The ability of Americans to innovate

I wonder how Obama's trust in the ability of Americans to innovate to solve the big problems we face now, can become expressed.

Could it be that he does not understand that corporations have been methodically controlling expression of innovation, through their otherwise-inexplicable wrongful use of their "Employment Agreements" required for a technical person to get a job? The "employment agreement" cedes all technical ideas an employee spontaneously has while in the employment of the corporation, regardless whether or not the idea was related to the job the person was assigned to do, or even in the field of interest of the corporation; and since the corporations have their pre-existing business agenda they are not willing nor able to make available those ideas to the public in the form of products the public can buy and use. Yet the corporation claims ownership of them and thus blocks anyone else from producing products based on those ideas their employees spontaneously create. Thus over the past decades the corporations have locked up nearly all American innovation, since nearly every technically inclined person has to work for some business, typically a corporation. Even in states which have passed laws forbidding this corporate practice, such as California, the corporations ignore those laws, pointing out the employee will have to fight the corporation in court to prove it... and employees don't want to lose their jobs nor have urge for court battles, thus the ideas are dead.

America is now faced with the legacy of this cunning practice by the businessmen who own and run typical corporations; and employees have long ago learned to not bother submitting such ideas to employers; because of the urge to control, the corporations will merely grab and bury the ideas calling them their business territory, thus killing the products that could have been created somewhere as a result of those ideas.

So how is Obama going to get around this massive long-emplaced intentional sabotage of American ingenuity, the ability to innovate?

Focusing on lessons I still have not been able to learn

In my later years I seem to be focusing on lessons I still have not been able to learn well, such as "horses to water" and "casting your pearls": "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" (unless they understand the difficult journey ahead, they are not interested in taking action to prepare for it); and "Cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample them beneath their feet and turn to rend you" (Swine do not recognize pearls as valuable, they look like mere pebbles; and they were looking for you to cast grains of corn for them, how dare you give them pebbles instead! Teach you a lesson, take that!)

A comment re the coal provision in the energy bill

Electrical power is essential to America. Coal is a home-source for such energy; far better than buying from offshore sources for mere oil to burn and is gone but our hard-to-pay debt for it remains. Coal sourced electrical power seems necessary as a desperate form of energy while we have massive wind and solar sourcing projects started and completed; but coal is not a substitute; it is imperiling the world environment and should be done only while waiting for direct solar sourced energy is being created. The risk is that coal business profit interests may secure their long-term income source at the expense of the nation's alternative energy system's creation.