On the jobs

President Obama is leading a toast while dining with Silicon Valley's tech moguls -- including Apple's Steve Jobs -- in a photo released by the White House yesterday.

To Obama's left is Jobs, wearing his trademark black turtleneck.

Jobs has taken a leave of absence from Apple to deal with health issues. Of the 15 honchos seated around the table, Jobs is the only one who didn't lift his elbow off the table for the toast.

Mark Zuckerberg is seated to the right of Obama in the Silicon Valley fete.

The Facebook wunderkind ditched his hoodie, T-shirt and jeans for a starched white dress shirt and suit.

At one end of the table is Google's Eric Schmidt, and at the other end is Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo.

Costolo was hush-hush about the event. He didn't tweet about the two-hour Thursday night dinner hosted by Silicon Valley tech investor John Doerr.

Stanford University President John Hennessy, another dinner guest, also kept mum about what transpired.

But he called it "a good meeting with a frank and vigorous exchange of opinions focused on innovation and economic growth, including topics such as the nation's investment in research and education, high-skill visa reform, and educating more engineers and scientists."

Other than the release of the photos, the White House did not divulge many details about the event.

Press photographers were banned from taking photos. That prompted some news agencies to refuse to distribute the White House photos in protest.

Obama felt at home. Eight of the tech honchos were major campaign contributors to the president or the Democratic Party.

"The president specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research, and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

One source involved in arranging the meeting said the tech moguls applauded Obama's funding of science and technology programs and research and development. But they also pushed the president to back corporate tax reform, including lowering taxes on profit generated overseas.

"I was honored to be part of the discussion with President Obama and Silicon Valley business leaders. Government and private industry must work hand-in-hand to spur innovation, strengthen our economy, and get Americans back to work," John Chambers chairman and CEO of Cisco, who sat across the table from the commander-in-chief, said in a statement.

Many of the attendees are members of TechNet, an advocacy group for high-tech CEOs.

(source:nypost.com)