(Roughly) Daily

From Ulysses S. Grant to Philando Castile— how the automobile fundamentally changed the relationship between the police and the citizenry: “A Brief History of the Traffic Stop (Or How the Car Created the Police State).”

* Dudley Moore

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As we stay in our lanes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1900 that the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was founded in Akron, Ohio (also home to arch-rival Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and another two mid-sized competitor tire places, General Tire and Rubber and BF Goodrich).  The company’s founder, Harvey Firestone, parlayed his close friendship with Henry Ford into a role as prime tire supplier to the Ford Motor Company, starting in 1906 with tires for the Model T.  In 1926, the company opened the Firestone Natural Rubber plantation in Harbel, Liberia.  The largest plantation of it’s kind in the world, it operated until it was seized, in 1990, by Charles taylor and his NPFL forces.  The company’s ventures in Liberia have been the subject of considerable scrutiny and criticism, including a 2005 Alien Tort Claims Act case brought in California by the International Labor Rights Fund and a 2014 investigative report by ProPublica entitled “Firestone and the Warlord,” and a PBS Frontline documentary by the same name.

The first Firestone store

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