During the height of the crisis when Davis was starting to mau-mau the private parties, I corresponded with a number of journalists (including at the LA Slimes) about the aspects they were missing. They just didn't want to hear it (must not have matched whatever they'd been taught in school). They were simply committed to the idea that the crisis was caused by the half dozen or so instances where there was "gaming" by the private parties (prices were set hourly by the ISO, sometimes by the minute, so these instances didn't amount to a hill of beans). They certainly didn't want to hear about the instances (admittedly also a small number) where the ISO went back to private parties and required them to raise their prices as the original contract price didn't meet their socialist definition of "fair".
This intransigence on the part of State government coupled with the scapegoating of private industry was one of the reasons we elected to move out of California.
You make some interesting comments. The incompetence, liberalism, and economic ignorance of the Cal state legislature is one reason why I moved to Arizona. The high cost of housing and high taxes were the main reasons, along with an increasingly liberal and weird culture. Arizona is great; this state reminds me a lot of California in the 1970's when we had reasonable housing prices and reasonable people in the legislature.