Postal and Federal Disability Retirement: Persuasion

Persuasion is a funny animal; when it is effective, success is determined by the reversal of an opponent’s viewpoint, but if it is ineffective, mere silence ensues, and unless prompted by subsequent queries, one never knows how close one came to persuading another and what further evidence or argumentation may have pushed the other side over the edge.

Then, of course, there is always the question of whether the opposing party is open to persuasion or not, and what are the conditions within which it may occur.  The danger lies especially when an organization or bureaucracy has become so powerful or autocratic that it need not ever be persuaded because there are no consequences to being left unpersuaded.

The presence of outside safeguards is often necessary for persuasion to have its salutary effect, as a more obscure sense of “fair play” is often not enough to make a difference.  All of this, of course, doesn’t even touch upon the substantive content of what constitutes a persuasive argument, as context is often just as important as content (anyone who has been married will immediately understand the truth of this statement).

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have submitted a FERS Medical Retirement claim with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (also known for its acronym “OPM”) and have received an initial denial and must now respond to the denial at the Reconsideration Stage of the Process, “persuasiveness” becomes the battle cry in preparing the proper response.

OPM has all the time in the world in preparing its denial and needs little basis in its persuasive content.  They merely need to have some minimal basis of reasons to issue a denial.  On the other hand, the denied Federal or Postal applicant has (A) a very short timeframe in responding and (B) must advance a heavy burden of proof in order to overcome the denial, despite the often scatter-brained content of an OPM Denial.

Furthermore, in preparing a reconsideration Response, one should always keep in mind that the targeted audience is not just OPM, but the next stage in the event that OPM remains unpersuaded — that of the Admin Judge at the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).  That is why any response to an OPM Initial Denial should include a recitation of the relevant case laws discussing why your particular case meets the legal criteria for an approval.

As with spousal arguments and discussions around the Holiday dinner table, context matters as much as context when trying to persuade the other side.  And also in preparing a persuasive response, you may want to consider consulting with a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer specializing exclusively in FERS Medical Retirement Law.

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 Disability Retirement Claims: Between Commas, Clauses and Quotations

Between the grammatical constructs appear the sentence which contains the meaning intended.  Many see such normative standards as necessary for the orderly creation of cogent writing; others, as constraining devices which are unnecessary and debilitating to the creative process of unfettered communication.

Do we even teach “grammar” anymore, especially given the technological tools and software devices of corrective enhancements, beginning with ‘spell check’?

Commas prevent run-on sentences; clauses constrain the wandering tangent; quotations indicate the dialogue, a title or magnification of a singular word, etc.  Our thought processes are better organized within the confines of social constructs, and when we have a commonality of grammatical rules, it constrains the anarchy which language is susceptible to befalling.

Society in large requires that similar constraint — by laws and regulations which constrain arbitrary authoritarianism.

Think about it — for Federal and Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that a Federal or Postal employee needs to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits: Would you want the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to be able to act unfettered and unconstrained?

Or, are we relieved that there exists Federal Disability Retirement laws and case-law precedents which constrain the arbitrariness of the bureaucratic process?  For, between commas, clauses and quotations exist the constraints of thought, just as laws direct and constrain a governmental entity like OPM.

Contact a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and make sure that the commas, clauses and quotations are applied in their proper context, as well as the laws which govern Federal Disability Retirement benefits from OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Legal Representation on Federal Disability Retirement Claims: The Privy

As a verb, it allows for sharing in information secretive within confidences kept closely held; as a noun, an antonym of sorts — of a most public facility where privacy is needed, but which everyone uses for the most common of needs — of a place where we relieve ourselves and perform bodily functions that redden our cheeks with shame when spoken about.

Are we privy to the intimate thoughts of friends and loved ones?  Do we ask where the privy is when in London, Tokyo or Idaho?  Of the last of the tripartite places so identified, the response might be: “What’s that, hon?”  Of the middle, it could likely be: “Nan desu-ka?”  Of the first, with a neat British accent or the melody of a cockney dialect: “My good chap, just around the corner over there!”

Confidential information or the toilet; how many words in the English language allows for such duality of meanings depending upon where the word is inserted into a sentence?

That is how Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition often feel about their situation when a 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: For years, like the noun because he or she was a “valuable asset” to the Federal Agency or the Postal Service, where all confidential details were passes by you and you were always “in the loop” of everything important going on within the agency; then, when the medical condition hit and you began to take some Sick Leave and perhaps even a spate of LWOP, you were relegated to being a “noun” — no longer privy to the inner workings of the Agency or the Postal Service, but merely a privy on the outskirts of town.

When that happens — when you are no longer a verb, but an outcast noun — then you know that it is time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, so that your place in the sentence of life will once again become an active verb, and not merely an outcast noun to be abandoned and forgotten in the grammar of vital living.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Admission

It is a noun of peculiar variability, perhaps all interconnected upon reflection.  It can refer to the permission to enter, whether by right, payment or removal of obstacles; or, denoting the price of such entrance; or even yet, a confession or acknowledgment of a point taken; and in other contexts, of being accepted into a fraternity of sorts, as in “admission to a university” or “to the legal bar” – meaning, not an actual, physical movement through gates now open, but a conceptual membership into a community of selective individuals.

Is there a linguistic relationship between that sequestered sense of the word – of an acknowledgment or confession – in contradistinction to the other forms, all of the remainder of which encompasses an entrance, movement or acceptance to a desired destination upon the removal of an obstruction, whether by a physical gate or a nod of consent?

How about this:  An admission denoting a confessional standard or conceding a point of conflict can be likened as a release, where pent-up resistance is suddenly or finally torn down, and the voluntary pouring out of one’s previously-withheld desire to “tell all” has been replaced with the emptying sensation of a satisfied conscience.  You are now allowed into the community of guiltless souls, or at least of having the feeling of being released from the cage of deception in falsehood.

