No "Laissez Faire" at Starbucks:
Starbucks allows its customers to purchase somewhat customized Starbucks cards. As David Boaz reports, it's okay to get a card emblazoned with the slogan "People not Profits" or "Si Se Puede," but not "Laissez Faire." The former is just fine, but Starbucks finds the latter to be "inappropriate." Apparently the folks at Starbucks (and Arroweye, the company that processes the cards) find it unacceptable that some of their customers want to celebrate the economic system that has allowed for their success. Makes me wish I'd gone to Caribou Coffee this morning instead.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Starbucks Now Accepts "Laissez Faire":
- No "Laissez Faire" at Starbucks:
if the coffee thing bottoms out, he has a future producing movies.
/me wholeheartedly agrees while sipping his morning dark roast.
Also, the trivia at the Caribou on 17 &L in DC this morning: "What television host has more hours on air than any other?"
I'll comment back later in the day w/ the answer, and this is an "of all-time" not just current TV hosts.
Time for some Folgers.
In the D.C. area I highly recommmend Murky Coffee, now only operating at its Arlington location. The Eastern Market shop had to close because the shops are owned by a sales tax-dodging liberal, who is maybe getting screwed by the District government, an equal opportunity screw-er. What's nice about Murky is that the owners' politics are irrelevant because Murky is really about making very good coffee, rather than operating as a money-grubbing bad-coffee slinging BigCorp posing as a Bo-Bo lifestyle choice / political statement. Yeah, they're fair trade, but their coffee is actually good.
Dean &DeLuca is a pretty good second choice, albeit a little pricey; but the location and clientele tend to be quite scenic and worth the extra buck per cup.
McDonald's you have to be careful, sometimes the coffee sits awhile and gets old.
For just Coffee go to Quick Trip.
I've been working at a Starbucks for just over 2 years (I'll be done in less than 2 weeks, thank god) and we have people who drive past 3 or more other coffee stores who come to our store daily for their cup of coffee.
Personally, I don't like coffee (irony, I know), so I can't really judge accurately the taste of other stores' coffee beyond my scale of bad to really bad. So I'm curious. Leaving aside possible bad business practices, or potential connections to Israel, etc., why do people have such a rampant dislike for Starbucks?
Hugh Downs?
However, it's a giant company. People don't like those, for whatever reason. See WalMart, GM, etc. It's actually smart for a big company to have an antiestablishment attitude, because it helps negate the anti-big company feeling to some degree.
Fair enough. Gotta hate the folks who worked up from nothing and made themselves the best. If you can't be the American dream, I suppose your best bet is to attack it where ever you find it.
So, in socialist Vermont, owning and operating capital does not make one a capitalist.
Oh, and it does taste burnt a lot of the time.
I generally either shut out the "No one I know voted for Nixon" vibe or I eavesdrop and see how many inanities get spouted. I'll never forget one time, at a Starbucks in Houston, I struck up a conversation with some locals and was told, point-blank, that I had no business being in the gay Starbucks when the straight one was only two blocks down.
Please. That's like saying people who dislike Pizza Hut pizza, or Budweiser, are envious. Is it just possible, that maybe Pizza Hut pizza and Bud kinda suck, but the masses aren't exactly discriminating in their tastes?
Just because they sell a lot of grapefruit-flavored MD-20/20, doesn't mean the product is good. All it means is they found a market for it. If quality is a matter of democratic process, then surely Bud, Pizza Hut (or maybe Dominos), Chevrolet, USA Today and Ryan Secrest are the highest quality products in their respective arenas. You really think that's the truth? All that market success means for most of these trademarks is they found a least common denominator market niche for their product. They are *great* at marketing. It doesn't mean their product is any good.
My wife &my ex-girlfriend have little in common, but both are/were addicts of the Starbucks French Roast, the burnedest of the burned. Tried "better" coffees, went back to French Roast.
You can find people who'll swear that bourbon is disgusting, that lager is undrinkable, that Diet Coke is foul -- and plenty of people who hold the contrary.
If so, then Alias is on to something. They really are just anti-French.
Regis Philbin!
and noisy.
Not sure what that makes Cathy Lee or Ripa.
as a non-coffee drinker, I marvel at the amount of money spent on the liquid, in whatever form. Of course, my expensive micro-brews are entirely beside the point.
