FERS Disability Retirement: The World of Yesterday

Yesterday was the day before the medical condition made its introduction; the day prior to having to acknowledge its existence, its impacts or its chronic appearance; the day just when complaining about life’s missteps and unfairness seems now so trivial and far off the mark of justified sequences; […] Read More …

Attorney Representation Federal Disability Retirement: The running of days

How does it happen?  Where did it all go?  One day, you are a young man or woman, full of promises and hopes, dreams that defy any limitation or restriction of potentiality yet to be unleashed; and the next, an old man or woman, rocking back and forth, awaiting the grim reaper with its scythe and faceless chasm of darkness and despair.  In between, of course, there is a memory – of a blur, a constant rush from this activity to that, of emergencies, turmoil and tumults, of the proverbial peaks and valleys; in short, it is called “living life”. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: Sunshine, briefly

Life is mostly dark clouds, with a ray of sunshine briefly upon a small patch of wet grass.  Yes, yes – such a perspective is a mirror reflection of the conflict between the “half-full” versus “half-empty” outlook; but is it helpful for young people to posit a world view, a paradigm or, in the philosophical realm of ivory towers, that king of all royalties in linguistic sophistication that is dropped nonchalantly to impress and raise eyebrows –  Weltanschauung […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The tentative step

This is a tough and dangerous world. No longer a Hobbesian State of Nature nor of War, the Social Contract as envisioned by Locke or Rousseau provides some nominal protection, and thus do we identify ourselves as “civilized” entities in yet a dystopian universe where a greater majority of the rest of the world acts with unconcerned insanity by engaging in senseless wars of mass killings and genocidal encounters. In such a world, we thoughtlessly bring newborns who must contend with an uncertain future, fraught with challenges unasked for and conflicts yet to be encountered. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The Reconsideration Stage

Much time is often wasted upon rebutting incoherent arguments. Such a statement is true in a great many sectors of life, as well as with an initial denial received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The first reaction in response to an Initial Denial received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is to panic and become disheartened: The Federal Disability Retirement applicant has waited many, many months, just to get to this point of being denied an application which was thought to clearly meet the legal standard of preponderance of the evidence, and perhaps the medical narratives and treatment records clearly and unequivocally established the nexus between one’s medical condition and the essential elements of one’s job. […] Read More …

FERS Disability Retirement Law: The Redshirt

In athletic parlance, it refers to an individual and a status, allowing for a fifth year of eligibility when the rules mandate a restriction to a four-year period.  The word itself is quite malleable, and reflects well the technicality involved in avoiding the direct letter of the language.  Being a redshirt (noun), a redshirt freshman (adjective) or redshirted in his first year (verb) reveals […] Read More …

Early Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Of spare things left in the world

We don’t seem to have a capacity to share of those things which we have no need, anymore. Does scarcity of resources result in “doubling down” in ways formerly described as miserly in deed? Does the free market principle of supply and demand explain the loss of social grace in responding to need? What ever happened to the spare tire, the jingle of spare change, and the ephemeral absence of spare time? Has society come to a criss-cross of contending forces, where the explosion of population growth, the rise of the middle class in developing nations around the globe, coupled with the exponential depletion of finite resources, have cumulatively coalesced to an incandescent compromise of character crisis? […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Potentiality extinguished

Aristotle addresses the concept well; of the inherent nature of being not defined merely by the state of current existence, but encompassing the finite potentiality of what it is yet to be, as well as being based upon the historical lineage of origination. Only within the context of that truism can children be treated as more than mere commodities of sweatshop workers, as in the days of Dickens and the Industrial Age empowered by the need for cheap labor; and on the other side of the spectrum, the old and infirm whose contribution to society has reached its apex of productivity, and is slowly receding into the sunset of former days filled with youth and vigor. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Affirmation, Affiliation and Affectation

But for the middle syllable (the extra “ta” in the word), it is what people strive for; and like the thief in the night who leaves behind earthen footprints of his twilight misdeeds, the insertion of that additional combination of a consonant and vowel turns the meaning of the word upon its head, and leaves us with an artificial prose devoid of poetry and warmth. The middle term is a favorite of sociologists and other “soft” sciences where anthropological studies […] Read More …