FERS Medical Retirement from OPM: Random Occurrences

Kant’s view is that the structures of order are imposed upon the objective world by human thought processes; thus, ultimately, the argument is that there are no such things as random occurrences, for everything is random, and therefore nothing is such.  For, if everything is X, then it is the same as saying that nothing is X, just as, If everything which is X is also Y, how can you distinguish between the two?

It is similar to David Hume’s contention concerning causality.  There is nothing in the world that tells us that the next time you hit a cueball and aim it at the 8-ball in a game of pool, that it won’t hit the target but fail to move it.  The fact that you have seen it done a hundred times before is no guarantee that it will happen the next time; for, what you saw the hundredth time gave you no new information than the first time you saw it.

Volume of incidents in identical form is no basis to argue that causality exists, if only because no “necessary nexus” is discovered whether you have witnessed something once, or a thousand times.  Yet, we crave stability and consistency; it is these random occurrences which trouble us, like a bad hair day which ruins and depletes our sense of confidence in the world we occupy.

Medical conditions have that effect upon people — that they are random occurrences which hit some, but not others.  It is when that happens when we believe the world to be unfair, and that the gods of fate somehow look with disfavor upon us.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition which prevents you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job, the search for greater consistency and stability in your life may be to prepare, formulate and file an effective FERS Disability Retirement claim, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

For, while the objective world around you may appear to be merely a series of random occurrences, it is the affirmative act of a human being which can impost some semblance of Kantian order upon an otherwise chaotic world.  Such an affirmative act begins, for the Federal or Postal employee, but contacting a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Medical Retirement Law under FERS, to be filed with 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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement Application: Beliefs

They have become overly magnified in this day and age of incessant contentiousness; but as to what they are, from whence they are derived, and why some are valid while others are inconsequential, remain somewhat of a mystery.  People believe in all sorts of things.  Moreover, in recent years, discretion and modesty seem to have been lost, and the art of expression is no longer a predicate to expressing them loudly and vociferously.

Is it important for people to possess beliefs?  Should they be based upon factual predicates?  Moreover, are some beliefs more valid than others? Should logic play a role in them, or is mere passion and extreme emotion enough to validate?

It is all well and good to hold insulated beliefs on social media, so long as the circularity of such beliefs need not be tested in the objective world.  Thus, if X believes in Y, and A believes in Y also, and it is never expressed outside of the context between the insulated linguistic exchanges between X and A, no harm comes about.  But if belief-Y is that “oncoming buses traveling at Z-miles per hour cannot harm you”, and either X or A goes out and tests such a belief in the objective, “real” world outside of social media — well, you know the real-world consequences which will result.

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, your belief in whether you can prepare and formulate an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, depends a great deal upon your factual knowledge of the laws governing Federal Disability Retirement.

Don’t take the chance that the legal knowledge which must be relied upon is enough to prepare a strong enough Federal Disability Retirement case. Instead, it might behoove you to contact a disability attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Law, thereby preventing a disastrous result, such as the belief that an oncoming bus going at 50 miles per hour is a harmless entity in the objective world.

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 Employees: The People We Knew

Life is short; or, as Hobbes would put it, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.  Of course, he was referring to Man’s “state of nature”, which constantly placed him in a war-like state with others, and in this time and era where we find ourselves contending and struggling, makes it appear as if we have re-entered such a state of nature.

This global pandemic makes it likely that, like major wars previously fought, we will know of someone, whether close or distant, who has either been infected with the corona virus, or who died from it.  The people we knew remind us of the frailty of health and the human condition.  We work all of our lives in order to meet a goal; perhaps of retirement, maybe of enjoying grandchildren; and even of slowing down a bit in order to “enjoy” the better things of life.

But like all plans, there are disruptions and interruptions, and the people we knew remind us again and again that work is not everything; it just happens to take up most of our time.

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, one’s health and the importance of maintaining it becomes of paramount focus.  There can be life beyond a Federal or Postal job, and filing a FERS Disability Retirement application may be the way to achieve that life.

Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest the people we knew reminds us again that no job is as important as the health that we once enjoyed, and have now lost, as this time of a global pandemic reminds us daily with the people we knew.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The complex simplified

Ultimately, that is the reason why we hire experts in a particular field.  Life has advanced with such complexity that everything has become particularized into specialized fields where focus upon a subject becomes narrower and narrower.

The days of former times when the neighborhood doctor came and made house visits with his black leather bag are no longer existent; instead, we go to the doctor’s office, and only then to be referred to countless and whatever other specialists for further consultation and diagnosis.  The “general practitioner” is merely the gatekeeper; once inside the gate, there are multiple other doorways that must be approached, entered, and traveled through a maze of further developments of referrals until the “right one” is finally connected to.

