Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [70]
My solution? I wanted to change the system so that every third year, the legislature couldn’t make new laws. They could only come back and repeal old ones. Trim down the size of those bookshelves in the secretary of state’s office a little. Then it came to my attention that, in order to do that, I’d have to revise the state constitution. So that went down the drain pretty fast. Just the bureaucracy involved in a constitutional amendment would require ten to fifteen years.
However, I’m pleased to report my success in repealing one law. It had to do with the game of bingo. You may find this hard to fathom, but Minnesota had it on the books that elderly people living together in nursing homes were only allowed to play bingo twice a week. The homes had to fill out paperwork to be held by the State Department of Gambling for three and a half years! Have you ever gone into a nursing home and watched bingo? Half of the people are sleeping! Yet the law even dictated what the prizes should be. If you won the grand bingo game, you got to go first through the chow line that night.
I called a press conference to announce the repeal of the bingo law. I did it as a joke to show how ridiculous some of these laws were, but I played it as real. Solemn-faced, I walked in and said: “I brought you all here to make an important announcement. With eleven days left in the legislative session, it’s my privilege to sign into law House File 132, Senate File 1138.”
I continued: “With urgent budget issues before the state, including the future of public-education funding . . . the future tobacco endowments, the size of permanent tax cuts, providing a sales-tax rebate to Minnesota citizens, and all the other programs that Minnesotans depend upon, the legislature sent me this important legislation to allow senior citizens to play bingo in nursing homes without state regulations.”
I added: “Of course, in light of doing this, we are putting a lot of responsibility on our elderly. We are trusting that they won’t become addicted to playing bingo every night, to the point where this could become dangerous to their health. We are hoping that organized crime doesn’t get its foot in the door now on these bingo games. Because we have made them legal seven days a week, how often the elderly wish to play bingo is up to their own good judgment. And our State Gambling Commission will no longer keep track of who wins the bingo games. I put great trust in our elderly that, with this burden lifted from them, they will not abuse this great privilege.
“And it is my hope that with this burdensome issue behind them, the legislature can now address other issues that are equally important.”
Terry’s Baja journal, continued: We reached the graded stretch of road and we could do about 40 on that and, finally, we hit pavement and cheered! It had been so bone-jarring on the gravel that now the paved road almost put me to sleep, it was so quiet. We were covered with dust and so were all of our belongings. We had not seen a gas station for many miles, and finally came upon one in Rosarito.
Continuing south, it is late afternoon when Highway 5 intersects with the pavement of Highway 1! Something I’ve taken for granted most of my adult life, asphalt, suddenly becomes the most important thing in the entire world! We hoot and holler! Trouble is, the smooth road almost has me nodding off at the wheel. We have to crank