The bill to give all children in disputed custody cases the right to have both equally fit parents in their life has been introduced to the Family and Children Services Committee. We have listened to the opposition to this equality and their words ring untrue at best and self serving evil at worst. The children's anti-parental right lobby will not acknowledge that the majority of children are improperly being denied stability in their parental relationships due to a small percentage of cases with domestic violence. They would have us believe that since only 10% of disputed cases make it all the way to the judge that there is no need for reform in the law because 90% of cases are settled by both parents of their own free will. They would also have us believe that children do not need both parents in their lives but just need small amounts of quality time with their non-custodial parent (father). They go on to say that raising the level of evidence by making the court show clear and convincing evidence of unfitness will increase the amount of litigation between divorcing parents. This is like saying that more people would be able to file more civil actions to win millions of dollars in civil suits if the evidence standards where raised to criminal standards. Tell that to OJ after being found not guilty but still ordered to pay...
 Anyhow we must now focus on getting the bill through the committee. We know that the bill has a majority of FCS members as co-sponsors. We know that the chair Brenda Clack opposes that bill and that she probably will not let it come up for a vote without a concerted effort to convince her that she needs to. I have heard that she plans on never letting it out of committee and that she will not allow any GOP introduced bills up for 6 months. I am suggesting that we get busy mobilizing and activating within her district so that she hears from every concerned citizen. She needs to hear from all of her campaign contributors that agree that children need both parents. She may need to be taken out of the FCS chair if possible by the Democratic leadership if she becomes a distraction or maybe we can engineer a recall election. Here is a list of all the committee members for you to contact:

Committee Testimony
Committee Minutes
No SubCommittees

Committee Members:
Brenda Clack (D), Committee Chair, 34th District
Robert Dean (D), Majority Vice-Chair, 75th District
Frank Accavitti Jr. (D), 42nd District
Ted Hammon (D), 50th District
Lisa Wojno (D), 28th District
Fulton Sheen (R), Minority Vice-Chair, 88th District
John Stahl (R), 82nd District
Jacob Hoogendyk (R), 61st District
Brian Palmer (R), 36th District
Dan Stump, Committee Clerk,
517-373-5795

Here is a link to the page that will show you who contributed to State Rep Clack's campaign. These people need to know that she needs to be encouraged to allow a vote:

http://miboecfr.nicusa.com/cgi-bin/cfr/contrib_anls_res.cgi?can_last_name=Clack,+Brenda&sched=*& amp;sort_1=common_name&sort_2=amount&sched=*

Here is a link to a page that gives you the media outlets in Flint Michigan: http://www.mondotimes.com/1/world/us/22/1219

Please work on contacting everyone and getting the message out in Flint. Also the links above can be used for all of the other committee members focusing first on the members who are not co-sponsors.