PROGRESSIVE AUTO - PETER LEWIS - ONE NEWS NOW

snopes.com: Progressive Insurance - Peter Lewis Donations


Source: snopes.com
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Subject: Progressive Auto Insurance.....PLEASE READ

This is a heads up regarding Progressive Auto Insurance. You know who they are. They’re the ones with the clever television ads featuring the perky brunette actress all dressed in white. What you might not know is that the chairman of Progressive is Peter Lewis, one of the largest funders of the left in America . He’s your typical rich spoiled kid who took over the company from his father and apparently feels “guilty” for his success and now dedicates himself to making it impossible for anyone else to become wealthy.

Between 2001 and 2003, Lewis funneled $15 million to the ACLU, the group most responsible for destroying what’s left of America ’s Judeo-Christian heritage. Indeed, Lewis is himself an ACLU member. One of the ACLU projects he earmarked his funds for was an effort to sue school districts who have drug testing policies. In other words, this idiot wants teachers to be able to use drugs without fear of exposure. I wonder what he would think if all his own employees came to work drugged out every day. (Actually, the Drug Testing was not done on Teachers, but rather on Students, mainly Athletes and the ACLU has taken those School Districts that have implemented such Testing to Court in order block such Student Testing!)

Lewis also gave $12.5 million to MoveOn.org and American Coming Together, two key components of the socialist left. The former group is perhaps the main group used by the Obama forces to organize their activists; the latter group is a 527 political action group that essentially served as a front for the SEIU union thugs who ran ACORN. His funding for these groups was conditional on matching contributions from George Soros, the international socialist who finances much of the Obama political network.

It’s disturbing that Lewis made a fortune as a result of capitalism but now finances a progressive movement that threatens to destroy the free enterprise system. He reminds me somewhat of Armand Hammer, the former head of Occidental Petroleum who did business with Joseph Stalin and became his good friend, around the same time Stalin was executing businessmen all over the USSR .

What angers me further is the way this company is targeting television shows watched by conservatives such as Fox News. Peter Lewis is making a fortune off of conservative Americans so that he can destroy our country. He’s banking on no one finding out who he is. I think it’s time we expose this clown.
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Peter B. Lewis (born 1933) is the Cleveland, Ohio-area based chairman of Progressive Insurance Companies. Lewis currently resides in Coconut Grove, Florida.




Contents [hide]

1 Biography

2 Business

3 Donations

4 References

5 External links



[edit] Biography

Lewis attended Cleveland Heights High School and, in 1955, graduated from Princeton University.



[edit] Business

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.)[1] 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.[2] 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.



[edit] Donations

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.)

The Guggenheim Museum ($50 million)

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

American Civil Liberties Union

The Democratic Party

MAPS-sponsored MDMA/PTSD Research in the US, Switzerland and Israel $750,000 [www.maps.org]

Menorah Park (Peter B. Lewis Aquatic & Therapy Center)

Traction

Lewis is a trustee of Princeton University, former chairman of the board of directors at the Guggenheim Museum (resigned January 19, 2005), and serves on the board of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Although Lewis often gives substantial gifts to artistic and educational organizations, he also has a reputation for — often forcefully — insisting that such organizations be financially accountable and financially sound; as of late 2004, Lewis has said he will no longer give to Case or Cleveland's University Circle neighborhood due to poor leadership and management.[citation needed] He has said that those funds might instead be diverted to Cleveland State University.

Lewis is an advocate of taxing and regulating the use and sale of marijuana and is one of the main financial backers of the recent, partially successful, campaign to legalize the use of marijuana for medical use in the U.S. In January 2000, Mr. Lewis was arrested and charged in New Zealand for possession of marijuana. Lewis pleaded guilty to three charges and paid a substantial fine, though under New Zealand law he was not required to serve time in jail or prison. According to his lawyer, Marie Dyhrberg, Lewis used the marijuana on the advice of his doctor for pain relief after the partial amputation of his leg in 1998.[3]

[edit] References

1.^ http://www.progressive.com/progressive-insurance/history.aspx

2.^ http://weatherhead.case.edu/about/facilities/lewis/

3.^ "Eccentric billionaire has high profile at home" by Josie Clarke, The New Zealand Herald, August 31, 2000

"FPO chief explains tragic ending" by Daniel Chang and Gail Meadows, The Miami Herald, May 25, 2003

"Who owns Cleveland?" by Thomas Kelly, The Cleveland Free Times, March 10, 2004

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lewis_(businessman)"

Categories: American businesspeople
People from Cleveland, Ohio
Living people
Princeton University alumni
American art collectors
1933 births
American billionaires
American philanthropists
American cannabis activists

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