Imagine that, Current TV paints Keith Olberman as an "ego-maniacal jerk". Who would have thunk it.

Thursday the new unemployment number was announced - a drop from 8.3% to 8.2%. Unfortunately, that's not a sign of an economy going in the right direction since it only counts those still eligible for unemployment benefits and looking for work. The real number that should concern Americans is the 87,897,000 dropped from the unemployment numbers who are still unemployed but no longer counted. Roughly only 64% of the labor force is now counted in determining the unemployment number; so of course, as the labor force number goes down, so does unemployment numbers. But those without jobs, not producing, and those under employed (either by working less than the desired 40 hours per week or working in jobs far below their skill level)are also not counted as unemployed.

The Department of Energy under the Obama Administration has made so many bad loans to "green" technology companies, that it's getting hard to remember them all. Solyndra probably made the biggest headlines, there there were many more and US Taxpayers paid for them all.

Today we learn of yet another: ECOtality. This company was given $115 million in stimulus funds to build 114,000 battery charging stations in 18 cities. Obama touting ECOtality in his State of the Union Speech as being a success story.

ECOtality continues to receive DOE grants.

. In the first six months of 2011, the company reported a net loss of more than $12 million, according to its 10Q. More than half of its income during that period came from its Energy Department grants.

So far, ECOtality has only built around 3,000 battery charging stations. Worse yet, they are reporting a net loss of more than $10 million AND even more concerning, ECOtality is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission!

Should Steven Chu, head of the DOE really keep shoveling US taxpayers' money out the door to companies like this? Has the DOE made any good loans or grants?