Seriously, who cares?
Before Starbucks hit this market (Boston) we had the Coffee Connection (which then became the Coffee Connection at Au Bon Pain, excuse the double preposition, before it disappeared.) I like Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and I liked McDonald's coffee before they switched to Paul Newman's by Green Mountain. I just had some pretty badly burned McD's at the Connecticut rest stop used by Lucky Star bus. Best coffee I've had (tasted as good as it smelled) was at a truck stop, also in that little square state between New York and Boston.
If 1% use French presses, what portion like fresh-ground Brazilian beans in their French presses? (And why are some people unable to make a good cup of coffee at all?)
Starbucks has bad coffee anyway.
I don't think they'd have a problem with "A is A" or "Vices are not Crimes".
Actually, the latter sounds like a great slogan for a Starbucks gift card.
Oh, and freshly ground beans are an absolute must (I'm partial to Colombian though). Now, if you said freshly roasted that would be a seriously exclusive definition.
Do you realize that the First Islamic Investment Bank, now called Arcapita still controls Caribou Coffee? Moreover those who run Arcapita do so under shari'ah business practices. If Caribou had a "Caribou Card" program do you think you could have "Zionist" on your card? Or even "Shalom."
Three words: preening social signaling.
Myself, Starbucks was the first opportunity I had to obtain specialty cofee drinks, and they were largely responsible for establishing a coffee culture in this state. Thanks to Starbucks, I now both have and am aware of alternative options, including Dazbog franchises and several good local shops. But I still have access to Starbucks for longer hours and at more locations than any other store, and fortunately, I have no need to engage in preening social signaling, so I still enjoy Starbucks coffee, even though there are now other options that I enjoy more when available.
Reminds me of a South Park episode: Gnomes.
Better than them serving it hot and it spilling on your legs and scalding you.
Maybe this article will explain.
but peets coffee has a very wide selection of teas...something that starbucks lacks. that alone guarantee's my patronage.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned seatle's best yet. one of my favorites. and since all the ones i know of are in a bookstore, usually much more quite than your average starbucks.
Well, that clinches it -- your alias isn't just a coincidence. So, posting here on the NSF's dime, or the Navy's?
When I hear it, "Yes we can" reminds me of the Sammy Davis, Jr. story, "Yes I can."
I'm by no means an economist, but if the current U.S. system is a laissez-faire one, what have the libertarians been whining about since the New Deal? I'm one of those wacky liberals who thinks that a completely unregulated free market is not something to be "coveted" in any case, but Adler is way off base to suggest that Starbucks owes its success to such a system when that company has a particularly strong tradition of rejecting the appearance of such things as employee and farmer exploitation that (rightly or wrongly-- I have no desire to get into that debate here) are often associated with a truly laissez-faire system.
1) they have (and have had) great marketing. that helps. just ask Bill Gates.
2) their burnt style coffee ONCE SOMEBODY GETS USED TO IT becomes an acquired taste. so, while coffee snobs may hate it, for those that start drinking starbux, they start to seek that burnt type flavor, and thus starbux has a loyal customer. for an analogy... see: cigarettes
3) starbux falls under the category of (so called) "affordable luxury". a starbux cup is a status symbol.
etc.
i love the way they try to be all PC and New age and stuff. it cracks me up. i just want a frigging cup of coffee. i make my own.
yes, but they used to weaponize their coffee, which had the unintended consequence of causing burn lawsuits...
Best way to kick the coffee habit is to develop a taste for lots and lots of good tea. Purists brew the stuff from leaves, which I do when I can, but I think the better grade of teabag is fine for most purposes. Just don't try to boil the water in a microwave. It never comes out right.
Check your local snooty grocery store for a selection of teas to start you off. Specialty shops and catalogs can also be good sources. Ideally you want to find someone who used to be a big wine snob but has decided to shift some of that obsessive energy into tea. Get into the habit of exchanging holiday gifts with such a person (mine is my brother-in-law), and you'll never lack for interesting tea again.
And one of the best things about tea is the cost. If you make it yourself, even the expensive kinds work out to around 10-20 cents a cup.
Does anyone know if that thing about caffeine protecting against dementia also works for tea?
That we're getting further and further away from that ideal.
