State-by-state prevalence of households and adults with cell phones only, according to estimates released Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ordered from highest to lowest prevalence of cell-only households.

Estimates subject to some error because of survey sampling and design of the estimation model; the range of potential error varies by state.

Oklahoma: 26.2 percent of households, 25.1 percent of adults

Utah: 25.5 percent of households, 23.9 percent of adults

Nebraska: 23.2 percent of households, 22.4 percent of adults

Courtesy AP

What better way to spend those hard-earned tax dollars?

More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in earmarks from a $410 billion federal spending package is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys.

The bill includes $5.8 million for the planning and design of a building to house a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The funding may also help support an endowment for the institute.

The bill also includes $22 million to expand facilities at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum and $5 million more for a new gateway to the Boston Harbor Islands on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a park system in downtown Boston named after Kennedy’s mother and built on land opened up by the Big Dig highway project.

The billions in earmarks in the federal spending bill have been a source of contention.President Barack Obama signed the bill which he described as imperfect. He said it must signal an “end to the old way of doing business.”

Critics led by Republican Sen. John McCain have denounced the 8,000 pet projects contained in the bill as pork.

Somehow they missed the Chappaquiddick Memorial.

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates regained the title of world’s richest person on Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of billionaires worldwide, as the global recession slashed the size of the list by 30 percent.

The number of billionaires fell to 793 from 1,125 last year. It was the first time since 2003 that the number of people on the list decreased, and the biggest drop since the magazine began the ranking 23 years ago.

The total net worth of the list fell to $2.4 trillion from $4.4 trillion last year, with the average billionaire worth $3 billion, down from $3.9 billion. The three wealthiest — Gates, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett and Mexican telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim Helu — lost a combined $68 billion in the past year.

“The global economy’s being battered by a financial hurricane that has wrought devastating damage on the world’s financial systems,” Forbes Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Forbes said in a press conference in Manhattan today. “It’s no surprise that billionaires have been battered along with the global economy.”

Thanks to Ian Warner.

Pelosi Made Repeated Requests for Military Aircraft, Documents Show – FOXNews.com — Heaven forbid she does not at least try to show some restraint in bad economic times.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly requested military aircraft to shuttle her and her colleagues and family around the country, according to a new report from a conservative watchdog group.

Representatives for Judicial Watch, which obtained e-mails and other documents from a Freedom of Information request, said the correspondence shows Pelosi has abused the system in place to accommodate congressional leaders and treated the Air Force as her “personal airline.”

Pelosi’s office disputed the claim, pointing to White House policy enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks allowing for the House speaker to travel to his or her congressional district via military aircraft whenever possible for security reasons. Her office said she typically uses the same kind of aircraft used by her predecessor, Dennis Hastert.

But Judicial Watch said that Pelosi was notorious for making special demands for high-end aircraft, lodging last-minute cancellations and racking up additional expenses for the military.

Found by Joe Carlson.

Illustration by Linda Eddy.