Sim card trick *sorta* worked, it was still 100% utilization upon restarting but now for the moment seems to be leveling off.
This morning was getting 100% utilization while idle. Was finding the sync icon was appearing a LOT, so I turned of automatic syncing, but that didn't seem to do much (still getting a lot of sync notifications appearing).
USB Debugging had no effect whatsoever.
2.2 with the Legend on Virgin Mobile.