Adler is way off base to suggest that Starbucks owes its success to such a system when that company has a particularly strong tradition of rejecting the appearance of such things as employee and farmer exploitation that (rightly or wrongly-- I have no desire to get into that debate here) are often associated with a truly laissez-faire system.
Rejecting something, or rejecting the appearance of it, doesn't mean you don't benefit from it.
Starbucks didn't bribe government officials into making them the only supplier; they didn't use force; they didn't even convince those who (in this case) really do know better. People chose to overpay for would-be-good-if-it-weren't-so-burned coffee in a good atmosphere. They were free to buy it, Starbucks was free to sell it. (Of course they had some constraints.)
Or to be more precise - if you don't need to regulate, don't. Stop trying to engineer results via micro-management, cuz you hurt us, not help us, when you do.
If we take that definition, which is pretty much what it originally meant, then a laissez-faire economy is not totally devoid of regulation; it is one that simply allows as much economic liberty as possible, where the Invisible Hand makes decisions instead of having a Central Planner do so.
We can debate around the edges of the "how much regulation is necessary" part, but in general the US has been more laissez-faire than most other countries and this has worked in its favor. To say that the US is laissez-faire is simply to say that its economy has been relatively decentralized as compared to most others.
Other examples confirm as much: e.g. Hong Kong, or - for those who like control groups - East and West Germany, North and South Korea. Laissez-faire works better than top-down, and should be encouraged.
About as neutral as "Tomorrow the World!"
this has been mentioned here before (in another thread).
may in fact be true. there is (at least imo) a difference in the taste of their coffee. maybe MCd's just doesn't do the "burn it" thing. but there is at least in my experience, none of that burnt flavor thang with the Seattle's Best coffee i have had.
I find that seattle's best coffee lacks the burnt taste of starbucks (or at least i notice it less) and some serve a different brand of tea that tazo's, which is definitely a plus.
Yet they incongruously use the Italian names for their drinks. The Italian coffeehouse model is (1) Pay (2) Order (3) Drink (4) Get the hell out.
Starbucks and other American coffeehouses should serve Brauners and Einspanners, like the Austro-Hungarian joints they try to emulate. Chicago has a branch of Julius Meinl if you want to see an authentic place.
(Scene with two guys typing on their laptops in Starbucks.)
Guy #2: Hey, getting some writing done there buddy?
Guy #1: Yeah, setting up in public so everybody can watch me type my big screenplay.
Guy #2: Me too. All real writers need to be seen writing otherwise what's the point, right?
Guy #1: You should totally write that down!
Guy #2: Okay, will you watch me?
Heh, I've been exposed. Don't you know whoi is a Polynesian dessert?
I do live still live on Cape Cod, but I'm no longer with the Institution.
On the substance, I'd say that a degree of laissez faire is still practiced in the United States and that has allowed the meteoric rise of starbucks and I have nothing against them and like their coffee. Thank god I can view buying a cup of their coffee the same way I can view ordering sword fish - the special people don't like it, I'll have more.
My affections for the product notwithstanding, if you don't think this is the funniest video linked on Volokh in a while you just ain't got a sense of humor. (caution adult language involved. The F word as opposed to the LF words)
They roast in the store. And date each batch.
http://www.contracafe.com
Personally, I don't buy that. Starbucks may certainly saturate markets (there are 22 locations within a five-mile radius of my apartment complex near San Mateo), but ain't nobody ever accused them of undercutting the competition, and there's some evidence that Starbucks actually increases the density of competing coffee stores in some markets they move into because they're introducing people to the novel idea that you'll get better coffee if you pay more for it. While Starbucks arguably isn't even the best gourmet coffee chain out there, they were a quantum leap over what you could get in most places a decade ago, and have been a gateway to the world of real coffee for a lot of folks.
As for the original topic of the article — I'm sorry, but unless there's more evidence offered that this rejection was born out of explicit animosity to our buddy Milton Friedman and pals, I'm inclined to think it was due to illiteracy, someone who figured that laissez faire wasn't French for either a rude dismissal or an exotic sexual position. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to conclude this is The Man yet again oppressing the beleagured capitalist minority.
The Great Depression was caused by rampant speculation and laissez faire. The current housing bubble was caused by laissez faire.
Clearly, laissez faire is a stupid idea, advocated by half-wits lacking any historical sense.
That is not to say that unlimited regulation is a good idea either.
