Dear Home Schoolers,
Hot Springs Christian School is partnering with Home Schoolers and other local Christian schools to play sports and participate in other activities. If you would like to play football, basketball, and or participate in a community choir or other activities, please email HSCS Administrator Bill Vining at bill@hscs.us. Our first scrimmage is on August 26th.
ARCN Feature Interview by Caleb Kinley, Editor
It is no secret that the public school system, especially in the more populated states, are miserably failing our students while abusing and wasting our tax dollars. Nearly a day goes by where we don’t hear of a school district purposely bumping up mandated test scores so their district looks ‘smarter’ for the governments No Child Left Behind Act. The cold hard fact remains that many students continue to slip through the enormous cracks but somehow still manage to graduate from High School when they can barely read at the third grade level and at the same time, have a terrible time doing fifth grade level Math. Prior to the creation of the Education Department and selfish money sucking teachers unions, America had some of the brightest students on planet earth. Fast forward about 50 years and without a doubt, we see that our public school children have been sold out and dumbed down. The horrific evidence of this blatant injustice is overwhelming! Is it any wonder that homeschooling and private schools are booming?
Enter the Hot Springs Christian School
Parents want their children to receive a quality education, and it is our belief that every child deserves a quality education in lieu of being handed a passing grade when they can barely get through a Dr. Seuss book. That’s why we at ARCN decided to interview Bill Vining, Jr.; the Hot Springs Christian School Administrator. We found the former Ouachita Baptist football and basketball standout chomping at the bit to kick-off this years education revolution. He has the online curriculum, the ideas, the Life Coaches, and the 21st century digital native concept to prove it. We felt so intrigued by what Vining and his staff has to offer students, homeschoolers, and parents, that we felt it necessary to share this information with our readers. The Hot Springs Christian School has only 4 more openings for elementary students and ten slots open for 7th to 12th grade available. The HSCS also has a football and basketball program. School starts back on August 17th. ARCN interview questions are blue. Vinings answers in quotes.
(1) Hot Springs has quite a few public schools available. Why did you decide to start the Hot Springs Christian School?
Traditional education is out dated and not best for our children. We at HSCS set out to find a system that focuses on the individual student and allows them to maximize their potential. We have been through three years of experimentation and feel that we have discovered an amazing education experience. Our public and private schools spend their resources trying to make the existing system better. To really affect the falling education numbers, the system itself has to change.
(2) What do you feel is the greatest threat to the current public education system, not just in Arkansas public schools, but the public school system nation-wide?
The public school system does not recognize that we are in the 21st Century. They continue to act as though we are in the industrial age. They also do not recognize that the client (student) has changed. Like never before in our history, the learner is different from other generations. This digital generation thinks, learns, and acts different than any previous generation. The threat becomes critical when the disconnect between the learner and present system collides. This may not be far off.
Special Editor’s Note: Please consider donating to the Hot Springs Christian School/HeartBridge Scholarship Fund. Your tax deductible donations help cover scholarships awarded to those less fortunate who wish to attend HSCS in person or online. You can donate here: http://www.gofundme.com/HeartBridge. Once the page opens, select the big green button that says “Donate Online.” Once you do, the donation page will open and you can donate whatever you can afford to give for such a noble and just cause. If you prefer to mail a check or money order, please see the directions at the conclusion of this interview. You can visit the HSCS photo gallery here. Thank you so much and may God Bless You!
(3) There are quite a few Christian denominations, are the students you have at HSCS all the same denomination? If not, how do you go about teaching the Bible with so many variations of beliefs?
We have students of all denominations. We do not major on the minor issues. We want to foster an environment that will encourage the students to build their own relationship with God and Jesus Christ. Everything revolves around the relationship. Denominational differences most of the time can be categorized as “religious”. We are not religious.
(4) Why would parents want to send their children to the HSCS?
We are the only non denomination school in Hot Springs. We specialize in preparing our students for college and life like no other school in Arkansas. More than anything, we foster an atmosphere where the student can maximize their God-given potential in several areas. The 10 master strategies along with the Life Coaching is a winning combination.
(5) You are a record setting quarterback that graduated from Ouachita Baptist University. Rex Nelson had the 1975 game between OBU and Henderson listed as one of the greatest football games he had ever seen at any level. In that game, you led your team from behind to victory with time running out. Did you learn any life lessons during the game and if so, have you applied those lessons to what you do at HSCS? For those viewers who are interested, here is the link to Nelson’s article: http://www.rexnelsonsouthernfried.com/?p=1565
I learned that it helps to have a little luck. Most of my high school and College teachers would roll over in their grave if they knew I had been a part in putting together a unique education experience. This was not my dream as a young person. God began to move in my life around 15 years ago to do something special in Christian education. I feel very confident that I am in God’s will at this time and loving every minute of it. I am honored and humbled to think that we are in this special position to make a difference in the lives of many kids. We feel that we have discovered a winning combination of ingredients that work for our students.
(6) I understand you have something new to offer in the Education Revolution. Can you describe the dynamic system HSCS is now offering through HeartBridge?
