South Carolina's Republican governor, Mark Sanford, just said no yesterday to stimulus funding, saying it signaled a Zimbabwe-esque economic decline. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., the majority whip, urged state legislators to circumvent Sanford.

Even as Democratic lawmakers in Washington backed away from the idea of a second stimulus, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the Republican whip, said his door was open -- assuming the next bill includes lots of tax cuts.

Grants.gov, the main marketplace for federal grants, may not be up to the task of managing the stimulus's added workflow. Peter Orszag, the Office of Management and Budget director, expects a 60-percent increase in traffic at the site, and ordered an immediate review of all money-giving computer systems.

Project of the day: A weekend electrical outage prompted University of Illinois' Urbana campus to ask for a new stimulus-powered power plant.

Federal agencies began sending their initial reports to the Office of Management and Budget last week, and the White House posted them on the official stimulus Web site, Recovery.gov, yesterday.

For a Web site with the stated goal of allowing "citizens to hold the government accountable for every dollar spent," there's not a lot of information there. The agencies aren't required to report financial data until April 6, and in the meantime, the reports seem relegated to general pronouncements about "major actions," stripped of most specifics. Take a look for yourself here.

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A week after Google promised to investigate suspect ads for a stimulus grant program that does not exist, it is still posting them – including to this reporter’s Gmail account.

As we noted last week, Eileen Harrington, acting director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, warned of unscrupulous Web sites offering to help consumers get large cash grants from the recently passed stimulus bill.

The sites, she said, typically ask for credit card information to pay a few-dollar fee—and then enroll consumers in a number of pricey recurring Web site memberships, which they must opt out of to avoid paying additional hundreds of dollars per year. The practice, officially known as a "deceptive, negative option offer" is misleading and illegal, said the FTC’s Harrington.

Facebook, also at the FTC’s press conference, said it yanked the ads almost immediately, tipped off by its "thumbs up, thumbs down" feature which allows users to flag ads they consider objectionable.

Google, on the other hand, was more circumspect.

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The stimulus could go global, if Obama administration officials succeed in a pitch to foreign finance ministers at this weekend's G-20 meeting. The Wall Street Journal points out the hyper-local version of stimulus, too, with municipalities like Carrollton, Texas, drawing on budget surpluses to hire workers to paint fire hydrants and do other odd jobs.

Meanwhile, economists and congressmen are brewing doubts in Washington. Mark Zandi, the Moody's economist behind many of the job-creation projections (PDF) Congress tossed around while shaping the stimulus bill told legislators yesterday that the package would create only 2.5 million jobs, fewer than previously guesstimated. (Last month, we detailed how the administration's job numbers were based on guesswork.) Some Democrats on the Hill are getting antsy about whether their constituents will feel the benefits of recovery spending before the next election, only 19 months away. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested a possible solution to both problems: another stimulus!

Project of the day: As we reported earlier, a Montana liquor warehouse will be getting new skylights as part of a state-wide energy conservation program. (Don't laugh, it might save the state money in the long-term.)