Tully's first shop was in downtown (high-rent) Seattle, with a fireplace and Internet capability. Their second shop was in Beijing.
Howard Schulz got in some trouble for running his personal garden across city property. Since he is both a Fidelista and wealthy, the newspapers stopped carrying anything at all on the topic. I have been unable to ascertain what became of the problem.
That's great. The nearest outlet is a mere 1068 miles from me in Rapid City SD.
By the way, our economic system is NOT laissez faire.
Duh.
Capitalism and regulation are not contradictions.
Duh.
That's not my experience with Starbuck haters. They hate the very sight of the stores. They know nothing of their corporate policies.
True, as with Scotch whisky, there are many weenies who can't handle it. They pretend that lite-er coffees are better than dark, that vodka is better than Scotch, that Pepsi is better than Coke.
It's a free country, and they're free to be wrong.
Most of the English language is derived from French.
I'm not certain whether tea can protect you against dementia, but what I know for sure is that tea has antioxidants and thus improves your health - unlike coffee. :-P
Personally, I'm a caffeine junkie and have to have my daily fix, but I'm not really into coffee. Coffee, tea and sodas/energy drinks all work differently on me. *shrug* Strange, I know. I usually make my own tea at home, but I absolutely love the "maple oat nut scone" pastries at Starbucks. :)
I hope they'll fix the L-F issue soon - if they continue to ignore it, it'll raise even more questions, and if they allow the use of L-F on their cards, they might get more people to purchase the said cards.
2. The very best coffee in the world is 'toddy' or 'cold drip' coffee. The kits are available online. The coffee is not cooked and has a clean fresh taste like no other.
Actually, both were caused by something they called "laissez faire," but which was "let it be in certain fashions, but ignore the illegal and fraudulent things many people are doing, especially the really rich ones at the top."
"Laissez faire" has the bad rap of "don't stop any thing that claims it's capitalism under any circumstances," but true LF capitalism has safeguards built in to keep people from stealing their way to the top. When too many people stop trusting the guys who have control of the money, you get things like the Great Depression (where a screwed-up monetary policy led to a stop in spending and a general fear of the system, which then led on to a fairly-preventable depression instead of a recession).
Incorrect. It was initiated by a slow collapse in govt bonds worldwide. That's why the stock mkt went up; then, as now, the bond mkts were an order of magnitude larger than the stock mkts, and as even a fraction of bond investors grew increasingly skitterish a sort of reverse flight to quality occurred. Zoom, up went stocks, only to inevitably crash back down.
Govt overreaction - e.g. trade barriers - then extended the problem, all occurring just as country folk were moving into the city, and while a drought struck.
Fearless, the tone of your comments is generally contemptuous, and this is very much a grown-up board. There is no need for the attitude, and as even just this current topic indicates, your knowledge is, shall we say, incomplete. You would do better to discuss and learn rather than insist and stagnate.
/free advice in the laissez-faire spirit
I was thinking, "What is to be done?" but yeah. Same point.
More generally: http://www.aerobie.com/Products/aeropress_story.htm
/HT Insta
//helluva cup of joe
Which is why they never got off the ground in markets like Israel (where Italian espresso makers Lavazza and Illy captured most of the market). Note that this is as Americanophile a market as you can find outside the USA.
Starbucks had the good fortune to be mostly competing against "Americano" brown water when they started.
Maxxman; if Starbucks jolts up the coffee with extra caffein I haven't noticed it ;-)
your mostly right there. a good bourbon beats out a good scotch most any day. and what roast you use depends on what you want to do with it.
As for the card, how about "Vote No on Proposition 10-289."
Si, se pudenda.
BTW for all those with a dirty mind - pudenda means ashamed.
But the other meaning could work too!
Im sure that the lack of the FDIC and the failure of the government to provide liquidity thereby allowing laissez faire to go out of control had nothing to do with the Great Depression.
On the contrary, rather than have contempt for you, I am in awe of your laissez-faire advice that is free of charge. Who said there was no such thing as a free lunch?
Laissez Faire indeed.
I go to Dunkin' Donuts instead. Double the volume, half the price, and triple the taste.
Plus, I don't have to fear I'm wasting my hard earned money on some pseudo socialist scam.
