I can't speak for every situation but I can tell you that in the last 2 places I lived, the major utilities weren't telling the truth about how they were spending the money or what they were doing for upgrades / maintenance. They did do a pretty good job of rewarding upper management, not entirely sure for what.

Things only started to improve when they were essentially taken over by the gov't, split up and subject to greater oversight. Grid reliability is much better although there's room for improvement.

I'm not fooled. I know the grid could be better but it functions quite well despite its age and increasing demand.
And the fact that it's NOT better, is the fault of the utilities. What they should have their feet held to the fire on is WHY isn't the grid in better shape.

But I expect we'll hear nothing but more lame, timeworn excuses.

"This is despite the fact that residential power prices have risen 70 per cent since the Barnett government came to power in 2008"

If prices rose this much in any of the Freedom-lovin' states in America, there would be a vast exercise of 2nd amendment rights. This hurts the poor FAR more than any perceived subsidising of the "rich", really the middle class.
I have quite a few friends in Australia who have solar PV. NONE of them - ZERO - are wealthy, mostly all working couples in modest homes with 1-3 kids, usually only one car.

Just more lame excuses.
Australia, a giant country that's almost as large as America but with only 1/15th the population went from nearly ZERO rooftop PV in 2009 to over 4GW by the end of 2015. It's true that the utilities there have been whining about voltage surges since 2011 but the amount of rooftop installations have increased 10x since that time and the grid hasn't melted down.

In other words, if the utilities in the USA are only as marginally as competent as the ones down under, they should be able to deal with a 5-10x increase in solar across the same population / geographic area.

Absolutely. Given the history of the Southwest, it's astonishing to me that water recycling & conservation isn't mandatory & widespread.

Likely because of agricultural demands. A lot of CA's water, in the hundreds of billions of gallons, leaves the state in the form of produce.

They're building a new $billion desalinisation plant near San Diego that should be operational by this fall. If the warming trend continues, this may be the 1st of many for CA & TX.

*That* Republican party is NOT *this* Republican party, they merely claim lineage but were hijacked by the Southern Democrats thanks to Nixon.

Only because of a passerby with a cellphone camera.
If he'd only *seen* the altercation but not recorded it, Officer Scott would still be walking around free.

I'm not sure if much of the rest of the world is significantly better - there are some very corrupt systems out there and some truly batshit politicians in a lot of countries.

If America were to draw up districts in a neutral fashion, put some curbs on the revolving door between industry and Congress, overturned Citizens' United and made donor transparency a requirement, that would address most of my objections.

?? Someone didn't understand what I wrote.
Very few people commute beyond the range of a typical EV daily and you'd still have 2 (or more) VEHICLES just not all ICEs.
It's the trip to the cottage, out of town to see the relatives, or the long drive that's the challenge.

So for people who live in any number of 1/2 modern cities, all you need is ready access to an electrical outlet.

And they get a pretty nice modern fully equipped factory with lots of room to expand as part of the deal

Of course, it's not an impossibility that Tesla may run into financial trouble but I don't see them fading away any time soon.
Musk et al have simply done too much of an excellent job in making the mass audience aware of the possibilities of EVs, even if it's at a premium.

Even if the players in Detroit aren't interested in Tesla's corpse, if they were to end up on the rocks, there are other players.
I can see Renault, Peugeot-Citroen, Mitsubishi, Kia or Hyundai, either alone or in partnership, eager to buy it at a discount and that would give them ownership of a desirable brand, with a worldwide exclusive, hi-powered charging network and a partnership with Panasonic, Solar City & Silevo.
They'd be mad to not, at the very least, make an offer.
Musk may crash & burn but unless someone invents a compact Mr Fusion by 2020, his eVision will come to fruition within a decade.

That's what term limits are for and they really, really need to be applied at all levels of government.
Now, since some individuals have held public office at several levels of government, let's say that you can't hold elected office at any for more than 8 yrs for the same position or more than 20 years consecutively for all levels combined.

At that point, I'm not sure if you should be barred from elected office entirely or be forced to sit out for 8-10 years.

Any system will have defects but the current one in the USA is rigged.
You want to be president? Might cost you & your backers a cool $Billion+ to lose.
Are the voting districts fair? Hmm, instead of having an arms length agency with oversight to draw the boundaries, let's have the 2 major parties take turns drawing the maps as they see fit every 10 years.
So what if you get a few districts that look like a dragon trying to pick its nose with its tail.

Let's have companies write the legislation that will be used to oversee them. I'm sure they're all good honest capitalists. And let's appoint prominent people from those very companies / industries to also be the cop on the beat. After all, we can count on them to prosecute their friends, who they'll probably work with again someday.

There are FAR more corrupt governments that America's but they could be so, so much better.
Canada's appear to be pretty clean although it seems that there are fewer checks on the Canadian PM vs the US President if the prime minister of Canuckistan holds the majority of seats in the House.