that stress can damage, and whether such damage can be repaired.  “Repair”, of course, is a relative term, and whether or not the structural firmness can be attained after any damage has been repaired, to a level of pre-damage status, is always of concern.

Can a psyche once damaged be repaired to a state of original soundness?  Are the vulnerabilities inherent in individuals capable of withstanding the stresses of modernity, and is the “test”applied the same as the reality of daily stresses exposed?  Is there even a “test” that can determine the safety or soundness when it comes to human beings?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the daily stresses of the medical condition itself, with all of its inherent complications, are overwhelming enough; it is then the “piling on” of everything else — of Agency actions; of the adversarial nature and responses of the Agency; of the potential for denying continuation of LWOP while even under FMLA protection, and the concern for one’s future with an Agency that seems bent on making one’s life harder than it needs to be: These, and many other “stress tests” determine the need to begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing for FERS Disability Retirement benefits.

Consult with an Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin to apply the legal stress test to determine eligibility for Federal Disability Retirement benefits; for, in the end, the only Stress Test for a Federal or Postal employee seeking Federal Disability Retirement benefits worth applying is the one which determines the potentiality for a successful outcome, and seeking the counsel and guidance of a FERS Disability Retirement attorney is the best way to relieve the stresses that surround such an endeavor.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The infinite we seek

What is it about the things which defy limit; endless and vast beyond our capacity to comprehend, and yet we cling to concepts that cannot possibly be embraced precisely because the finite cannot delimit the infinite; for, to do so is a contradiction in terms?  Does language capture the infinite?  By knowing its definition, is there anything beyond being able to cite the description of the concept?  Why is it that some concepts are denied comprehension even though we can, by rote memory or simply by looking it up on our Smartphone and regurgitating that which someone else has written, describe and delineate?

Say, for instance, a lay person asks a Cardiac Specialist what is involved in a heart transplant, and Doctor X explains to Information-Seeker-Y the process of how the body is opened up, the various veins, ventricles, etc., snipped here and severed there, and what the dangers are, the risks posed, etc.  At the end of the explanation, we somehow feel satisfied that we have been informed of a procedure which we have never experienced, likely never witnessed and certainly will never undertake — yet, we believe we “understand’ the process.

Similarly, can a blind man who can explain the complete process involved in flying a plane say that he “understands” it fully?  And what is the fine print involved in “fully” as opposed to “partially”?  Yet, if we give the definition of “the infinite” as involving X, Y and Z, and “fully” delineate and explain the conceptual apparatus that makes up our understanding of it, nevertheless, in the end we are allowed to say, “But no one really understands what the infinite is, because we are finite beings.”

That is partially the brilliance of Anselm’s Ontological argument — of defining the infinite as “That than which nothing greater can be thought of” — a jumble of confusing words which seemingly bifurcates the finite from the infinite, but juxtaposes them in an aggregation which makes it seem like it makes sense.  In the end, it is best to know one’s own limitations and, by doing that, at least we can possess the knowledge that humility leads to greater wisdom through finite means of grasping the infinite.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who recognize the enormity of the process of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it is best to understand that the “infinite” — as defined as that which is limitless, endless and beyond measurability — can be applied to a bureaucratic process that involves multiple layers of incomprehensible complexities.

The infinite is a conundrum; the Federal process of preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is analogous to the infinite.  As such, it is wise to seek the counsel and advise of someone who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law — of a being who is that than which nothing legally can be thought of (i.e., an attorney who exclusively handles only Federal Disability Retirement cases).

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement Claims: Determined Lives

Can it be viewed in at least two different ways and meanings?  Of a life that involves determination — i.e., in the sense of forcefulness, enduring faith and strength of character?  Or, in another sense, of being already fated, without choices or options to consider?

Thus are determined lives characterized, and bifurcated into two camps of perspectives, although the one is not exclusive of the other by necessity.

Most people experience both sets of experiences, often intersecting with one another depending upon the circumstances faced.  In some set of circumstances, one may have complete control over the direction and purposive intent of one’s life, activities involved and goals to be met — and by sheer determination, one may in fact accomplish and meet those desired ends.

Then, there are times and contexts when one’s life seems to be determined — where the control of one’s future is not within the purview of one’s own desire or effort, but by some distant force of persuasion cannot be easily influenced by one’s own will and determination.  A medical condition is one such instance.  One has no control over the fact of a medical condition, only of its effects and consequences, and even that, much of it is left in the hands of a doctor or specialist.

