Roswell Daily Record THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
Vol. 123, No. 23 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
January 26, 2014
Obama to focus on economic opportunity
WASHINGTON (AP) — Struggling to generate second-term momentum, President Barack Obama will use Tuesday’s State of the Union address to announce new executive actions on job training and retirement security, while prodding a divided Congress to work harder on expanding economic mobility for middle class Americans. Obama’s broad themes — described by the White House as opportunity, action, and optimism —
www.rdrnews.com
may find some support among Republicans, who also have picked up the inequality mantle in recent months. But as Congress barrels toward the midterm elections, there’s little indication the president will win over the GOP with his legislative policy prescriptions, including a renewed push to increase the minimum wage and expand access to early childhood education. With its grand traditions and huge prime-time televi-
sion audience, the State of the Union offers Obama an opportunity to start fresh after a year where his legislative agenda stalled, his signature health care law floundered and his approval rating tumbled. The president has cast 2014 as a “year of action” but has yet to show the public how he’ll ensure that’s more than just an empty promise. Previewing the president’s remarks, White House spokesman Jay Car-
ney said, “He’ll certainly aim high. Presidents ought to aim high.”
Obama has been tinkering with the speech in his typical fashion, writing out notes long-hand on yellow legal pads and scribbling edits on drafts typed out by his speechwriting team. The White House has heavily promoted the address on social media sites like Instagram, posting photos of Obama working in the Oval Of fice with lead speechwriter Cody Keenan.
SUNDAY
Aides are also working on an interactive version of the speech that will run online and feature charts and statistics about the president’s proposals as he’s speaking. While each of Obama’s speeches to Congress has centered on the economy, the challenges have changed as the nation has moved away from the deep recession. Corporate profits and the financial markets have reached record highs, but many Americans are grappling with long-term
unemployment and stagnant salaries. Obama has struggled to gain traction on Capitol Hill for many of the economic initiatives he supports, including reinstating unemployment insurance for more than one million Americans who have been out of work for a long period of time. With that in mind, White House officials say the president’s speech will include announce-
Helping to heal
See OBAMA, Page A3
Arapahoe High group encourages Berrendo students to ‘find joy’ TESS TOWNSEND RECORD STAFF WRITER
Mark Wilson Photo
Visitors file into Pearson Auditorium for the Stand Together, Heal as One program as students from Arapahoe High School in Colorado paid a visit to console students from Berrendo Middle School, Saturday.
A group of students from Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo. visited with Berrendo Middle School students and families Saturday to offer support following the Jan. 14 shooting at the middle school. Arapahoe saw its own school shooting Dec. 13, when senior Karl Pierson shot student Claire Davis and killed her, before turning the gun on himself. The 15 Colorado teenagers who came together on the stage of Pearson Auditorium provided Berrendo students with advice for getting
through the trauma of a campus shooting. “In order to find healing and to find a new normal, you have to find joy,” Arapahoe student David Courtney told the audience. The high schoolers advised Berrendo students to look to their families, school and community for support. They told them to express their emotions however they felt best, whether it be crying, writing or something else. They also encouraged them to consider daily routines as a form of catharsis and way to return to nor-
Specialist seeks Hagel seeks root of nuke problems to preserve green spaces in drought
LAS CRUCES (AP) — A cooperative extension specialist at New Mexico State University is looking for ways to preserve green spaces in places where water is scarce. The research focuses on water conservation, said Bernd Leinauer, who has been studying turf grass and water conservation for 13 years. “We are focusing on water preservation in the landscape,” he told KRWGTV. “We need water to grow plants in the desert, but
when water is used for aesthetics instead of food, for example, it becomes questionable. So, how much water can we af ford to use?”