We have combined three ingredients that work together well. 1st is a 21st Century curriculum that involves the student being able to move at their God-given speed. 2nd we have put together biblical based strategies for life that will empower the student in their learning. This empowerment results in what we term as a “SuperAchiever” when applied according to the strategies. This is very difficult in explaining. Our website helps in understanding what the strategies are. 3rd, all of the ingredients are put together by a Life Coach. The majority of the teaching is done on-line so that is frees up the Life Coach to work with the students on a personal level. This generation needs coaching. We have integrated the curriculum and the Life Coaching so that the school and Home school parents have a format for mentoring the students. We could sum all of this up by saying that our passion is to help each individual student and the system of education facilitates that goal.
Special Editor’s Note: Please consider donating to the Hot Springs Christian School/HeartBridge Scholarship Fund. Your tax deductible donations help cover scholarships awarded to those less fortunate who wish to attend HSCS in person or online. You can donate here: http://www.gofundme.com/HeartBridge. Once the page opens, select the big green button that says “Donate Online.” Once you do, the donation page will open and you can donate whatever you can afford to give for such a noble and just cause. If you prefer to mail a check or money order, please see the directions at the conclusion of this interview. You can visit the HSCS photo gallery here. Thank you so much and may God Bless You!
(7) How is HSCS funded?
Tuition and small gifts. We will be looking for financial partners and praying for larger gifts to help us move to a national level. This will be a unique opportunity for a donor to be a part of a real revolution. Most of the gifts given now go for scholarships for families that cannot afford the tuition.
(8) Where will you go from here?
HeartBridge has used Hot Springs Christian School as a model to learn what will and will not work. We are now ready to share with others what God has revealed. We want to accomplish this on a national level. We want to expand to Home schoolers, other Christian Schools, Missionary schools, jails, private schools and others that may want to start house schools.(schools consisting of between 4 to 15 students)
(9) Can you sum all of this up?
Statistics prove that the present education system is not working. We as a nation are losing on a world wide scale. It is time we challenge the present system. It is time we help promote an EDUCATION REVOLUTION. It is insane to continue down the same destructive path. With God’s grace we can impact the lives of thousands of young people. One day, maybe the public schools will follow suit.
The Personal Bio of Bill Vining, Jr.:
I grew up in Arkadelphia, AR. After receiving my Bachelor’s degree from Ouachita Baptist University in 1976, I worked as a graduate assistant to OBU’s Coach Eddie Sutton while obtaining my Masters in Education Administration.
I have coached, taught, and been in the administration of both public and private schools in Arkansas and Tennessee. I have also been involved in three start-up businesses before being called to be part of the founding of Hot Springs Christian School. We see HSCS being a beacon of hope to the community and our state. Our school is opening up frontiers in education that we feel will change the way students are educated in America.
I am inspired by the students and staff of HSCS who have bought into this venture the pioneering spirit so vital to the mission of the school. I am profoundly grateful to my beautiful wife and precious family for all the supportive they have given me through the years. And I am eternally grateful for my relationship with God through my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
If you cannot view the above video, please go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POfbzsyC6O8
To make a donation by check or money order, please make check or money order out to Hot Springs Christian School (please place the word Scholarship in the memo or for section on the check or money order) and mail to:
Hot Springs Christian School
116 Elice Circle
Hot springs, AR 71901
To contact HSCS by phone: 501.781.0020
You may follow the Hot Springs Christian School on the following Social Networks
Used with permission
By Peter Schiff, President of Euro Pacific Capital
By supposedly compromising to raise the debt ceiling, Congress and the President have now paved the way for ever higher levels of federal spending. Although, the nation was spared the trauma of borrowing restrictions, the actual risk of default existed solely in the minds of Washington politicians. But the real crisis is not, nor has it ever been, the debt ceiling. The crisis is the debt itself. Economic Armageddon would not have resulted from failure to raise the ceiling, but it will come because we succeeded in raising it. This outcome falls along the lines that I had forecast (See my commentary, “Don’t Be Fooled by Political Posturing” from July 9th).
Both parties are now pretending that the promised cuts in spending outweigh the increase in the debt limit. But the $900 billion in identified cuts are spread over a decade and are skewed toward the end of that period. There are an additional $1.4 trillion in cuts that the plan assumes will be identified by a bi-partisan budget committee. But similarly empowered panels in the past have almost never delivered on their mandates.
More importantly, none of these “cuts” are actually binding. There is plenty of time for future Congresses to reverse what was so laboriously agreed to over the past few weeks. My guess is renewed economic weakness will be used to justify ultimate suspension of the cuts. In addition, most of the spending reductions were already scheduled to take effect before this agreement. So what did we really get?
The Congressional Budget Office currently projects that $9.5 trillion in new debt will have to be issued over the next 10 years. Even if all of the reductions proposed in the deal were to come to pass, which is highly unlikely, that would still leave $7.1 trillion in new debt accumulation by 2021. Our problems have not been solved by a long shot.
