Your "fantasy quote" sounds exactly like so many of the statements made about the taxpayer-financed hotel and convention center project.

Had "Crossings" been hyped like the downtown project, might it face less public opposition?

I don't think the public is paying attention, as most folks are just resigned to the fact that elected officials make deals with developers, regardless of the consequences to traffic and future tax rates.

It's a shame our state has gotten to the point that approximately half (and likely more) of all our citizen's employment is government funded, either directly or indirectly. Private industry needs to work with layers of bureaucrats and participate in various programs just to survive in this state.

It's scary to think that the only healthy high growth industry left here is government itself.

Great, when do you move in?

I mean, if it's that simple, where are these businesses? What can we really offer them? Where are they locating instead? What concessions have the areas that host them made? Please share your list of candidates.

Ahh yes, fantasy. At least my statement was factual.

These upstart businesses are located in regions that show political leadership by offering incentives to help create a business environment friendly to developing new technologies. You can offer reasonably priced office/plant leases and utilities, modern facilities, access to working capital, and promote programs that encourage some of the new technologies being developed within our higher education institutions to stay in Pennsylvania to grow upstart businesses into high paying jobs. Here, not somewhere else.

You mention "concessions" that must be made. The most vitally important concession government needs to make is the realization that the high cost of government contributes to the high cost of living that contribute to new businesses going someplace else to get established during their formative years when they need lots of money to get going.

Share a list of candidates? Anybody with common sense and the realization that high costs of living send jobs to lower priced, private industry friendly regions (and nations). Pennsylvania's state and local governments are hostile towards small business, treating it as another group of people to squeeze money out of to pay for daily operating expenses.

We need to be smart with where to spend government money, rather than wasting it all on daily expenses - and more politically inspired construction projects. Convention centers and sports arenas do not create new technologies and modern industries.

So you got nothin'. Thanks for playing.