This is because no one wants to take positions sharply at odds with the media status quo. But on Friday, Jessica Calefati of the San Jose Mercury-News did just that on state poverty.

For two years, the U.S. Census Bureau has been reporting that based on a new measure of poverty adjusted for cost of living, California has by far the nation’s highest poverty rate. But while I’ve written about this for the U-T San Diego’s editorial page, Dan Walters has referred to it in some columns and Chris Cadelago mentioned it in a Capitol Alert brief for the Sac Bee, the stat hasn’t become part of the mainstream California media narrative about life in the Golden State.

Why? That pack mentality.

I’ve whined a lot about Calefati over her coverage of the bullet train. She buys the Dan Richard myth that would-be contractors are potential investors, never looking at the contractors’ history, and doesn’t appear to have read the appellate court ruling on the bullet train that provides zero long-term relief from Prop 1A’s restrictions. But on poverty, she’s nailed it. From now on, it’s going to be awfully difficult for other reporters writing broadly about California quality of life to leave out the mass poverty angle.

Here’s a key part:

“By some measures, California seems to be doing really well, but these measures are deceptive,” said Jack Pitney, a political expert at Claremont McKenna College. “So much of the good fortune is being blown to the affluent — and a lot of Californians are getting left behind.”

The state’s official poverty rate of 14.9 percent is just slightly higher than the national average. It’s decreased from a high of 16.9 percent in 2011, yet it remains stubbornly higher than it was before the Great Recession began, according to U.S. Census data.

But those figures don’t tell the whole story. According to another set of Census statistics that takes the cost of living into account when calculating need, California’s poverty rate is 23.4 percent — the highest in the nation. …

Who’s indifferent to mass poverty? The gov

But Calefati doesn’t just point out how extreme poverty is. She notes how badly poor people have fared under the state budgets shaped by Gov. Jerry Brown. She cites program cuts and then offers this broad appraisal of how the gov thinks:

Brown, stemming in part from the former seminarian’s Jesuit background, also seems to have a distaste for handing out cash to able-bodied people. He has said that the investments he made in public education and subsidized health care for the poor are among the best ways to help people climb out of poverty.

“There’s no single measure of poverty and there’s certainly no single action — or government program — that will eliminate it, which is why the administration is moving on multiple fronts to help Californians in need,” said Evan Westrup, the governor’s chief spokesman. …

Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, said she appreciates Brown pushing for the minimum wage hike but argues that he has shied away from tackling the state’s poverty problem head-on.

“The governor likes to describe this state as a laboratory of innovation,” she added. “It’s the people who make California an innovator, not just the coast line and the palm trees. If we don’t invest in our children’s well-being, who will be left to innovate?”

But termed-out Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a liberal Sacramento Democrat who led the state Senate for six years, isn’t optimistic that social service spending in California will soon be the same again — as a coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats like Brown resist going on the kind of spending binge that led to the multibillion-dollar deficits.

“The thing about budget cuts is once they’re made it’s very difficult to restore them dollar for dollar,” he said. “It just is.”

That’s the last paragraph of Calefati’s story. Any journalism forensics technician will tell you the last graph of a long analysis is what the reporter (or line editor) thinks about the facts that have been presented.

A radical break with usual kumbaya coverage of Jerry

So here’s what the Merc News front page says: California is the poorest state in America, and Jerry Brown doesn’t care all that much.

What a remarkable difference from Brown’s (and the media’s) normal narrative of “California’s on the rebound! California’s got its mojo back!”

That narrative looks idiotic when the media actually report that due to high housing prices, California is the Mississippi of the 21st century.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office released a terse analysis that depicted the latest business plan as vague, unsubstantiated and not credible – and then concluded with this bombshell:

“The Proposition 1A bond measure explicitly prohibits any public operating subsidy. However, the plan … assumes some form of revenue guarantee from the public sector to attract private investment. This generally means some public entity promises to pay the contractor the difference between projected and realized revenues if necessary. The plan does not explain how the guarantee could be structured so as not to violate the law.”

In an e-mail, a spokesman for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Jeffrey Barker, said the authority was responding to the criticism by putting together a business plan that “does not require government operating subsidies” and could comply with the wording of Proposition 1A by offering private investors a “ridership guarantee” instead of a “revenue guarantee.”

But a ridership and a revenue guarantee are the same thing because ridership times ticket price equals revenue. The Legislative Analyst’s Office told us yesterday that it agrees.

That’s been the giant fundamental obstacle ever since to the $68 billion bullet train project getting substantial private investments.

Meet the latest journo to fall for the CHSRA spin

Nevertheless, ever since then the bullet train folks have periodically gotten reporters around California to write stories about the much-improved prospects for private investment. The latest example came over the weekend, when Jessica Calefati of the Bay Area News Group managed to write a long article about, yes, renewed hopes for private investment without even mentioning the LAO-cited obstacle. Sheesh.

SACRAMENTO — On life support just a few months ago, California’s bullet train has been resuscitated.

Last week, demolition began in Fresno to clear the way for the first stretch of track. More significantly, private investors across the country and abroad are expressing new interest in bankrolling part of the $68 billion project.

The lawsuits that have stymied the plan aren’t yet resolved, but a budget agreement brokered by Gov. Jerry Brown that guarantees the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles rail line its first funding stream — one that leading economists say could reach about three quarters of a billion dollars annually — has emerged as a “game changer,” high-speed rail experts say.

Inking a deal that will send the project hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees collected from polluters is the signal the private sector was waiting for, according to formal letters of interest the state received last month. With only a fraction of the project’s funding in hand, the state needs private investment for about one-third of the final price tag to have any hope of completing the rail line.

In the past, rail authority officials have tried to confuse reporters by citing construction and project management companies’ interest in being contractors on the multibillion-dollar contracts that will be given out if the project goes forward as being tantamount to interest in investing it. Of course private companies want to get big contracts. That doesn’t mean they’re investors.

Look at the company’s website — it’s no investor

Dumb, de dumb dumb: That is just what’s happened again. Look at this paragraph from the BANG story:

But it’s significant that Vinci Concessions, a French company that is considered a world leader in developing highly technical high-speed rail projects, is one of the nine companies that eagerly wrote to California about the bullet train last month.

Groan. Look at Vinci’s website. Look at Vinci’s standard contracts. It is primarily a contractor seeking work from governments pursuing ambitious transportation projects. It’s not an investor.

It’s something the company makes clear in its key pitch:

VINCI Concessions is the leader in almost every joint venture it establishes and has demonstrated its ability to attract long-term investors.

It’s not the investor. It’s the allegedly shrewd project manager that allegedly can attract investors.

Back to you, Jessica Calefati. Back to you, California High-Speed Rail Authority. Back to you, Dan Richard and Jerry Brown.

Where are the investors who want to partner with California on the bullet train as opposed to being contractors on the bullet train?

They can’t cite any — because as the LAO noted 54 months ago, revenue and ridership guarantees are illegal under state law. And no private investor wants to partner with California without such guarantees.

I hope James Fallows, the respected East Coast journo who has come out as a CA bullet-train fan, sees this rank manipulation by the rail authority for what it is: confirmation he shouldn’t trust the rail authority.