51.  Chile achieved the fiscal surplus by focusing expenditure on the very poor and transferring the cost of basic services, such as education, to the middle class.

52.  Colonias are communities of mostly low-income families and lack basic human services, such as water, sewer service, streets and lighting.

53.  Communication is improving, but mayors and governors are still stuck with the job of balancing the cost for improved security, with the cost of maintaining basic services.

54.  Consumer groups question whether utilities would have invested more in improving basic service if they had not had the option of putting money elsewhere.

55.  Each bill would guarantee basic services, including emergency room care and access to specialists.

56.  Elsewhere around the country, some funeral directors have responded to discount casket retailers by cutting casket prices and raising their basic service fee by a corresponding amount.

57.  Existing phone companies have been forced by regulators to offer basic service to low-income consumers at discounted prices, with those costs effectively subsidized by other customers.

58.  Experts appear to believe that midwinter losses of electricity or other basic services will cause hardship in many areas, but stop short of human catastrophe.

59.  For example, a California IPA pays primary-care physicians a fixed monthly rate per enrollee to cover basic services.

60.  For decades they suffered under governments that were venal and ineffective and that often failed to respond to demands for the most basic services, like water and sewage.