Good post. The LA Times left out that important part, for some reason. It's like blaming the original course setting of the Titanic for everything rather than Captain Davis for not steering around the iceberg.
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.