Law has become the same as medicine; no longer can one simply hang up one’s shingle and “practice” law in every generality; rather, the legal field has become such a conundrum of complexity that the best approach is to first understand what legal issue needs to be addressed, then to locate a lawyer who specializes in that particular field of law.  From the lawyer’s perspective, it is a job of taking the complex and simplifying it such that the layman can comprehend the issues at hand, the approach that will be taken, and the resolution offered.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the issue is encompassed by the developing need to think about the future and to adjust and adapt to whatever benefits are offered for the Federal or Postal employee in such circumstances.

The benefit of “Federal Disability Retirement” is not often even known by Federal or Postal employees to exist.  However, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is certainly an option to be considered.  It is, however, a complex administrative process where adequate and sufficient medical documentation must be gathered, where certain key elements and points of law must be addressed, and if it is not carefully formulated, can have dire legal consequences without careful review and processing.

As with so many things in life, having a legal representative advocate for your case becomes a necessity where the complex is simplified, but where simplification does not mean that it is simple –merely that it is indeed complex but needs to be streamlined so that it is cogent, comprehensible and coherent in its presentation, substance and submission.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The tapestry of modernity

Every age has its feel of fabric of the times; in ages past, the woven loom of quiet hamlets with curls of smoke slowly rising from the warmth of the hearth; in others, the tension wrought at the dawn of the industrial revolution, where the ways of old and the textiles of handiworks would soon be replaced by the machines of progress.

In modernity, there is the tactile sense of restlessness, of communities splintered, where we are told that the inevitable march of progress is but for the dawn of an age of leisure, as each technological innovation will afford us greater time with out families.  Somehow, however, we are busier than ever.  Not more productive; not even happier; just a frenzy of activity to plug the holes of the dam which continually creaks with new fissures.  That is the tapestry of modernity; of a world which fits man into a cauldron of machines beyond the want of age.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who, in this day of demands beyond human capacity and tolerance, suffer from a progressively debilitating 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, there dawns a time when filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes a necessity.

Often, the upcoming fight seems like the “same old” repetition of confronting the inevitability of the progressive decline reflected in the age of technology, as bureaucracy and administrative obstacles form a conspiracy of stopping every avenue of attempted accommodations.  Life is tough; life in modernity is tougher, still.  The tapestry of modernity belies the times of yore when communities cared and banded together, replaced by the coldness of rights, benefits and entitlements.

OPM Disability Retirement benefits are there to compensate for the Federal or Postal employee who “paid the price” and now has a disability which prevents one from continuing in his or her chosen field; and the tapestry of modernity allows for that very attainment of necessity, in order for the Federal or Postal employee to move on into the next phase of civilization’s promise of hope for a future of uncertainty.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Life’s wisdoms

The term, “decapitalization” often refers to the deliberate and systematic process of imposing harsh government policies in order to alter the private sector’s hold upon society’s commercial entanglement and mercantile involvement.

In some grammatical contexts, however, it can denote the reduction of capitalized lettering into “small” letters, and thereby change its appearance, import, and even “meaning”.  e.e. cummings is a fine example of this.  Or, on a “title page”, one would expect that the concept of “Life’s Wisdoms” would be capitalized, for essentially two main reasons:  The first word, “Life”, is too great a theme not to ascribe the signification of it, as well as being the beginning part of the title; and the second, well, if it was good enough for Solomon, then we should certainly designate and captivate with a position of priority.

So, why has it been “reduced” in the heading of this short blog, you ask?  Because most of life’s wisdoms are not provided at the time of birth on a silver tray packaged in a unitary compendium; rather, they are “dished out” in small increments, over time, through encounters both expected and unasked for; and always when we least desire it.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal Sector and the U.S. Postal Service, seeking out “information” in order to begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management may take on many and variegated forms:  Internet Research; contact with the Human Resource Office; call to an attorney; discussions with others who have gone through the administrative and bureaucratic process; unloading upon family and friends, etc.

Always remember, however, that there is a vast chasm of differences between “information” and “wisdom”, and the mere fact that much of information provided “out there” is capitalized with blaring trumpets of fanfare and glitter, ascribing signification by making something into an “upper case” designation, or otherwise in priority of sequence, does not transform the “it” into anything more than what first the skeleton of the entity originated.  Saying it doesn’t make it so; dressing it up does not complete a substantive metamorphosis begun in nascent shivers of intended good.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who must make wise decisions concerning one’s future course of actions because filing for OPM Disability Retirement has become a necessity, the conversion from aggregating mere information to obtaining life’s wisdoms must come about first through a decision to decipher and sift through the vast and irrelevant information “out there”, and then to implement a course of action which sounds right, considers the differing interests at hand, and then to emulate the experiential factors we have accumulated over these many years of trials and turmoil.

