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Capital and Main is a news website reporting on the current economy and our collective efforts to create a new and better one. Monday through Friday you will find original content covering politics, business, labor, jobs, the environment, culture – in other words, the economy and all the myriad areas of contemporary life that it touches.

Culture Clash's play about money, manipulation and red-baiting ending with destruction of a closely-knit LA Latino neighborhood over fifty years ago rings true today as the present economic power of developers and the drive to profitably exploit vulnerable communities within the central city and drastically change their ethnic, class and cultural composition continues to steadily displace the long-time residents of many neighborhoods.

The U.S. government is allowing tourists to bring home $100 worth of rum and cigars. And the U.S. State Department is working on a forthcoming list of products that Cubans can export to the United States. The list will not include numerous life-saving medicines currently unavailable in the United States, and not apparently because the U.S. government believes rum and cigars are better for its people than life-saving medicines. No, the reason is bizarre yet predictable.

When the Ebola global alarm was sounded by Doctors Without Borders, which, like Cuba, already had health professionals in Africa; Cuba was the country that offered the most assistance once WHO called for nations to step up with funds and, most importantly, human resources. Cuba sent 256 volunteers with significant international emergency experience while Cuba's Dr. Jorge Pérez and others work to prevent Ebola's global spread.

Because their traditional allies from the Democratic Party have obsessively embraced corporate-motivated innovations, teacher unions seem paralyzed, unable to respond with a new strategy. They criticize the overuse of standardized tests, but they keep electing Democrats to office who, once elected, more often than not join the corporate attack on education.

A skeptic looks at the human side of game theory.

If the top one percent were taxed at the same rate as the middle 20 percent, states and localities would raise $68 billion per year. Similarly, if the top 20 percent paid the same as the middle 20 percent, states and localities would generate $128 billion each year.

I don’t believe that we have confronted the legacy of our history in a meaningful way…Our interest is really in forcing the country to talk differently about this history,” -- Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative,

While ‘assigned’ to the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, detective Richard Zuley led one of the most brutal interrogations ever conducted at the prison. ‘I’ve never seen anyone stoop to these levels,’ a former Marine Corps prosecutor said. But Benita Johnson, Andre Griggs, Lathierial Boyd and Lee Harris describe Zuley using familiar techniques on them at Chicago police precincts.

Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma was arrested February 19th for his role in the failed coup attempt against the elected government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Ledezma, who has a long history of right-wing extremist activity in Venezuela, was one of three opposition leaders to have signed a "National Transition Agreement," calling for, among other things, the removal of President Maduro a day before the coup was to have taken place.