Free Republic

In the HBO show Silicon Valley, there’s a running joke about server farms as gulags. The data center on the show is utterly removed not just from the currents of innovation and finance, but from normal human contact, and it’s managed by a character borrowing his affectless demeanor from Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Even if you know nothing about tech, the vast rows of servers unattended by humans give you all the visual information you need for the setup — these places have all the glamour of storage units. The payoff comes when the developers learn that...

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board issued preliminary reforms on Wednesday that would balloon the already massive unfunded liabilities of public pensions. But in anticipation of an outcry from budgeters and public employee unions, GASB, which sets accounting standards for state and local governments, made clear that it is only a scorekeeper, not a referee. GASB emphasized that its reforms would only apply to the financial reporting of pension liabilities, not to the way governments go about funding — or, more accurately, underfunding — their pension plans.

SAN FRANCISCO - The bill is coming due for years of generous benefits bestowed upon state, county, city and school employees, and it's a stunner: hundreds of billions of dollars over the next three decades, threatening some local governments with bankruptcy and all but guaranteeing cuts in education, public safety and other services. This staggering burden is coming to light because of new rules issued by the Government Accounting Standards Board. They require public agencies to disclose the future cost of health care and other benefits - such as dental, vision and life insurance - promised in addition to traditional...