D.C.’s Billionaire: Rents, restaurant tabs, and upper-income taxes may be rising. But new annual figures from Forbes suggest that the District may still be suffering from a dangerous dearth of rich people: Of the 12 area billionaires on the magazine’s list of richest Americans, only one—manufacturing and tech tycoon Steven Rales, who’s worth $2.7 billion—actually lives in the District, according to Washington Business Journal. -1

Pay Up, Foreigners! Oh, diplomats. You give us lowly locals so many rituals to gawk at: The national-day balls. The White House credentials ceremonies. And, of course, the tick-tock of stories about your parking-ticket woes. The latest? WTOP reports that foreign envoys owe some $340,037 in tickets, dating back to the 1970s. That doesn’t include late fees. Russia is the biggest scofflaw, with a $27,200 bill for 892 tickets. The Vatican, meanwhile owes $25 for one single expired-meter ticket. -1

Jack Evans, Bad Boy: Sure, Jack Evans may seem like the square, conservative Georgetowner on the D.C. Council. But to locals who expect the Washington Post to read like a family newspaper, he’s now officially a linguistic bad boy. As of this morning, Evans’ coarse dismissal of a tax-hike argument by his earnest colleague Phil Mendelson represented the only time the word “bullshit” had appeared in the city’s newspaper of record in all of 2011. And that’s no B.S. +3

Twitter, Meet Bureaucracy: There was a tense back-and-forth between reporters and Mayor Vince Gray today on the subject of transparency. Gray’s administration, which came into office promising to be more accessible than his predecessor, has lately irked the press—and assorted social-media types—by encrypting police radios and clamping down on the popular @dcfireems Twitter feed. Gray’s team says misinformation could be dangerous, so they’ll now run tweets past a P.R. aide before posting them. -2

Yesterday’s Needle rating: 63 Today’s score: -2 Today’s Needle rating: 61