Loss of control — of living a determined life (second meaning) as opposed to a determined life (first meaning) — is a feeling that no one desires, and for Federal and Postal employees who sense that the loss of control is expanding into other areas of one’s life — as in one’s employment, ability to maintain a working schedule, and the loss of capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job: it may be time to consider preparing, formulating and filing 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.

The distinction may be a subtle one — of living a determined life (second sense) or a determined life (first sense) — but the distinction may make all the difference in the world, depending upon what your next steps are.  Consult with an attorney who specializes in helping Federal employees obtain Federal Disability Retirement benefits in order to avoid the determined life (second sense), and attain a determined life (first sense).

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Little battles fought

It is the minor skirmishes of life that maintain the vitality of everyday existence; they are fought in preparation for the greater battles and campaigns.  That is why a ‘strategy’ is important; otherwise, taking the same hill countless times in a day leads one to wonder what the greater plan is.  For, futility and the sense of meaninglessness are what defeat any motivation to continue.  Incentives for advancement; a sense of growth and an optimism for the future; these and other values are what one fights for, engages in skirmishes, and those little battles that are fought with a worthwhile sense of gaining something.

Medical conditions, especially of a chronic kind, tend to diminish the will to fight.  They not only weaken and debilitate; they begin to eat away at any sense of accomplishment and striving for those valued goals.  It is, in the end, a sense of hope for which we all fight the little battles fought; otherwise, the major wars would fail to be worthwhile.

Medical conditions are the “unfair” factor in any war, sort of like roadside bombs planted in this new war of hit-and-run attacks.  They often come upon one slowly; and whether in a sudden, traumatic event or evidencing a slow progression of debilitation and subtle changes over a period of days and months, the insidiousness of not knowing how to battle it, of doctors telling of being patient, of medications themselves sometimes having worsening side effects that complicate, exacerbate and exponentially magnify in frequency, severity and other realms of wounds endured – these all cumulatively combine to create a sense of frustration like fighting an enemy you cannot see and will never be able to actually “fight” in the traditional sense.

That is why 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 an important step in those “little battles fought” – for, unless the little ones are taken care of, the large ones that loom ahead may not be properly engaged in.

Reorganizing priorities; focusing upon one’s health; determining the future course of relevancy; these are all part of the metaphorical battles to be fought, but for the individual who experiences the medical condition and specifically for the Federal or Postal employee who must consider filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, they are no less real than the sudden devastation of a roadside bomb exploding beneath one’s Humvee.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Balance and Order in a Lost World

Once achieved, death destroys; it is the anomaly of life, that the linear progression leads toward its own terminus, and by slow and incremental degeneration, its own vivacity is defined by a sense of self-immolation.  The realization of attainment almost always occurs upon surpassing the apex of an ordering of one’s life, and so the inevitable decline necessarily diminishes any joy derived from self-reflection of having achieved that balance and order for which we strive.

We can pursue a lifetime of studying Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and the goal to achieve eudaemonia by living a life of virtue in accordance with reason, and thus comply with the essence of who we are, what we define ourselves as, and thereby fulfilling the conceptual construct of our own inventions.  Or, we can “chuck it all” and attribute absurdity to the universe, genetic predisposition as the defining essence of our being, and justify the arbitrary course of our lives by deconstructing the classical ordering of our civilization’s teleology.

Few of us consider ourselves to be the master of our own destiny; and fewer still, of much influence in the steerage of our direction or course.  We tend to believe in the magic of, “If only…” while simultaneously ignoring our freedom from society’s constraints and liberty’s folly.  And when tragedy befalls, we blame the collective conspiracies of the gods who view us as mere playthings, fodder for unenlightened determinism no more complex than a belief in superstitions once thought lost in the antiquity of timeless reservoirs of forgotten bookshelves.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must suddenly end his or her career because of a medical condition, because the medical condition no longer allows the Federal or Postal worker to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal worker’s position description, the loss of balance and order is not just a hypothetical paradigm, but a reality enforced by circumstances beyond one’s control.

