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LANSING, Mich.—The stimulus doesn't come with an instruction manual. When both receiving and applying for money from the federal government, all 50 states are left wondering: How should we keep track of where all the money is going? What are the criteria to apply for more money? How should we calculate the number of jobs we've created or saved? How should we decide whether this thing is working?

These are the central questions of the stimulus, yet the feds only send advice, not answers. And if the feds don't know the answers to these questions, then who does...

LANSING, Mich.—It should be said up top: I have found a stimulus project that has not created a single job. Nor has it saved any. Twenty-thousand dollars have gone to the Lansing chapter of Volunteers of America to restock their food kitchen, and according to the Obama administration’s rubric, it should be a failure of a stimulus project. The $20,000 comes from FEMA via the United Way, and it has gone toward buying more goods for the food pantry here, where they've served 85,439 meals this year, a 9 percent increase from last year. Next year, they’re aiming to serve 100,000 meals.