​Election 2014: Are we getting our money's worth?

Here's something to think about as you go to vote: Congress hasn't done anything in years.

Yet, these midterm elections will be the most expensive in history -- just like the last ones.

$4 billion this time around -- that's billion with a B.

A small question: Do you think you're getting our money's worth?

Better candidates? Better government? I doubt that.

But it does raise yet another question: Can you name a commodity or a product that gets worse and worse, that produces less and less of what it is supposed to produce, yet gets more expensive?

Maybe you can name one, but the only thing I can think of is American politics.

I'm not blaming it on Republicans or Democrats. I'm blaming it on Republicans AND Democrats who have turned what used to be an amateur sport into a professional business, where the jobs that volunteers used to do for free have been outsourced to professionals.

That's also unique to politics -- outsourcing something you were getting free to someone who'll charge you for it, and in the process winding up with an inferior product . . . a government that remains in permanent gridlock.

The right to vote is our proudest possession, but the way it has become debased by money shames us all.