Admission in this sense is a freeing of one’s inner soul, and it is normally insufficient to bring that narrative of expiation in a silent soliloquy to one’s self; thus, there are confessionals and penitent individuals, bowing with genuflective subservience and unmasking one’s soul to someone cloaked in authoritative garments, and somehow the externalization of one’s guilty conscience has an antiseptic, cleansing effect.

Admission into a fraternity of brotherhood is always a welcoming act; admission of one’s mistakes, wrongs committed and sins adorned, has never been an easy undertaking, and less so in this day and age where moral equivalency is the prevailing rule of life.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the issue of admission is always twofold:  First, the entire purpose of preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is to gain admission into the class of former Federal and Postal employees who are now Federal Disability Retirement annuitants; and, secondly, it is important to allow for the difficult admission that the entire administrative and bureaucratic process is a complicated one, and therefore may require the assistance of legal counsel in order to successfully maneuver one’s way through the maze of complexities.

An admission in the first sense is thus the goal; an admission in the latter sense is merely a reflection of wisdom in progress for the Federal or Postal employee who, by necessity of a medical condition, needs to file a Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Those bare moments of honesty

They come in flashes of rare instances; sometimes, in a more subtle manner, like encroachments by a nimble adversary; at others, tantamount to ugly boils erupting in the middle of one’s forehead while interviewing for a sought-after position.  We cloak ourselves in lies, more lies, and obfuscations wrapped in greater deceptions of self-doubt.

Sometimes, such concealment is necessary; for, perhaps it is an evolutionary tool in order to merely survive.  Those who have lost such capacity may have to face the harsh realities of day-to-day living, and simply go mad; others who cannot defer the decadence of self-realization may react by engaging in binges of bifurcated pigeonholing and compartmentalizing of walls constructed to deny access to intercontinental flights of fancy.

Heidegger would say of it that we are merely procrastinating the inevitable.  The reality of Being is too harsh; projects and made-up, artificial distractions allow us to avoid the revelation of the ugliness of the world, or at least delay its unconcealed rupture for the time being.

But medical conditions shatter that quietude of avoidance.  For, their reality and intentional rudeness in deliberate interference in our daily lives presents itself like the fat uncle who takes up the entire couch without asking; the ugly displacement of pleasurable moments cloaked in deceptive avoidance of self-awareness makes for an elephant which is whispered about but nobody notices.

Becoming lost in virtual reality; Facebook friends whom we never meet; Twitter followings which meander in meaningless platitudes; the very lack of substantive discourse in our lives belies our greater efforts to avoid and confound.

Does it matter that the team one roots for will have lost on Sunday, or that the Lottery Ticket was a wasted twenty-dollar bill flushed down the toilet?  Mere distractions become central in lives of desperation and quiet moments of weeping in the dark caverns of lost thoughts, sought-after childhoods and forgotten moments of honesty and carefree pictures frozen in time.  But it is the ugliness of troublesome truths which reveal themselves to haunt and nudge.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who must face that challenge, the reality of life occurs when the medical condition prevents the Federal employee or Postal worker from continuing to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.  At some point, serious decisions must be made.

The clash between avoidance and reality comes to a flashpoint of sorts, and procrastination of the delayed cloaking of harshness can no longer be discreetly catalogued.

The page is opened upon us, and we must ask:  Can I continue in this same way?  Is the Agency or the Postal Service considering termination?  Will I become a young retiree in a 90-year old body if I struggle to remain?  And those haunting images of 40-some-year-old former football players in wheelchairs and walking like senile old men — does that portend of images for my life in the not-too-distant future?

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a viable alternative to allowing for those bare moments of honesty to become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Indicators mean something, and when one’s body, mind or soul shout within the quietude of one’s nudging conscience, it is time to consider preparing, formulating and filing for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, lest those bare moments of honesty become lost in the forgotten crevices of secluded fears relegated to the growing trash heaps of avoided realities.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Identity Theft

Concerns over “identity theft” abound in this information age where an almost unlimited trove of personal data gets transmitted through the ethereal universe of the Internet.

Certainly, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management itself should be aware of this, with the recent hacking of Social Security Numbers, birth dates, responses to security questions, etc., and their failure to protect such sensitive caches of information.  But such thievery is normally recoverable; new passwords and keywords can be changed and obtained; additional walls of security impositions can be constructed, and life can be returned to a relative level of normalcy, with mere vestiges of fading memories of inconvenience to haunt our daily lives.

There are other forms of identity thievery, however, which can be more onerous, and unrecoverable.  When an individual is stripped of his or her identity as developed over many years through hard work, dedication and loyalty to a purpose or cause, and that reputation becomes destroyed in quick order and succession resulting from circumstances beyond one’s immediate control, where is the restorative avenue for that?  To what door or office does one apply to regain the loss, and return back to a sense of normalcy?

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who are daily harassed because they suffer from a medical condition which impacts one’s ability and capacity to perform, any longer, the full essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal sector or for the U.S. Postal Service, such “identity theft” of an alternate kind is well known and intimately experience.

Those multiple years of toil, dedication and loyalty to development of fine-tuned talents in order to perform one’s job with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service — they become for naught, when one’s worth is so closely tied to one’s health, whether physical or psychiatric.  And so it may be time to “move on”, and this means, in all likelihood and necessity, 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.

Yes, ultimately, one’s OPM Disability Retirement application must be filed with the very same agency whose vault of personal personnel information was hacked into; but that is often the irony of life itself, where the Federal or Postal employee must knock on the very door which allowed for identity theft, in order to regain it again for a new and brighter tomorrow.

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