SCHOOL SUPPORTERS are holding vigils and marches to denounce the Legislature’s refusal to adequately fund education.

Homeowners are doing a slow simmer over lawmakers’ refusal (in some cases, for very good reason) to do anything about property taxes that seem to be growing beyond their ability to pay.

Business organizations and doctors are so outraged over the failure of lawmakers to pass tort reform legislation that they’ve taken out newspaper ads blaming senators for the growing dearth of doctors willing to treat trauma patients and deliver babies.

Even the carefully establishment state Chamber of Commerce newsletters attacked the “failure of Senate leadership” on tort reform and noted that in the House, “although leadership claims a pro-business environment, there are many who would differ on that opinion.”

No wonder legislators were outraged — to hide their worry, I’d guess — over the pigs: There’s no telling what’s likely to emerge when you add a popular governor and an in-your-face, made-for-TV stunt to such a volatile mix of simmering resentment.

Two weeks ago, we saw a glimpse of what can emerge, when voters tossed out two legislators and forced four more into today’s run-off elections. And that’s in spite of a pitifully small number of truly contested races.

While ivory-tower types talk in academic terms about lawmakers’ refusal to consider smart proposals to overhaul the tax code and streamline government agencies so we can accomplish more with the tax money we’re spending, lawmakers realize, and voters are increasingly coming to understand, that there are countless tangible problems created by the Legislature’s failure to act on proposals ranging from the sweeping to the mundane.

As one Republican House member told me: “Everywhere I’m going, voters are saying to me, ‘We have a Republican House, we have a Republican Senate, we have a Republican governor. Explain to me why you can’t get anything done.’ And I don’t really have good answers.”

Consider just a few things that will continue to happen for at least the rest of this year, because lawmakers either couldn’t or wouldn’t get the job done:

• Kids who are barely keeping up or even failing in school will spend a summer without summer school and next school year without after-school programs that could help catch them up and keep them from dropping out to dead-end lives.

• Doctors will continue to retire early or restrict their practices because — unable to set the prices they charge to treat patients — they can’t afford malpractice insurance, which is rising in part because our state does too little to discourage frivolous lawsuits.

• Renters — usually among the poorest people in our society — will continue to pay inflated prices because landlords have to pay 50 percent higher property taxes than homeowners on identically priced properties.

• The most basic necessity of life — food — will continue to be taxed at 5 percent or more, while luxury cars continue to get a huge tax break that grows as the price of the car goes up.

• Drunken drivers will continue to ignore the tough new 0.08 standard with impunity, lawmakers having lifted not a finger to plug loopholes that make the law so unenforceable that many police refuse to use it.

• Teens will still have far-too-easy access to cigarettes, both financially and legally. Not only did legislators refuse to even consider raising our embarrassingly low cigarette tax, but senators wouldn’t even make it illegal for kids to smoke.

• We’ll all continue to pay higher insurance bills and more tax money on Medicaid than we should because the overwhelming majority of legislators wouldn’t take the needed action to overrule a handful of obstinate senators and take the one proven step to increase seat belt usage — let police enforce the seat belt law.

• Able-bodied people too lazy to walk and contemptuous of the rules of society will continue to get away with borrowing someone else’s handicapped parking placard without fear of punishment.

• Some cities and counties that collect the special 1-cent restaurant tax will continue to charge for items such as cut fruit purchased at a grocery store, since lawmakers never got around to writing a reasonable definition of what the tax covers.

• Municipal officials will continue to call off the election in uncontested races, and declare the candidates elected without a vote.

• Taxpayers will continue to subsidize money-making events such as college football games and races, through free traffic control from the Highway Patrol.

• And our part-time legislators will continue to look forward to a cushy taxpayer-subsidized retirement, through a special pension system that pays them more than four times what is paid to a full-time state employee who draws the same salary — a pension system that is so obscenely generous that it even allows them to keep buying super-subsidized credit in the system after voters kick them out of office.

Of course, I can see why legislators would want to make sure that doesn’t change. If they don’t shape up, it’s just a matter of time until a whole lot of them need it.

Wednesday: Lawmakers managed to pass a few important bills that have been lingering for ages. Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.