No, but in areas where it happens, then they post the streets with no overnight parking rules. In 99% of the time the local residents/homeowners want this, and petition City Hall for that area to be so posted. We have lots of streets that allow overnight parking in San Jose.
Any laws that have legalized abortion.
Repeal the laws that tax people at the end of the year for payments received from unemployment checks - geez, if there was ever a group who deserved a tax break, you would think the unemployed would rank right up there.
Exactly who determined that marriage is solely for heterosexuals? Churches can do whatever they want regarding the religious aspect of a marriage ceremony and rites, but the government has no right to discriminate with regards to a committed partnership based solely upon sexual preference.
Speed limits should be realistic. Why should there be a 35 MPH speed limit on wide, four lane streets that are miles from schools, shopping areas and the like? During normal traffic times, if you drive 35 people will pass you like you are insane - but police love to hover there when it is time to make up their monthly quota, knowing full well that nobody in their right mind drives 35 on that stretch of road. When I say realistic, I mean 45 or 50 MPH. It is like they intentionally set these ridiculously low speed limits just to create speed traps.
I’ll extend this to marijuana. I’ll also extend this to other drugs possibly, depending on the severity of their effects. But I’ll add a provision that all acts committed under the influence of voluntarily-taken drugs are to be treated as if they were committed cold soberly and deliberately. Get blasted and sit around the house for a week on holidays recovering? No problem. Get blasted and kill a little girl while at the wheel? You just committed murder.
That’d be the 14th Amendment. Good luck with that.
F*k it…everyone else has already mentioned the repeals I support, ideologically, and probably done a more eloquent job at it.
So I’m just going to say laws against dueling. As long as both parties are consenting—make 'em buy and sign a $5 dueling license, or something. Screw a “Waiting Period”—hey, feuer frei. Just sign an organ donor card, first.
Could we also legalize and tax the sale of LSD and Ecstasy? Not a month goes by that i don’t see in the police blotter that people have either one, and got arrested.
Rent Control would also fall on my list. The Government shouldn’t fix prices. It can’t respond to changes in consumer behavior as fast as the market can.
Mild rent control is a Good Thing. See, although the Market can respond faster, people don’t respond that fast. Here in San Jose during the Boom, many landlords doubled their rent. But they lost good stable long term tenants so in the long term, it’s actually bad to try to match rents to short term fluctuations in a market.
While the market isn’t perfect when it comes to housing, and should be corrected, price fixing isn’t the way to do it.
While I don’t disagree that speed limits should be realistic, I’m not sure your argument holds. It is probably 35 since there are cross streets. Cars trying to merge onto that street or cross it would have a much more difficult time doing so if the speed limit were raised 10 or 15 mph. It might result in more accidents and fatalities.
How long of a stretch of road are we talking about? If it were 5 miles long, then doing 35 mph on it would take you 8.5 minutes. Going 45 would take you 6.67 minutes, or about 2 minutes less. If you go 40 mph, you are likely very safe from the cops (as you said, there are likely to be lots of other drivers going much faster) and you’ll get there only 1 minute slower than if you were driving 45 mph. And that assumes the stretch is 5 miles long. That would be a very long stretch of road to have at 35mph with no schools, shopping centers and cross streets.
No but when Landlords goof and mistime the market, their customers lose their homes. As was said by the Rep from the TriCounty Landlords association about San Jose’s rent control law: “It just protects Landlords from being stupid”. San Jose allows 8% increase per year, which in the long run is way more than is needed. The SJ law is good- is allows landlords to adjust the rent up to market, but protects tenants from odd market fluctuations. And Silicon Valley has had some odd fluctuations.
DrDeth, I don’t want to hijack this thread any further. I see your point, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
I would say the local law that requires me to wear a helmet when riding my bicycle, except that it’s not enforced in any noticeable way.
Bah. Back in the day, any kid caught wearing a bicycle helmet may as well wear a “Kick my ass, please” sign to go with it. Most of us lived to tell about playing Evel Knievel and sometimes enduring epic crashes with much blood and skinned knees.
In lieu of the bicycle helmet law, perhaps a modestly priced “doesn’t wear a helmet” licence would work better…income would go to the “scraping brains off public pavement” cleanup fund. 
No problemo, with the proviso it also applies to modes of transport that actually run into each other all the time. 
Thanks for all the answers (most of which I agree with).
I’m a little surprised, though - I loosely subscribe to the whole libertarian belief that petty laws are suffocating us, so aside from the civil rights things people have mentioned I expected more complaints about pointless forms that needed to be filled out, signatures to be gotten, permits to be stamped, etc. The truth is, I can’t think of examples of that stuff from my own life, and not many people have mentioned those things either.
So is that whole argument mostly bogus? Or if I had titled this thread “Examples of Pointless Bureaucracy” would I have gotten different results?
Laws requiring taxi cab commissions and licenses. It is an invitation to corruption and unnecessary bureaucracy. Require any one running a cab to prominently post their rates . Anyone who wants to pick someone up and drive someone somewhere can and they can set the rates and the routes they find profitable.
Many of the petty bureaucracies should go away. I don’t even like the idea of car safety inspections . I seriously doubt any defects are truly found through the perfunctory procedure and the entire DMV seems to me to be a money and paperwork mill that has very little to do with a well functioning society.
Everything the UN has to say on the subject of drug control.
“Our UN obligations” are a fig-leaf for politicians who have run out of other crappy justifications for prohibition.