​A Jester Protester

https://youtu.be/D9n73JsZ2kU?feature=shared

Once a week, I become a court jester, mocking modern tyranny in the only garb outrageous enough to survive the purge.

​Historically, only the jester could mock madness without losing his head—though these days, even the fool must dodge the falling blade. I meet tragedy with comedy now. Satire is my alchemy, turning unbearable reality and sorrow into survival. Laughing and crying offer a similar emotional release, but I would much rather laugh. Otherwise, I would collapse under the weight of despair.

​It all began on April Fools’ Day in 1988, when I first appeared on the Capitol steps in full jester regalia. My Republican congresswoman helped sponsor the act and showed up at noon to watch. Since then, one question has echoed louder than the bells on my hat: Who’s the real fool?

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My first live comic protest was a total bomb—figuratively, thank God. I called it a "FUNeral." The crowd wasn’t dying laughing, but I nearly was from stage fright. That day, I shouted, “You’re not dealing with a full deck when you throw out the joker!”—a line that still clatters like loose change in our pocket-sized democracy. I was loud, but nonviolent, staging raids armed with bad humor and good intentions.

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My journey into public service and absurdity runs deep. My father, a longtime Congressional Research Service chief, helped found the Capitol Hill tennis team alongside members of Congress. His influence, combined with a childhood spent wandering the marble halls of the Library of Congress, taught me that public service could be both noble and consuming.

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My tennis roots also brought me close to the legendary Pauline Betz Addie, who used to dress as "Susie Gluck" to entertain while teaching. She was honored in the Hall of Stars at the US Open three years ago, though they conveniently omitted how the same organization had once banned her from the amateur game despite her playing in six Grand Slam singles finals.

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While attending George Washington University on a tennis scholarship in the 1970s, I saw oil slicks curling past a D.C. treatment plant—an image that burned itself into my conscience. Beyond environmental economics, my most influential course was a graduate seminar on engineering ethics through the National Academy of Sciences, where I earned an academic award that permanently shaped my view of stewardship.

​By 1980, I was a national Earth Day coordinator. Soon after, I testified before Congress regarding the 1981 Used Oil Recycling Act after helping launch a major oil reprocessing plant. (The two backers of that plant later revolutionized golf with Softspikes®, ending the "agony of de feet" to become the top cleat choice worldwide.)

​That same year, while working for the D.C. Energy Office, I introduced my character "Ray Cycle tm" and handed Mayor Marion Barry a bag of municipal biosolids at our Christmas party. 

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Not long after, two people who accompanied me to film a free public service announcement at the Capital Centre with NBA champion Wes Unseld were caught selling cocaine to Mayor Barry. Our first take of that PSA mysteriously disappeared, and while I paid the acting union dues out of my own pocket, it took months for the city to reimburse me

Ray went on to present six papers on behavior modification at national conferences and shared his trademark with the State of Connecticut by 1990. At the Third Symposium on Applied Behavioral Science at Virginia Tech in May 1982, I presented a paper titled Waste: A Comedy of Errors. Behavior modification is abbreviated B.M. I’ve spent decades trying to toilet-train the public with crappy jokes. Tell me: how many people get to dress in tights, don a cape, and take the stage at a behavioral science symposium?

Later came the Trash Pirate, created during my time as the recycling manager for five towns on the East End of Long Island. The day the Berlin Wall fell, I was hit head-on in a retired, non-starting East Hampton police car by a van carrying 16 cleaners. Searching for buried treasures in garbage, I found myself trying to negotiate with the local Mafia using two broken knees—though I ultimately found a few town supervisors who were far more criminal.

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That 1989 head-on collision shattered my nose, hand, shoulder, knees, and ankles. As I lay in recovery facing agonizing physical therapy, my insurer—Liberty Mutual—refused to pay for my treatment. They misrepresented my case during depositions and trial, forcing me into arbitration in New York just to receive the coverage I had dutifully paid for.

​Decades later, the players have changed, but the playbook remains identical. The canyon between what policyholders endure and what insurance executives enjoy has only widened. 

While families open monthly bills in horror—watching double-digit premium spikes force impossible choices between auto insurance and groceries—executives fly in private jets, fund endless ad campaigns, and pocket record compensation.

​The industry insists skyrocketing rates are unavoidable, pointing to inflation, supply chains, and natural disasters. But the numbers tell a different story.

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Presently, an unprecedented volume of insurance capital—trillions in policyholder premiums known as "the float"—is being channeled directly into funding the massive physical infrastructure of AI. From multi-gigawatt data center complexes to GPU-collateralized loans and power grid extensions, insurance balance sheets have emerged as the unsung engine powering tech's most expensive experiment.

​Tech billionaires are playing a familiar game: privatizing profits while socializing losses. 

