Dear Richard “12 ga” Cheney,

By way of your suggestions regarding our flagship line of offshore oil rigs, let us first say how pleased we were to have them. Your idea to package each rig as a tax-exempt, not-for-profit orphanage with public charity status is a stroke of neo-capitalist genius. To your race, whatever that may be, you are a great credit.

If our assumptions are correct, a rig, delivered complete with labor/orphans (of which there is now a global surplus, thanks in part to the continuation of many of your domestic and foreign policies as Vice President) would allow a drilling firm to “benefact” itself through tax-deductible, charitable contributions to itself-as-orphanage. At the same time, the drilling firm/orphanage, being subcontractor for the “care” of the labor/orphans, is eligible to receive government monies as long as the labor/orphans remain wards of the state. This shift in accounting will save millions per annum in insurance costs alone, not to mention the cost of labor, which will be tied only to fluctuations in the cost of gruel.

Along similar lines, another of our consultants (nice Jewish kid, goes by the name of Kissinger, expert in international orphans) has proposed the idea to decorate each rig (using public funds, of course) as exact replicas of the great factory/orphanages of the past. Thus, by modeling drill rigs after, say, the Waldstein Stocking Factory or the Vienna Workhouse, each facility could extract an exhausting number of work hours in the name of "historical accuracy" and subvert any OSHA regulations that might reduce profits. Thus when coupled with tax-exempt museum status, the drilling firm/orphanage could see a minimum increase in (not-for) profits of, oh, let’s say, a very large sum. Possibly more. All to be paid to its directors as salary. Eat your heart out Clinton Global Initiative.

Lastly, assuming these rigs go into production, Kissinger and I disagree over securing the endorsement of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. After seeing photographs documenting the ramshackle state of their Calcutta branch, I have come to distrust that entire operation. Where does all that money go? Is David Copperfield their accountant? To me, it seems only a matter of time before someone exposes that entire operation as a fraud.

Again, we are forever in your debt (only as a figure of speech, of course) and are looking forward to offering you a cushy position on our board should your memoirs continue to fail to find an audience beyond the Bilderberg Group.

Sincerely,

Hal E. Burton
Leopold II, Inc.
Dis, TX