Federal Employee Medical Retirement Benefits: The Diary

Many begin the process at an early age, then abandon it with little remorse or afterthought, as a worthless project discarded for want of inherent value; and when, years and even decades later, it is discovered behind a bureau or a secret cubbyhole where trinkets and memorabilia retaining an eternal aura of privately precious remembrances are stored away, we shriek with joy as if the lottery had been won, a proposal has been declared, or a camouflaged vault containing the mysteries of gemstones […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Fated Lives Intersecting

To state that, because something has happened, it was fated to happen, is to merely confess a tautology of meaningless repetition; and so there must be more to it than what the words themselves seem to logically undermine. Thus, when Cassius lamented to Brutus that men at times “are master of their fates; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,” he was referring to the clash between human will and the predetermination of events already set, and despite our best efforts, our condemnation by force of will, it is our own pathos that evinces tragedy. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The complexity of human experience

We take for granted much, and dismiss with careless appreciation the residue of crumbs begotten. The idiom that refers to the final straw which breaks a camel’s back — why does the foreign species have an impact upon a culture which is unfamiliar with such a beast of burden? Is it that, despite the images produced against the background of pyramids and pharaohs of a bygone civilization, the essence and theme of the proverbial statement resonates, whether replaced by a horse, a donkey or an ox? […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement under FERS or CSRS: Junkyards

It is the latter in the compound word which is left forgotten and unnoticed, precisely because of the screaming blare represented by the former, demanding attention by the sheer nature and character of its breaching sensibilities, like the spoiled cousin refusing to abide by the conventions imposed upon uninvited visitors and customs curtailing unwanted guests. Once, before time forgotten and memories untarnished, the landscape was perhaps a pasture green with wildflowers and vegetation overgrown; then, a possessor who perhaps put up a fence to demarcate the beauty […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The numerical veil

Statistical constructs indicate group shifts and movements; numbers, based upon controlled samplings, provide the substantive fodder for analysis of trends and patterns of population deviancies. There is, however, the question of the incommensurate nature between mathematical paradigms and linguistic application; stated more simply, Do numbers hide more than reveal, and can anything be extrapolated from them and interpreted in terms we can understand and comprehend? To a winner of the lottery, the numerical phantasm “one in a billion” […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Relevant subjects and relating back

Is it merely a ploy?  Are all subjects discussed in order to get to the point of addressing the subject of disability retirement for Federal employees and U.S. Postal Workers?  Some might wonder; yet, from the perspective of this attorney, the answer is quite simple:  Having a medical condition, and the resulting need to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is reflective of life’s multi-variegated challenges on a wider cosmic scale.  We tend to compartmentalize the trials and obstructions encountered; to say of this bump in the road, […] Read More …

Elevation of the Federal Consumer Product Compliance Directorate (FCPCD) to a Cabinet-level status

It first came to light in August, 1974, just prior to Nixon’s resignation from Office. A young reporter by the name of Dan Druthers asked the President: “Have you considered the exponential factor of time wasted in consumer affairs concerning crushed toilet paper rolls during transport and delivery? What has your Administration done about it? The American People demand an answer!” The White House Press Corps was aghast. No other journalist had had the temerity to heretofore question the Presidency with such forcefulness. The President, of course, was stumped, and shot back, “Mr. Druthers, what do you think you are running for?” […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: The power of dialectical shrewdness

The Middle English noun form of the term connotes a conniving and negative tone, as in the focus of Shakespeare’s play, “The Taming of the Shrew”; but the adjective form merely denotes a practical astuteness in utilizing scarce resources in creative and constructive ways, whereas the altered noun form of “shrewdness” simply extends upon that kinder, gentler meaning. When truncated as a compound concept with the term encompassing language and communication, however, it is meant to imply a practical force of conveying which sheds itself of unnecessary embellishment and unrequited force of utterance. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The Coherent Life

Coherence fails to take into the account the unexpected; moreover, a linear, systematic unfolding of events is rarely the rule, but rather the exception. Look at nature and the traumatic tumult which follows daily — of predators and pendulums swinging between life and death, and the instability of future courses yet to be determined. What do we make of it all? Kant would posit that we bring to the objective world structural viewpoints in order to bring order into a chaotic world; but is rationality seen from within of any greater coherence than a world unfettered by human perspective? […] Read More …