Just remember that Solomon made his share of mistakes, as well.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The Demarcation between Sanity and…

The dividing line itself may be a false option; for, there may well exist a spectrum of alternatives prior to falling off of the fathomless cliff into the netherworld of the opposite.  Yet, human behavior often reveals to us the tenuous hold we have upon this thin reed we identify as the “civilized” world, where conformity to standards of behavior are relatively followed, and the social contract between citizens constrains open aggression towards one another; and from the individual’s viewpoint, the internal mechanism of orderliness remains fairly intact.

We recognize, however, that there exists such a dividing line; how else to explain the rise of dystopian novels and movies depicting the quick regression into chaos and madness?  Then, on an individualized scale, the daily pressures, the stresses encountered, the bombardment of data, needless and useless information, and the constant obsession with our Smartphones — we come to believe that the demarcation is between sanity and the “other” universe, comprised of complete loss of rational discourse.

That is why we come to accept that a person has “snapped” or “gone postal“; and the new normalcy includes a bomb being set off in a crowded mall, and certainly for some endangered countries and populations, that is a daily occurrence to be expected, like birth, death, taxes and sweaty palms on a first date of teenage romance.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must work under conditions of daily and almost intolerable levels of stress, well comprehend the plight of that fragile decomposition of demarcations.  For, when a medical condition begins to impact the Federal or Postal employee’s capacity and ability to continue performing all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, the exponential quantification of stress levels begins to expand and show the almost-imperceptible cracks opening the inner resolve to “tough it out“.

The question is:  How long does it take, and not “whether”, but “when”?  The reason why the little old lady next door always says to the reporter, “He was such a nice young man…” is that we rarely take the time to notice the subtle changes of decomposition.  Instead, we tend to observe things in incremental jumps, like warp speeds of bouncing into another universe of experiential encounters, instead of being watchful to daily needs and wants.

For the Federal or Postal employee whose medical condition has come to a point where it becomes clear that simply “existing” as opposed to “living” has become a daily reality, the time may be now that preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has become a necessity, and not merely a theoretical option for an obscure future event.

The dystopian universe first begins with the demarcation between sanity and reality, and the failure to recognize and identify the source of deterioration; rarely is it between sanity and its opposite, except perhaps in timeless tunnels of inchoate universes where the whispers of crying fears shout out in chasms of darkness, in a madness we are creating daily for ourselves as we delay the inevitable.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: The False Option of Extremes

-The choices we make are contingent upon the knowledge we possess; thus, if we choose between a tripartite offering of x, y & z, when (as perhaps illustrated by Venn Diagrams within a rectangular border representing the “universal” set of possibilities) actual and available options may extend beyond the known quantities available, then we have made our decision based upon an ignorance of alternatives.

Offerings are generally made based upon self-centered care; in negotiating with an adversary, it is normally the option of extremes which are granted:  Either X, or Y, but not both, and if neither X nor Y, then consequence-T.  No mention is made concerning the availability of sub-options Xx, or Yy, to the remaining result of T1, 2 or 3.  Furthermore, when the concealment or unrevealed alternatives fail to be presented, it is often the case that only the extreme of options are conveyed, which makes the entire set of non-universal choices false in their very definition.  This can be exponentially quantified when a medical condition is introduced into the equation, precisely because mental acuity and sound judgment become influenced by desperation of circumstances.

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 positional duties in the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, the false option of extremes can very likely be attributable to fear, lack of knowledge, combined with loss of confidence in the fair distribution of justice and good sense.

It is indeed troubling that so many Federal and Postal workers know nothing about Federal Disability Retirement, or its availability after having worked just 18 months in the Federal sector (under FERS), or 5 years under CSRS.  The confusion can sometimes arise in the availability of Social Security Disability, which is distinct and separate from Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

The two are distinct and different in multiple ways:  the criteria to qualify; the nature of the benefit; the rules concerning employment after approval of either, etc.  Yes, if under FERS both SSDI and FERS Disability Retirement are granted, there is an “offset” tantamount to a coordination of benefits between the two, but for those who do not seek outside employment, the combination of both (despite the offset) will normally net the (former) Federal or Postal employee more in terms of a monthly annuity.

Whatever the reasons, the age-old adage (attributable to Sir Francis Bacon) that knowledge is power, and lack of it injustice and contempt (the addendum clause is merely added by this author) by those who possess but offer mere false alternatives, is but a pervasive truism abounding despite the Internet, Google and other information-searching technologies of modernity.

In the end, the false options of extremes should be countered by a deliberative intent and real curiosity to know — know that the “other side” is never truly looking out for your best interest; that in making spur-of-the-moment decisions, to take a further moment to investigate and reflect may be fruitful, and in the end, to recognize that for the Federal or Postal employee suffering from a medical condition, working on at the expense of one’s health, or resigning, are not the only two options available, but preparing, formulating and 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 also within the subset of universal alternatives available to the Federal or Postal employee.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire