So what’s the haps in the capital, as the kids might say? Let’s take a look:

• Could somebody please give Assemblyman Ty Cobb a copy of the legislative rules of procedure? He looked like he was badly in need of them on the Assembly floor on Wednesday. Then again, Speaker Barbara Buckley seemed only too happy to school Cobb from the rostrum as to the proper protocols for debating bills and their amendments on the Assembly floor.

Although Cobb was the only person to vote against Buckley’s elevation to speaker, we’re sure her gentle admonitions to Cobb were done in love.

Then again, maybe what Cobb really needs is a copy of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, since he irked Assemblyman Bernie Anderson by his antics. The Assembly was discussing a bill that would block judges from sealing court cases whenever they feel like it. And Cobb was trying to bring an amendment that would let judges seal cases whenever they thought it was in the best interests of the community, which is to say, whenever they feel like it.

Yes, that is totally subjective and guts the intent of the bill. That’s probably why, in the words of Judiciary Committee Chairman Anderson, the committee “had no appetite for the amendment and thus it was rejected.”

But never-say-die Cobb brought it haphazardly to the floor, where he apparently violated a couple points of legislative protocol. Buckley stepped in to help. In love.

Oh, and of course, much like the rest of his bills this session, the Cobb Amendment failed.

• There was a little more acrimony on the Senate floor on Wednesday. It seems outnumbered Democrats in the upper house are finally growing weary of what they perceive as heavy handed treatment by Republicans, who hold a one-vote majority.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio juggled committee assignments before the session to make sure Democrats didn’t have a majority on any committees, which had happened in past years. And things really came to a head when Minority Leader Dina Titus’ bill to require insurance companies to offer a vaccine for a virus that causes cervical cancer was pulled off the general file after it had been passed and set aside.

Voice votes that were normally unanimous suddenly started going along party lines, and since the Senate is divided 11 to 10, it was hard for us at Various Things & Stuff to hear who really had more. Luckily, state Sen. Mark Amodei, not us, was serving as president pro tem of the upper house, and his hearing was good enough to hand each divided vote to the bare Republican majority.

Oh, by the way, Titus was allowed to amend her bill so that local government’s self-funded insurance programs didn’t have to cover the vaccine, which on Thursday allowed the measure to pass the Senate – again – and head over to the Assembly.

Anybody want to bet that local governments will once more be required to offer the vaccine once this measure gets to the Assembly, and the Senate will once again be forced to vote on it? We’re smelling conference committee on this one.

• And speaking of Titus, she was in classic form this morning during a joint meeting of the Senate Finance Committee and the Assembly Ways & Means Committee. Titus was wondering aloud at the rather rapid erasure of the projected $137 million deficit, which was accomplished in large part by recalculating future welfare caseloads, accounting for about $50 million in savings.

As Carlos Brandenburg, administrator of the state’s mental health division, was explaining the budget, Titus went off. Either the welfare caseload was wrong to begin with, or the most recent estimates are fictional, Titus thundered. Either way, it’s no way to run the system.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right, doctor,” Titus said.

Brandenburg, for his part, remained calm. “The numbers are what they are,” he said.

The numbers, according to the Review-Journal, are significant: The state anticipates 6,135 fewer welfare cases in the next fiscal year, and 9,531 next year. How? According to the R-J, it’s the strong economy and a beefed up ID check to prevent illegal immigrants from taking advantage of state services. 

• Nevada attracts a lot of stupid people, and its having a negative impact on the state.

That’s the crass our totally oversimplified version of an erudite presentation given by university system Vice Chancellor Jane Nichols to the Assembly Education Committee. And while Nichols presented some interesting statistics and stark trends, the upshot of her talk was depressing.

According to Nichols, for every 100 students who start high school, only 51 graduate. Of those, just 28 enter college, and only 19 are still around by their sophomore year. And of those original 100 students, just 10 actually graduate from college. (Nationally, it’s more like 18.)

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, people moving to Las Vegas aren’t that educated, either. In 2005, 16.1 percent had less than a high school education, 27.3 percent had a high school diploma, 30.9 percent had some college but just 17 percent were college graduates and 9.3 percent had an advanced or professional degree.

As a result, 28.6 percent of the workforce has an associate’s degree (the kind you get from a community college) and 21.2 percent has a bachelors degree or better. Nevada ranks 46th in the nation for educational background of its workforce.

“As long as Nevadans don’t think they need a college degree, we’re going to have a problem,” Nichols said.

While that might have been fine for the past, Nichols said more and more jobs will require a college education. Which is not so good when you consider that the state university system is projecting that college enrollment will drop in coming years, from 6.4 percent this year to 6.15 percent in 2014.

“We have to change the Nevada perception of reality,” Nichols said. “If we don’t change that we won’t have to worry about illegal immigration in this state, because the education levels in Mexico will surpass us. We will be an undeveloped nation called Nevada.”

Assemblyman Harvey Munford said the problem comes because the gambling industry is the No. 1 source of employment, and good-paying jobs that don’t require advanced education are plentiful. “We need to get away from casinos being our No. 1 industry,” he said. As a state, Nevada needs to start attracting good jobs that do require a college education.

For her part, Nichols recalled the 1960s, in which there was a national surge in science and engineering education as people participated in the space race with the former Soviet Union. Our new “space race,” could be in the fields of health care or alternative energy, she said.

“We still have to think about the future of Nevada,” she said. 

And now, for a few legislative Quick Hits. Think of them as dessert for reading through the serious stuff:

• According to a series of obscure notes written in shaky hand on napkins gathered during a Barrick Goldstrike reception at the coolest coffee shop in Nevada – Comma Coffee – Assemblyman Dr. Joe Hardy was totally wearing his “got gold?” Barrick hat backwards. We think we must have been addled by the microbrews served at the reception, because we just can’t picture the Boulder City physician as a gangsta.

 • Winos in the Legislature? Sure, some lawmakers have booze in their office. If you had to work these hours and do what these people do, you’d be driven to drink, too! But actually selling wine in the legislative gift shop?

That’s a serious proposal, embodied in SB 430, which is on it’s way to approval in the state Senate. The bill provides for the gift shop to sell “souvenir wine” along with other trinkets currently available, like pens, polo shirts, jackets, portfolios, wallets and the like.

We at Various Things & Stuff volunteered our services – pro bono, of course – to select the vintages that could be offered for sale in the gift shop. We do it out of love for our state and patriotism. And Bordeaux.

• It not just nice to be nice. It’s the law! Or at least it is if SB 491 – which is on its way to state Senate approval – becomes law. Under that law, the state’s law books have to be nice to disabled people. Whoops. We just violated the law! Here, why don’t we just let you read it for yourselves:

“The Legislative Counsel shall, to the extent practicable, ensure that person with physical, mental or cognitive disabilities are referred to in Nevada Revised Statutes using language that is commonly viewed as respectful and sentence structure that refers to the person without referring to his disability.

“Words and terms that are preferred for use in the Nevada Revised Statutes include, without limitation, ‘persons with disabilities,’ ‘persons with mental illness,’ ‘persons with mental retardation’ and other words and terms that are structured in a similar manner.

“Words and terms that are not preferred for use in Nevada Revised Statutes include, without limitation, ‘disabled,’ ‘handicapped,’ ‘mentally disabled,’ ‘mentally ill,’ ‘mentally retarded’ and other words and terms that tend to equate the disability with the person.”

Got that? Good. Oh, and under an amendment passed by the Senate today, the same goes for the Nevada Administrative Code, which is the set of rulemaking books that are based on the NRS.

• Although the state Senate had a long agenda, it still found the time to approve an amendment to a bill repealing the payroll tax on banks today. And why not, with the giddiness in the air caused by the revelation that Nevada no longer has a deficit! Why, it’s time to break open a case of the souvenir wine!

What’s that? What about the $3.8 billion road-building shortfall? The ignored $1 billion iNVest plan for schools? The large number of uninsured people in Nevada, lots of them children? The fact that our Supreme Court’s chief justice has told us our prisons are going to be over capacity before the end of the year?

Well, transportation, schools, kids and jails don’t have heavy influence over the votes of some members of our Legislature, people! Banks do! Or at least they do over these people.