Indeed, the “world” within which such balance and order is lost, is not attributable to some greater concept of geopolitical significance, but one which touches directly upon the ephemeral plight of the here and now.  The striving for balance and the need for order; these are fundamental constructs required to maintain sanity and joy; and when the imbalance of life combined with the disorientation tethered by an unexpected medical condition intersects upon the rhythm of daily living, the shaking up of an otherwise tranquil life can appear to be devastating.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is often the necessary step in order to maintain that balance and order forever sought, and now interrupted by the gods of chance; and while the penultimate destiny of life’s striving may now appear to have lost its rationality for direction and purpose, it is always in the striving that one finds a way, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is often a means to a further end, if only to again regain a semblance of that balance and order once gained, and now temporarily lost, in a world already lost but for the insular privacy of one’s own happiness.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Agency: Alliances

Meritocracies are built upon an ideal of competency; quickly, however, as reality creeps into the ineffable truth of what actually occurs, people tend to fall back upon the comfort zones of unspoken alliances, allowing for protective measures tantamount to the nuclear paradigm of mutually assured destruction in saving one’s own skin.

The person who goes to work with quiet competency believes that hard work and incremental contribution will ultimately win out the day; the hardy laughs outside of the office echoing down the hallway with vague reverberations of mirthless camaraderie; the social events invited with a mere pop-of-the-head mention in passing by, but quickly with the added disclaimer of, “Oh, it won’t be much fun, but you’re certainly invited,” as if you are offered a discount coupon which needs only to be cut out and brought with you, but no scissors are provided and tearing such conveniences outside of the dotted line is considered in bad taste; and the Monday recounting of the get-togethers with back-slapping tales of associations forged and assuredly irrelevant to the work at hand, but somehow those quiet stares held for a moment too long between unspoken alliances concretized in what once was described as backroom deals filled with cigar smoke and consideration exchanged under poker tables, comes back to haunt in subtle ways in misdeeds of unaccounted time.

When a crisis hits the fan, favoritism is always denied, despite the facts which betray the truth.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must consider preparing for another vocation because the one presently positioned is no long viable, resulting from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties at the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, it often becomes evidence that the leeway given for approving FMLA in the meantime, or liberal leave policies, redistribution of workloads in order to temporarily accommodate or suspend many of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, is based not upon laws, regulations or those pesky statutes of alleged protective shrouds proudly declared by politicians from both sides “of the aisle”; rather, it is as it always has been — upon the feudal fiefdoms of alliances forged upon meritless applications of weekend romps.

The payment for hard work is the salary one receives; the “extras” depend upon the discount coupons one has discarded over those many years.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the time to consider preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is when the medical condition begins to impact and prevent one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s job; and when the afterthought of alliances left unattended results in regrets of unquantified good-will, one should remember that meritocracy is best judged in the faces of a family spent with, and not in the empty beer cans of remorse and despair.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Retirement Benefits for Disabled Employees: Discovering the natural teleology

It is for that function or use in society that we strive in our early years; while some may argue that the extrinsic relationship between career and one’s natural abilities make for an artificial coalescence of man-to-meaning, nevertheless, the adaptation to societal needs results in the correspondence between man’s inherent want and the contribution to a greater good.

But what happens when, later in life, the fusion of ability with societal need is abandoned?  What if work no longer can be performed, goals cannot be met, and wants cannot be fulfilled?  We are in a phase where we preach to our children that they should find a career in which natural talents are utilized, where inner satisfaction is achieved, and a sense of accomplishment is fulfilled.

A generation or so ago, we merely thanked society for offering a decent wage and a higher standard of living.  Then, something went awry — the gap between the worker and management became a wider chasm of discontent; magazines and video clips revealed the limitless narcissism of wealth and unfettered greed; and mediocrity of talentless actors revealed that even they, too, can achieve stardom despite lack of any appreciable achievement.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing the pathway of a chosen career with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, the separation from one’s work and position may take an unspoken toll — not just because of the medical condition, but further, as a result of losing the natural teleology the Federal or Postal worker had striven so strenuously to achieve.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is never an easy road.

Others may believe that securing an annuity because of one’s inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties is tantamount to winning a lottery of sorts, but the reality is that most Federal or Postal employees who file for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, if given the choice, would forego the benefit if the medical condition would resolve itself and health would dictate the course of one’s future and fate, and not its corollary, of illness and a chronic medical condition.

Throughout youth, one always strove to discover the natural teleology for value and place in society; when that essence of human need is suddenly lost or severed, it is time to reignite that loss of self, and to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application in order to enter into the next stage of life’s arena of meaning, value and worth.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire