Obama pushes jobs plan in Silicon Valley

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Inviting questions, President Barack Obama got one he was happy to answer.

"Would you please raise my taxes?" one man asked the president at a town hall here yesterday, hosted by the social networking company LinkedIn.

The questioner described himself as unemployed by choice after succeeding at a search-engine startup company that did "quite well" -- he was identified later as former Google executive Doug Edwards -- and said he wants the nation to spend more on education, infrastructure and job training.

That gave Obama a chance to promote his nearly $450 billion jobs plan that would be paid for in part by higher taxes opposed by Republicans but not, evidently, by some of Silicon Valley's wealthiest.

"I appreciate the fact that you recognize that we're in this thing together. We're not on our own," Obama said. "Those of us who have been successful, we've always got to remember that."

He spoke midway through a three-state Western swing built largely around fundraising for himself and other Democrats.

Obama said he did not want to punish the rich, but rather to return income tax rates to the level of the 1990s that he said were fair. "During that period, the rich got richer," the president said. "The middle class expanded. People rose out of poverty."

Edwards, former director of consumer marketing and brand management for Google, encouraged Obama to "stay strong" in his push for higher taxes on the wealthy.

-- AP