Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: The direction of life

We are told from a very early age that we must have one; like winds that carry seasonal warmth and jet streams that bring unseasonable temperatures, we are ingrained to be purposive, teleological and focused upon the goal in mind.  Wisdom-filled proverbs echo beyond the history of instructional transference from parent to child, community to individual and generation to modernity: aiming for the target; sticking to a task; seeing things to their completion; being patient in everything you do; […] Read More …

FERS/CSRS Disability Retirement: Of tripe, tropes and trickling trivialities

One rarely thinks in terms of multiple stomachs, but certainly cows have them; but when we consider the tripe of language, we project only the inherent foolishness of man. Of tropes, we may envision a higher calling; though, of course, figurative speech requires greater imagination and creativity, and the dullness of many falls back naturally into either the first or second stomachs of the bovine kind, and not merely to be digested and emitted through the natural canals of intestinal tracts, but by metaphorical heights of human depravity. Then, of course, there are trivialities, and most of the drip-drip-drip sort, and never in voluminous waves of profundities, […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Suspicion of Preemption

Preemptive strikes are often justified by anticipatory rationalizations; the “other” one was “going to” do it, so it is right that one should do it beforehand (whether we are certain of the other’s actions or not, and of course, that is the beauty of such argumentation; by raising the specter of suspicion, we skip over the question itself and deride those who would dare to question the right of self-defense). […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Cherishing those small pleasures of life

Perhaps it is reading quietly by a crackling fireside; or playing fetch with the dog; or that moment of peaceful quietude just before sleep overwhelms; those moments, where worries of the world and daily living expenses intrude not, and time remains frozen just long enough to allow for an interlude of soundless music. There have always been pleasures in life; we often overlook them, take them for granted, or merely avoid recognition, lest an identification of it as such would mark them for extinguishment by those imaginary goblins of demonic demolition set out to destroy all remaining vestiges and residues of joy and comfort. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The Adaptable Criterion

If a criterion is advanced at the outset, one expects that the details of its applicability will result in a fair outcome so long as the requisite subsets are adhered to. The problem is one of generalizations, however, and the linguistic malleability of hermeneutic interpretation, and in the end, the honesty of the individual. There may have been a time when the sin nature of man was contained, and Pandora’s box was sealed, or at least somewhat secured; but once relativism creeped into the general populace, the game of restraint was lost forever. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement Law Blog: The Trifecta

The bet must be precise. Thus, it needs to be based upon extensive research, a knowledge of each of the elements, the circumstances surrounding the process; the quality of the expected environment; whether intersecting conditions will interrupt or influence; what other unforeseen confluence of intercessions may develop. The finishers must be predicted in sequential order. The trifecta is therefore a management of time, knowledge, expertise and sprinkled with a bit of luck extracted from the cauldron of a witch’s brew. […] Read More …