So far, Leinauer has found that about 50 percent of potable water used during the summer in Las Cruces goes to irrigate landscaping and that percentage is not uncommon in other cities in the desert Southwest. See GREEN, Page A3
WASHINGTON (AP) — In taking a deep look at trouble inside U.S. nuclear forces, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is searching for the root causes of recent Air Force missteps but also for ways to make the nuclear warrior’s job more attractive at a time when the military has turned its attention away from such weapons. Nuclear missile duty has lost its luster in an era dominated by other security threats. It’s rarely the career path of first choice for young officers. And yet Hagel and others say it remains important to U.S. national security. On Friday he put the magnitude of the Air Force’s nuclear responsibil-
ities in stark terms, quoting President John F. Kennedy who said in 1963 that nuclear airmen “hold in their hands the most awesome destructive power that any nation or any man has ever conceived.” And so it is worrisome, Hagel said, to realize that some of those same airmen may use drugs, cheat on their proficiency tests and have engaged in other dangerous misbehaviors.
The Associated Press in 2013 exposed a number of serious missteps in the nuclear missile force, including training gaps, leadership lapses, inspection failures, deliberate violations of security rules and elevated levels of domestic violence and other miscon-
duct. Hagel now wants to know what ails the force. “We know that something is wrong,” he said, and it includes what some call an attitude problem inside the force. Dissatisfaction among the officers responsible for operating intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, is not new, but it appears to be grabbing the attention of more senior Pentagon leaders, including Hagel and Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, who was sworn in Friday as the service’s top civilian official. “Recent allegations regarding our ICBM force raise legitimate questions about (the Pentagon’s) stewardship of one of our
See HEALING, Page A3
most sensitive and important missions,” Hagel said Friday at the swearing-in ceremony for James, who has been on the job for four weeks and is only the second woman to lead the Air Force. “Restoring confidence in the nuclear mission will be a top priority,” he added. One repair tool that James and Hagel might choose is incentive pay or other extra benefits for the young officers who do as many as eight 24-hour shifts per month in the underground command bunkers from which they would execute any presidential order to launch a nuclear-tipped Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM.
Marita De La Pena: The Deadly Tarantula Girl of Roswell TESS TOWNSEND RECORD STAFF WRITER
Don’t be surprised if you recognize her — she’s a woman of many hats. Roswell resident Marita De La Pena belly dances. She keeps snakes. Sometimes, she belly dances with snakes. She teaches special education at Sierra Middle School. She teaches dance at the AscenDance studio. She and her husband, J.D. Lorbiecke, have five children, a full-time job in itself. Are you winded, yet?
We’re just getting started. De La Pena, 32, starts her day at 4:30 or 5 a.m. and takes an hour of “me time” before getting her husband and children up at 6 a.m. She works at Sierra until 3:30 p.m., runs errands after work until about 5 p.m., eats a quick dinner, goes to the gym or to the dance studio, then ends her day working in the zoo until about 11 p.m. De La Pena and Lorbiecke indeed own a zoo, where they house a variety of reptile and inverte-
HIGH 70 LOW 33
TODAY’S FORECAST
brates, most of them tarantulas and snakes. The couple shares a unique passion for animals. In addition to reptiles, De La Pena’s family has pet dogs and used to care for a goat. “There’s a lot of beautiful stuff out there,” says De La Pena. The zoo has a YouTube channel, Deadly Tarantula Girl. The show is aimed at educating the public about the beautiful creepycrawlies of the world while also teaching viewers about animal conservation and safety around poten-
tially dangerous species. The deadly tarantula girl herself is particularly concer ned with how venomous species are portrayed in mainstream media. “Our country kind of thrives on the scary things, the dangerous things, the evil things; so things are kind of blown out of proportion,” she
says. She says that most venomous species won’t attack humans and many don’t have enough venom to kill a human victim. The way to handle such critters when encountered is to use caution, she says. With a rattle snake, for example, it is best to
See DE LA PENA, Page A3
TODAY’S OBITUARIES PAGE A8 & A9 • CHARLDEAN TALNACK • JEFFERY SCOTT PARKER • JAMES LON BEATTY • ELIZABETH MARTINEZ “GRANDAD” • LORA CARPENTER • PABLO “PAUL” MARQUEZ • MABEL BUTTS • HELEN VIVIAN KEOHANE RODRIGUEZ
Courtesy Photo
INDEX CLASSIFIEDS ..........B1 LOTTERIES .............A2 COMICS .................B9 OPINION .................A4 GENERAL ...............A2 SPORTS .................B1 HOROSCOPES .........B6 WEATHER ..............A8