Or even better: camp coffee made in a thermos with boiling water. It keeps its heat and although it gets more bitter as it sits it is never burnt.
I can't stand coffee makers unless I get the very first cup when the dripping stops.
And with the thermos method I can pour a 1/4 cup when I want it so I don't have to drink the last bit cold.
Something about that 1066 thingy.
Cursed French. First they corrupt the English language, then the Irish potato with their French fries. When will it stop?
Usurpers. I am tired of French thingies.
Not only are they anti-capitalists, they're hypocrites.
"si se puede", in the best Beavis &Butthead fashion, may strike the "barista" genii as something referring to playing show and tell with one's privates, i.e. "see see pud".
On the other hand, "laissez faire" may be interpreted by these PhD types as "lazy fairy", which would be a verboten anti-gay slur.
Are we beginning to understand the minds at work here? What a complete gaggle of morons!
v
In response to the comment from "Wallace" about the small coffee shop owner in Vermont starting a sentence with "I'm no capitalist but. . . " - I can explain that. He was not using 'capitalist' in the traditional economic sense but in the 21st century New England leftist sense: as an ambitious 'climber' who can't be satisfied just having a nice store or two, but who has to grow something enormous and global. They're perfectly happy with small scale, local, face-to-face capitalism - its the 'grow a global behemoth' thing that they're against
Re: Schultz, everything he does makes good sense. There is no social or business cost associated with rank hypocrisy. The leftists who really appreciate Starbucks 'fair trade' efforts don't know or care about the unionization status of Starbucks employees. They, like Schultz himself, are about "daily life choices". In other words: you will perfect the world through the righteousness of your shopping and driving. Its the most painless religious satisfaction one can possibly obtain. Relatively low-cost and pain-free. Big efforts - like mass unionization of barristas, or, for that matter, the liberation and democratization of tens of millions of people - are anachronistic distractions from stickers-on-priuses lifestyle superiority.
Krispy Kreme makes better donuts. [/gauntlet]
Is the customizable gift card a Starbucks innovation? That they should need to have some editorial control is understandable. I suspect that in the face of popular pushback they will back-pedal from blocking political statements - even campaign statements - in favor of simply blocking expletives and possible infringing words.
Sort of amusingly given the SF Bay Area's liberalism, all of the folks I personally knew who refused to go to Starbucks on "they're killing the independent coffee shop" grounds were people I knew before I moved out here. Everyone here says they refuse to go to Starbucks because they just hate the coffee. (Given those 22 locations in the 5-mile radius I mentioned, clearly everyone is lying, but that's another issue.)
I like French Press coffee too; I've been tending to buy fresh-roasted beans from one of a few (very much still in business) independent coffee shops in these parts -- Barefoot Coffee, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Ritual Roasters. I think all of them do mail order.
First: Don't get a card. Just don't. It is silly. Your credit card swipes, and doesn't need to be signed. Don't use them as some coffee purchase bank. Silliness.
Second: Walk around the store. Look at what they are selling (Ethos water, fair trade coffee). This card bit doesn't surprise anyone... does it? A corporation that has a double standard (markets one way, acts another) is hardly eyebrow raising.
re: snobbery
Come on. These sort of stories (while I believe are COMPLETELY true) are no different than any other coffee shop. In fact, since the perception regarding Starbucks has changed I think the snobbery has moved on. Go to your local 'independent' 'free thinking' 'not the corporate machine' cafe if you want some REAL snobbery. (Note: I live in Bezerkly; and I know that McDonalds and 7-11 probably wouldn't count here.)
re: hatred
This has been done to death above, but I'd like to say one thing. I think that they made a big mistake pushing this sort of 'life experience' deal; movies, games, music, etc. I think that if they just sold coffee, and didn't try to make an experience out of it, a lot of irritation would slide. The pretentiousness of it all just makes me gag.
re: the coffee
They sell the dark ('burnt') coffee because, frankly, thats what the folks that go there want. I remember that at my store the lighter coffee was routinely ignored and undersold. I would guess that straight drip coffee doesn't account for a majority of their sales anyway (I'd put money on that). Especially during the summer. Summers were a bloody nightmare (everyone at your local Starbucks hates working during the summer... I promise you that. Watch their faces when they have to make a dozen Frappachinos).
Anyway, sorry for the long post. (PS: Commenter Folks: love reading the comments here.)
