WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 8 (DPI) – A surprising number of posters, ignoring the digital revolution, insisted this week that a radical Republican conspiracy drove the decision to eliminate Saturday mail delivery by the U.S. Postal Service.

But a majority of posters on HuffingtonPost.com and NYTimes.com, among other sites, took the view that the curtailing of services by the Postal Service was a sensible and necessary response to the economic realities in the digital age, as companies communicate with customers almost entirely online.

But a vocal minority – about 15% — declared that the Postal Service’s onerous pension obligations imposed by Congress prompted its shrinking services.  And many readers supported those views.

Among the highest recommended posts on NYTimes.com: “If the USPS were a company, they wouldn’t have to adhere to an idiotic law requiring them to pay into future retiree benefits at such high amounts. No private company is subject to such financial burdens.  However, Republicans seek to destroy the USPS, so they enacted these laws specifically to bankrupt the USPS. It’s working exactly as they wanted.  Yet another public service slowly being destroyed by Congress.”

And another: “If the Postal Service were a company, right-wingers in Congress wouldn’t have passed a law requiring it to fund its pensions 70 years in advance.  The Postal Service was making money until “small government” right-wingers found a way to kill it off — after receiving “campaign donations” (legalized bribes) from FedEx and UPS.  This is a twofer for the right-wingers in Congress: they get to hand billions of dollars in business to their benefactors, FedEx and UPS, and they get to destroy another union.

But the majority of posters focused on the practical issue of email replacing old-fashioned mail. And many readers too pointed out that private firms turn a profit while the USPS, with its high costs, is beholden to Congress to implement major changes to its business.

Among the most highly recommended posts: “The Postal Service cuts services as the government continues to increase its spending, borrowing and tax rates. Meanwhile private carriers, which unlike the Postal Service turn a profit, will continue to deliver on Saturdays. This ludicrous situation is emblematic of what our government has become – a bureaucratic morass that becomes less and less efficient and more and more of a drag on the economy as it continues to grow.”

Another:  “I won’t miss it.  Nothing important comes in the mail anymore, and there’s no reason to have it delivered on Saturdays. Keeping the post offices open on Saturdays seems far more useful.”

“I’ve never received a letter on Saturday that couldn’t have kept until Monday. The USPS is the best bargain a U.S. consumer ever had: 50 cents and my letter gets where it’s going in two days 99.9 percent of the time. On the day AT&T matches that value and quality of service for its trumped-up products, pigs will fly. No Saturday delivery is just the first thing the USPS should do to align itself with today’s social, technological and marketplace realities.”