Investigate "Big Greeting Cards"

With several holidays just around the corner, I'd like to re-post a rant I did on a forum about this time last year.

I think it’s time to stop ranting against “Big Oil”, and to take up the cause against “Big Greeting Card”. If anything has gotten out of hand, price wise, it’s the greeting card business. It can’t be the amount of paper, because I can buy a pocket book at WalMart for less than the price of a typical card, and the book contains ten times the amount of paper.

It can’t be the earnings of the verse writers. I’ve read where they get mere pennies for writing verses, and there are only so many ways to write Merry Christmas, so you know there must be thousands of recycled verses.

I’m convinced it’s nothing but obscene profits for a few rich greeting card executives, and Congress ought to hold hearings to investigate Hallmark, Ambassador, et al. I’d like to see their CEOs squirming in the witness chair while they try to explain to the honorable congressman from Mississippi why thirteen cents worth of product costs $5.99 at the local drugstore. Even after the leftover cards hit the discount shops, they sell for ten times their raw product cost. I'm sure the original retailers can claim unsold cards as losses against their federal taxes, so we are being forced to pay Hallmark twice!

While they are at it, I think Congress should investigate the reason behind adding all those greeting card days to the original two or three we used to have. Somehow, Grandparents Day, Kwanza, and Earth Day don’t do it for me when it comes time to send greetings. If they dig deep enough, I'm betting they’d find some kind of illegal relationship between the card companies, the promoters of new holidays, and yes, maybe even the Bush administration.