I like Cape Cod Potato Chips — not enough to buy them when they’re not on sale, but they are better than average, and they’re local, or were, until recently.
Most of the production had long since been transferred to free American states, but a vestigial footprint was left behind, in Hyannis. The little factory, which still employed 49 people, used to be a decent-sized tourist attraction.
But as of July, everything’s gone. As the corporate owner, Campbell’s Soup, noted in a press release:
“The site no longer makes economic sense for the business.”
Couldn’t the same thing be said about the entire state of Massachusetts? It no longer makes economic sense.
Or any other kind of sense, for that matter.
The flight last week of Cape Cod chips from Cape Cod was a mere diversion, small potatoes you might say, from the larger pattern of catastrophes here in Massachusetts.
Consider this ongoing cold snap. Just a couple of weeks ago, Gov. Maura Healey made a big announcement. Hydro Quebec had just “flipped a switch,” and now those nice uber-woke Canadians would be providing 25% of the state’s electrical needs, at a savings of $50 million.
Her coven of no-nonsense gals and transitioning beta males began cheering wildly.
Fast forward to last weekend. Hydro Quebec had some, uh, problems, as woke enterprises are wont to do. Plus, global warming took the same weekend off in Canada as it did here. Demand skyrocketed in La Belle Province as temperatures plummeted and output failed.
Guess what happened? The Canadians “flipped a switch” — to off. And Massachusetts was screwed, or would have been, if we hadn’t had fossil fuels to fall back on. Again. Forty percent of our electricity last weekend was generated by… oil.
Not cleaner stuff like natural gas — Maura shut down two pipelines, remember? Or nukes — thanks, Clamshell Alliance!
No, it was oil that saved the day. Oil from free America bailed out the virtue-signaling, totally incompetent Democrats here.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…
Then there was wind power, another of Maura’s pet topics. Last week, the wind-power green scam artists were back in federal court, arguing to be permitted to keep squandering billions more on those insane offshore windmills that produce next to no energy, but plenty of pollution.
Do you know how much energy “wind” generated for New England’s hard-pressed electric grid last weekend? According to the Wall Street Journal, less than the burning of wood and garbage.
If wind and solar power are the future, it’s going to be very cold and dark in New England.
You know the old joke.
Q. What did Democrats use for light before candles?
A. Electricity.
Meanwhile, in the political arena, the state continued trying to prevent the feds from arresting and deporting any of the illegal-alien criminals they have welcomed into Massachusetts on full lifetime welfare.
The Democrats claim the federal government has no right to come in and re-impose law and order in the Commonwealth.
Yet simultaneously, the state attorney general went to court to force nine local towns to acquiesce to a crackpot state mandate requiring them to build “public housing,” which is now a euphemism for flooding tranquil working-class communities with hordes of the non-working classes, most of them from the Third World.
So much for insuring domestic tranquility.
This lawsuit against the towns was filed by the attorney general, Andrea Campbell, who has such a commitment to the celebration of diversity that she has fled Boston for the bucolic, 86% white town of Dartmouth on the South Coast.
It’s far outside the confines of the targeted MBTA district. Dartmouth will never be affected by the fundamental transformation of America that Campbell fantasizes will soon be devastating Winthrop, Holden and the rest of the towns.
None of this makes any sense. The state argues that if the feds want to impose control over Taxachusetts, it’s somehow unconstitutional. But if Massachusetts arbitrarily decides to impose its control over the municipalities, it’s totally okay.
This was the nonsense that was going on here last week, just like every week. Maybe that’s why people would rather talk, at least for a moment or two, about defunct potato chip companies.
Nostalgia becomes a recurring theme in failing states — thinking about pleasant things that have vanished because they “no longer make economic sense.”
In Massachusetts, you can play the do-you-remember game with any kind of business sector — candy companies, banks, beer, even the computer companies that were once supposed to be the state’s savior. Digital, Wang, Data General, Prime, etc. All gone.
And now Cape Cod potato chips. These days I mostly grocery-shop at Aldi’s, where the house brand is Clancy’s. They’re made in Canada, which is also where State Line chips come from since the old Wilbraham plant was shuttered.
After the Cape Cod chips announcement, I asked my radio listeners if they remembered other old local brands. The lines lit up.
It’s kind of a sad topic, but not as depressing as talking about how Healey, Campbell et al. are taking a wrecking ball to absolutely everything normal in Massachusetts.
Callers mentioned Tri-Sum and Wachusett — according to their website, those two old rivals are now made “in the Northeast,” which doesn’t sound much like Worcester County. Remember Vincent’s, from Salem, with the witch on the bag or tin?
They brought up brands I’d never heard of — Hunt’s and Blackstone — or recalled only vaguely, like Boyd’s. In New Hampshire, they had Granite State.
I recalled my Aunt Mabel in Portland alternating between King Cole and Humpty Dumpty chips, depending on which brand was on sale at A&P.
And now Cape Cod chips become the latest ghost brand in New England. Maybe they’ll put up a marker at the shuttered factory gates on Breeds Hill Road. It’s a tradition in Massachusetts, just like the other announcement from Cape Cod’s owners last week.
“The company will provide impacted employees guidance on how to assess state assistance programs.”
Welfare — the last thing that makes economic sense for Massachusetts.
