A few have told me I should post my thank you letter to Exxon-Mobil, so here it is. First a little background: about a year and a half ago, I applied to some Hispanic Scholarship Fund engineering scholarship, with little hope, in my mind, of actually receiving it. I was in Brazil a few months later when my mom told me I had received a letter back home from HSF. They wanted to congratulate me, as they were awarding me the engineering scholarship I had applied to, and by the way, Exxon-Mobil funded the scholarship, so I had better write them a thank you letter. I did, and they were so impressed they decided to renew my scholarship for one more year, and they really want me to drop Volume 2 of my infamous thank you letter. Also, I gotta give props to my man Checkmate, for polishing my rough note of gratitude into a dC blog worthy thank you letter. Now without further ado, the letter:

Dear Exxon-Mobil,

I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your generous support of the HSF/Exxonmobil Foundation scholarship, which I humbly and most gratefully received this year. It fills me with joy to see Exxon doing it’s part to support the higher education of young Latinos throughout the United States, empowering us to one day make our own personal contributions to society. If only the mainstream media would focus its attention to this kind of philanthropy! Instead, unbalanced journalists have subjected your firm’s record profits (a natural product of efficient management and operation) under the glaring scope of its harsh, partial scrutiny. Leave it to the liberal media to attack good old fashioned American entrepreneurship, as if there is a moral obstacle standing between conscientious firms and Exxon-level profits. As a profit-driven firm (which firm isn’t?), Exxon has simply succeeded unequivocally. Politicians are trying to tar and feather Exxon with threats of investigations and the consequences of alleged price gouging. The notion of Exxon-Mobil being afraid of tar is laughable; you should be the ones selling it to them! And as for feathers, just take one look at those marine birds in Alaska—Exxon-Mobil is clearly not afraid to get a little plumage ruffled!

Some opportunistic environmentalists are trying to create problems out of thin air by claiming that Exxon-Mobil’s policies are exacerbating the already serious problem of global warming. They use such evidence as the recent study by Science Magazine that analyzed 928 peer-reviewed papers published between 1993 and 2003 on global warming, and concluded that 100% of them were in agreement that the Earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity.

Again, this is a clear demonstration of the huge gap that exists between the real world and the esoteric research, baseless theorizing, and untenable moralism that takes place in isolated ivory towers. Luckily, we have men in office such as Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla) who still have the guts to stand up against elitist intelligentsia and tell us the truth that “global warming is the biggest hoax perpetuated on the American people.” He would know. Never mind that his campaign is the second biggest recipient of donations from the oil and gas industry (only second to that of the honorable senator from Texas, John Cornyn), Inhofe is on the Environmental and Public Works Committee—he must be well informed to do his job.

Once again I would like to express my thanks for the $2500 scholarship. I genuinely hope its funding did not negatively affect Lee Raymond’s $190,915-a-day salary last year, or from his subsequent $400 million retirement package. I suppose making record profits allows for fiscal flexibility—your success has made Mr. Raymond and I both better off! I’ll use this money to help finish my engineering degree, and then, if the whole Iran problem has been “taken care of” by then, I could perhaps offer my technical knowledge to help build a pipeline from Tehran straight to Houston. Hopefully then, I won’t have to fill up my SUV at $3 a gallon.

Sincerely yours,