You are aware, are you not, that this refers to the female genitalia. Check it out...in a medical dictionary
I thought that was his point. It means, almost literally, "the naughty bits". (I have been trying to teach that word -- I prefer it to vulva -- to my kids, explaining that you generally can't "see" a vagina. I've also been trying to teach them that it's more polite to wear clothing, even at home.)
Starbucks, like other international name brands, sells predictability.
That's way over-rated. People are not insects. Why bother traveling, or trying to learn and grow, if everything is going to be predictable? (About 15 years ago, at the same company where I learned about Armano coffee and Melita cones, and habaneros and Scotch Bonnets, a field rep told the story that when he was traveling to various sites he would ask people "While I'm here, what should I see?" and they would inevitably tell him "We've got a mall." And he would say "No, I want to see whatever it is that makes this place unique. I want to see what you've got that nobody else has." And they would tell him "But it's a really good mall.")
And I like dark coffee, such as a Vienna roast, and thick coffee, like Turkish. I like most foods cooked to a golden black. (Long story, but Saturday I had a $100 steak, and I ordered it well done. My companions scoffed at it, so I had a piece of their similarly priced steak cooked "medium" -- yes, it cut like butter, but I prefer my meat cooked.) I like dark chocolate. Nevertheless, dark coffee is not the same as burnt coffee.
"A friend of mine worked at a small independent coffeshop in Burlington, VT. He overheard the owner talking with another employee one time, when the owner said 'Now, I'm no capitalist. . . '
So, in socialist Vermont, owning and operating capital does not make one a capitalist."
You ought to try being a used/rare book dealer. I'm about the only politically conservative one in the whole friggin' country.
They all talk about socialism and "the people" and how great Communism is. Then they go to a library book sale and buy a book for a quarter and try to sell it for $50.
99.5% gross margin! Then they gripe for days about ExxonMobil making 7-8% or whatever it is.
I once pointed out this, ah, cognitive dissonance, to a book dealers' email list and you'd have thought I uttered the most vile slander in the history of the world. "Us liberal book dealers? CAPITALISTS? You conservative troglodyte SOBs SUCK."
And you'll notice most book dealers don't have two dimes to rub together. So they are LOUSY capitalists. Damn funny.
You got it, Hugh Downs indeed, though my guess was Johnny Carson.
Merv Griffin?
Wait let me rephrase that:
MERV GRIFFIN!!!!
Perhaps surprisingly (or perhaps not), the coffee preferences on this thread are neither as numerous nor as vehement as the preferences expressed on the pizza thread a while back.
There's gotta be an opportunity there somewhere.
bornyesterday, sure, if your definition of "donut" is "flavorless half-cooked pastry drowned in a substance purporting to be icing". If you actually want, you know, donuts, then you go to Dunkins.
Dyema wrote at 4.8.2008 12:01am:Starbucks burns its beans too.
A couple of Bay Area recommendations when you're on the road locally --
First, the best coffee on the peninsula is Main Street Coffee, Redwood City. Bob studied with Alfred Peet long ago. Bob's an engineer, so he designed some sophisticated temperature controls for roasting as well, and he didn't follow Peet's footsteps in roasting. I've been drinking Main Street coffee since it was actually on Main Street by the SP tracks. Bob has the best coffee I've ever found on the peninsula.
Second, the best coffee in Santa Clara (just across the line from San Jose) is Mission City. They don't over roast either. And they have a large venue where you can spend as much time sipping coffee and using their wifi as you want.
Neither of them will give you a hassle about inscribing "Laissez Faire" on your purchase card. And both serve coffee I find many cuts above Starbucks or Peets.
My first try might be, "Profits not People," to test whether it really is any anti-capitalism thing. ("Laissez faire" is more a libertarian sentiment, isn't it?) If that were rejected, then my next try would be "Mean People Are The Greatest" if it could be about misanthropy rather than political philosophy. Through a number of such carefully crafted "probes," I would seek to break the code. (I wonder if there is one person in the company, perhaps sitting in Seattle, functioning like the network censors in years gone by, who has the ultimate say as to what is and isn't acceptable to put on one of their cards.)
"God Bless America!"
"Support Our Troops!"
went through fine. Just got confirmation that my card has been shipped.
So, maybe they've relaxed a bit on their political restrictions.