AI-linked and mega-cap tech stocks now make up roughly 40% to 45% of the S&P 500, with concentration on the Nasdaq sitting even higher. Whether this massive infrastructure spending yields long-term corporate profits remains to be seen. But with three-quarters of consumers remaining skeptical, how will the public benefit while bearing the tremendous costs—including spiraling electricity, water, and environmental strains?

​Back before the turn of the century, I publicly questioned Waste Management’s accounting practices. My research into financial assurance requirements for landfills revealed a stark reality: the money simply wasn't there. Arthur Andersen was famously cooking the books—artificially stretching out the depreciation schedules of garbage trucks to hide mounting costs.

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Recently, an environmental insurance expert invited me to speak at a national conference organized by an association I ironically helped start. During my talk, I remarked that today's environmental insurance landscape looks a lot like the aggressive financial amortization of AI data centers—another corporate welfare disaster in the making.

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This parallel took me back to 1981, when I served as the first plant manager of a multi-million-gallon used oil recycling facility at Newton Asphalt in Alexandria, Virginia. Standing among those tanks and pipes, surrounded by the heavy reality of physical infrastructure, I couldn't help but reflect on how corporate accounting tricks have evolved.

​In 1992, I worked as a regional environmental planner in Northern Virginia. Today, that landscape has been overtaken by “Data Center Alley,” home to 300 to 600 facilities consuming 4,140 to 4,900 megawatts of electricity. Amazon Web Services alone operates more than 160 centers—the largest corporate concentration worldwide—recently adding a $700 million campus in Prince William County. This staggering demand strains local grids, with AI promising even sharper increases.

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Around the turn of the century, I warned the Virginia Legislature that incoming mega-landfills were not an economic boom, but an impending financial bust. Ironically, the current Secretary of Natural and Historic Resources and I were colleagues tackling this exact issue for the Northern Virginia Waste Management Board. Now, David Bulova heads this remediation.

​Today, those warnings have aged into stark reality. Because Virginia hosts several large, privately owned landfills, it remains a primary destination for out-of-state trash along the East Coast. Massive volumes of waste arrive daily by train and tractor-trailer, bound for facilities like the now-bankrupt Shoosmith Landfill in Chesterfield County. Shoosmith generates roughly 50,000 gallons of toxic leachate daily, compounded by serious concerns regarding toxic coal ash previously disposed of at the site. The cleanup estimate now stands at $140 million.

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In 2002, I created Noah U. Water. I donned a watering can on my head and told kids I had "water on the brain." At a rural water symposium, I wore a talking toilet seat around my neck to warn people about what not to flush into septic systems. Even when teaching tennis, I used the analogy: "Serving is just like toilet training—you've got to get your first one in!"

​By 2010, I created Less More—LESS STRESS, MORE TO BLESS. Less attitude, more gratitude. All human beings must learn to conserve, or there will be no resources left. I grew up with the famous "crying Indian" PSA from Keep America Beautiful, but today I believe we need humor to make the message stick.

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Our legal system has tilted so sharply toward wealth and power that ordinary citizens barely stand a chance. I love this country deeply, but a greedy force rewards influence over integrity. Congress feels paralyzed, and Donald Trump remains an existential threat to our democratic guardrails.

​If the AI bubble experiences a sharp correction, the fallout won't just hit Silicon Valley venture capitalists—it will ripple through the balance sheets protecting everyday American families. It is time for state regulators to pull back the curtain on AI private credit before policyholders discover where their money was really spent. Multi-billion-dollar government contracts involving quid pro quo arrangements between political leaders and the AI tech sector must face complete transparency to protect public trust.

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Real reform requires deep structural changes, true accountability, and absolute transparency. We must implement multi-year budgeting, performance incentives, and a strict separation between regulators and market participants. Reckless deregulation and gutting tax enforcement merely strip the Treasury of legally owed revenue, while privatizing government services without proper oversight saddles future taxpayers with enormous liabilities.

Designing wiser systems—not broadcasting louder rhetoric—is the only path to a government that rewards stewardship over harmful inefficiency. Unless we wake up to these financial realities, we will end up burying the opportunities of future generations. Wisdom is endangered, and the massive AI gamble is not conservative governance.

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Socrates once said that an unexamined life is not worth living. Today, with the rise of artificial intelligence, wisdom is becoming endangered because AI often goes unexamined, shielded from its unintended consequences.

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Recently, I returned to Washington, D.C. Walking past GWU and the memorials felt like coming home. I stood on the steps of the tidal basin, Capitol and Supreme Court in my jester outfit—not as a stunt, but as a protest.

Behind the jest lies resource conservation, stewardship, and protest. The fool does not perform to amuse, but to warn. Jesters historically held the license to say what others feared; today, that license must be renewed. My foolish antics reflect our nation's hysteria. The emperor has no clothes, truth is treated as treason, and the mad king’s wrath is real.