And while we're on the subject of progressive communication

Argh. This morning's Forum program was about the California's
juvenile correctional system, which has been famously badly
managed for a while now. Near the end of the program, a caller
asks 'Gosh, the alternative intervention program being tested in
Mississippi costs $45,000 per youth per year. That's an awful
lot of money; are we sure its a good idea to try to model our own
programs on that?'

Does the youth advocate say 'Our primary goal is keeping the kids
out of prison later; if we can keep them out of jail for just two
years, we'll all pay lower taxes, suffer less crime, and we'll
have saved a life?'

Does the youth advocate say 'Prison costs $33,000/year per adult
prisoner. We've been able to lower recidivism rates among young
offenders, we seem to be keeping them out of jail for an average
of 1.5 years per youth, so we're only a little bit ahead. We
hope with another few years of this program we'll be able to
reduce the jail time of the average youth offender by five years,
and we'll be saving $100,000 per youth that we put through this
program.'

No. The youth advocate says 'What we need is a completely new
approach to this problem...'

Argh!
People! Learn to use arguments and language that is appealing to
people who don't already agree with you! Everyone who will agree
with the sentence 'what we need is a ...' is already supporting
you! That is not why you are on the radio! You are on the radio
so that you can persuade people who *don't* agree with you, and
so that you can tell people who do agree with you stories that
they can tell people who don't that will change their mind!

Argh!

RichardT