Progressive Insurance...

Is run by a man who is almost as bad as George Soros. Keep that in mind when thinking about your choice of insurance.

Peter B. Lewis (born 1933) is the Cleveland, Ohio-area based chairman of Progressive Insurance Companies.

In 1965 Lewis became Progressive's chief executive officer after joining as an underwriting trainee in 1955. (His father, Joe Lewis, who died in 1955, co-founded Progressive with Jack Green in 1937.) In the 1960s Progressive had 100 employees and $6 million in revenues. As of 2005, Progressive had grown to 27,000 employees with sales of $13.4 billion and become the third largest auto insurance company in the United States. In 2000 Lewis retired as CEO of Progressive, though he remains as Chairman of the Board.

In 1987, Lewis and Alfred Lerner (1933-2002), owner of the Cleveland Browns and CEO of MBNA America Bank, attempted a takeover of the Cleveland Trust Bank of Cleveland, Ohio. Though the takeover attempt was unsuccessful, it was profitable for both Lewis and Lerner.

Lewis's approach to business is often unorthodox. For instance, Progressive's headquarters, designed by Bialosky + Partners Architects and built in 1994, includes a health club and a contemporary art collection. Lewis credits these and other unorthodox factors for helping create an environment in which creative thinking thrives—the kind of creative thinking that Lewis says makes a more profitable business.
With an estimated net worth in excess of a billion dollars, Lewis frequently donates money to charities and political groups. He is a patron of the arts and supports many artistic pursuits. Lewis's personal and corporate contemporary art collection is well known—the corporate collection is displayed at Progressive Insurance offices. Lewis has made donations to:

Princeton University (A Gehry designed science library, $60 million; the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, $55 million; arts initiative, $101 million. Total $233 million to date.)

Case Western Reserve University (The Weatherhead School of Management Peter B. Lewis Building, another Gehry design, $36.9 million, out of $61.7 total building cost)

Marijuana Policy Project (Donated $3,000,000 to MPP in 2007.)

America Coming Together and MoveOn.org (with George Soros matching his $10 and $2.5 million, respectively)

American Civil Liberties Union

The Democratic Party