Thanks for your suggestion.  However, the issue you've created is too wide in scope to be actionable.  As you note, just because the string "/usr/local" appears in a file within the Python source distribution does not indicate a problem.  Many of the cites are in documentation or examples where it is noted or understood that the correct path will need to be supplied or is supplied when the file is actually built and installed.

The one real related issue I am aware of is that the main setup.py, which is used to build the standard library components, does have some hardwired sets of paths, usually including /usr/local, to find necessary third-party libraries and setup.py does not always provide a consistent way to augment those paths.  This is also an issue for cross-compiling Python for other environments.  There are various issues open regarding this, for example, Issue5575 "Add env vars for controlling building sqlite, hashlib and ssl".  I would suggest contributing to those issues by creating or reviewing and testing existing patches.  Also note that Python 2.7.x is open for bug fixes; new features are generally only accepted for the next major release, currently expected to be Python 3.4.  Unless there are more specific items that are not already covered in another issue, I am inclined to close this one.