ProgressivePunch.org is still very much a work in progress, and we really welcome your feedback. Please email us comments, questions, and suggestions at feedback@progressivepunch.org.

The key person in ProgressivePunch is Joshua Grossman of Berkeley, CA. Joshua is a social entrepreneur. He has an extensive background in a wide variety of social change endeavors such as political campaigns, co-producing a video for PBS on the destruction of the Redwood forests in California, serving as an interpreter for earthquake rescue teams, etc. His most successful entrepreneurial venture in a more conventional sense is his co-founding of America's largest environmentally friendly paper company, New Leaf Paper (2002 sales $15,000,000). While Joshua has not been employed by New Leaf since 1998, he retains a significant minority stake in the company. New Leaf is putting all profits into growth and Joshua derives a negligible current income stream from the company. Joshua has closely tracked politics in all 435 Congressional Districts across the United States since he was 13 years old (for the last 31 years). He knows the names of all the members of Congress off the top of his head, as well as their voting records and the political demography of their districts. Some of the impetus behind the web site is an effort to make much of this information as well as much additional information available to a much wider public.

Kevin D. Keck of Alameda, CA is a very experienced programmer who is currently employed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, designing sophisticated integrated databases for biologists working there. In addition to constructing ProgressivePunch's databases and inquiry systems, he's closely collaborating with Joshua Grossman in conceptualizing the functions as well as the architecture of the site.

The actual descriptions of the votes cast by the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives have been written by Eric McGhee, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley who resides in Los Angeles.

The first objective of ProgressivePunch is to provide a nonpartisan, educational (as defined by the IRS) voting record service to inform the public about the performance of its representatives. By providing information on a broad range of issues and applying a progressive analysis to the votes cast, we want to raise public consciousness by highlighting positive votes and exposing negative votes.

ProgressivePunch also hopes to influence the future voting patterns of these legislators, not only by making their votes visible and transparent, but also—as we build the website—by facilitating the transmission of messages from the public to these legislators, thanking them for good votes, chastising them for bad votes, and calling upon them to "do the right thing" as future votes arise.

In this home page, to maintain the nonpartisanship of our voting record service—per IRS requirements—we do not make any reference to or mention of any political campaigns, elections, candidates, nor do we make any statements expressly or impliedly endorsing or rejecting any incumbent as a candidate for public office. No mention is made here regarding an individual's overall qualification for public office, nor is there any comparison of candidates that might be competing with the incumbents in any political campaign. The voting records of all incumbents are presented and candidates for reelection are not identified. This homepage will not contain any links to any candidates' websites.

Nevertheless, we are aware that many of you may be interested in supporting or opposing one or more of these incumbents when they come up for re-election. Eventually, we expect to develop a separate part of the ProgressivePunch website devoted to activities related to political candidates' campaigns. When we do so, our homepage will redirect you to that location so you can pursue your electoral interests.