No active CSS in editable CSS files

I would like to make the case that none of the CSS files which are intended to be edited by the user - in the 2.x branch's case, everything in the "css" directory - should have any "active" CSS in them; only empty declaration signatures. For example, css/comments.css contains mostly empty declarations, but there are two lines of active CSS; one near the top, but one kind of buried in the middle.

The most obvious reason why I think this is bad is because if any of this active CSS needs to be updated for a new release of Zen, it becomes a pain to merge those changes into place for pre-existing themes. But more obvious is that, for themers like me who prefer not to edit these pre-built signatures and instead start with a fresh blank CSS file, we can't just go ahead and comment out all of the "blank" CSS files in the .info file without deactivating active code - unless we go through each file and copy all the active CSS to another file, and clearly that's a pain too.

All active CSS should either go into the Zen parent theme's CSS files, or in a single, easily-replaceable CSS file in the subtheme (I'm leaning toward the latter).

I would be willing to create the necessary patches if the Zen Masters don't hate the idea.