Essentially, the structure announced today allows both political parties to talk about reform without actually changing anything. To underscore that point, the deal involves less than $25 billion in immediate cuts! This is less than a rounding error in a $3.8 trillion dollar budget. This is politics as usual.
Even these estimates are based on rosy economic assumptions that have no chance of coming to fruition. For example, for the current fiscal year, Washington estimates GDP growth at 4%. But actual growth for the first half of 2011 is below 1%! If our government is over-estimating our current year’s growth by a factor of 4, how accurate could their forecasts be ten years into the future? A more honest assessment of likely economic performance would reveal future budget deficits spiraling out of control.
Some might say that the primary goal of this deal was to avoid the dreaded credit rating downgrade. Unfortunately, the deal addresses none of the ratings agencies’ stated grievances. If they fail to follow through on their downgrade warnings, the rating agencies will lose whatever credibility they have left. For political reasons, the downgrades may not come right away, but they are inevitable. But as has happened so often in the past, by the time the tardy downgrades arrive, the market will have likely already rendered its verdict.
The debt ceiling itself merely represents a self-imposed limit on US borrowing. Since Congress can vote to raise the limit, its existence has been more of a political nuisance than an actual barrier. The operative factor is not how much we allow ourselves to borrow, but how much our creditors are willing to lend. That type of ceiling can’t be raised by an Act of Congress. Once our creditors come to the conclusion that they have lent beyond our capacity to repay, they will be very reluctant to lend more. As trillions in short-term Treasuries mature, the dwindling pool of buyers will demand higher rates of return to compensate them for the risk. But our government is in no condition to afford those higher rates without gutting the rest of the budget.
Last week, it was revealed that despite Obama’s warnings that a default would immediately occur if the debt ceiling were not raised, the administration had already agreed to prioritize interest payments to avoid default. Such preferential treatment is only possible because current interest rates are so low and debt service represents only about 10% of total revenue. When the pool of willing lenders evaporates, net interest payments could quickly consume more than 50% of federal revenue. This is particularly true since rising rates will also plunge the economy into a recession that will substantially reduce revenues – even as debt payments surge.
At that point, prioritizing interest payments would mean deep sacrifices in the rest of the federal budget – including Social Security, Medicare, and the Armed Forces. The question then becomes: will US politicians really be willing to take the political heat that would emerge from prioritizing interest payments to foreign creditors over payments to American voters?
I expect that as soon as our creditors decide that they are no longer willing to lend to us at ultra-low rates of interest, we will refuse to repay what they have already lent.
Besides default or major cuts to domestic spending, inflation provides the only other means for the government to deal with this intractable crisis. Because of its political palatability, inflation is, in fact, the most likely outcome. Once we go down that path, we risk high inflation turning into hyperinflation, which would decimate the remainder of our economy. So, as our leaders congratulate themselves for saving the nation, the reality is that they may have just sold it down the river.
If you cannot view the above video; please go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy4hKG1A0T8
Via WorldNetDaily by David Kupelian
Here’s the plan in a nutshell: Out of the current $14.3 trillion federal debt we keep hearing is rapidly approaching the congressionally approved borrowing limit, over $1.6 trillion of that sum is money you and I “owe” to the Federal Reserve, in the form of bonds the Fed bought from the U.S. Treasury over the last couple of years in implementing its controversial “quantitative easing” policy.
Paul, chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and arguably more knowledgeable about monetary policy than any other member of Congress, says just don’t pay it back, because it’s not a real debt.
Here’s how Time magazine senior writer Stephen Gandel explains the Paul plan you’ve never heard of:
Paul’s plan starts with the Federal Reserve. In the last year or two the Fed has been buying up U.S. Treasury bonds in an effort to lower interest rates and boost the economy. The most recent round of that buying has been dubbed QE2, and has come under a good deal of criticism, though most economists agree that it was a generally helpful policy. The result is that the Fed now holds nearly $1.7 trillion in U.S. debt. But that is really phony debt. The Treasury pays the interest on the debt on behalf of the U.S. government to the Fed, which in turn returns 90 percent of the payments it gets back to the Treasury. Nonetheless, that $1.7 trillion in U.S. bonds that the Fed owns, despite the shell game of payments, is still counted in the debt ceiling number, which caps that amount of total federal debt at $14.3 trillion.
Paul’s plan: Get the Fed and the Treasury to rip up that debt. It’s fake debt anyway. And the Fed is legally allowed to return the debt to the Treasury to be destroyed. A trillion and a half dollars is currently about what spending is expected to exceed tax revenue in 2011.
So, dissolving the phony debt the government (remember, that means you and me) “owes” the Federal Reserve would cover all our government’s expenses, when added to expected tax revenues, for the rest of the year.
Read more: Why are we ignoring simple, painless debt solution? http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=327389#ixzz1TVieNpTd
tags: debt solution, debt crisis, ron paul, worldnetdaily, federal reserve cartel, debt, phony debt, phony money, paper money, david kupelian, wnd.
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