The high price of rice and spice: whose fault?

Sometimes, one is so desperate to come up with blame-shifting spin, one misses glaring fallacies in reasoning.

At Malacañang’s media briefing last Thursday, Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma blamed the present surge in rice, garlic and other food prices on the purportedly successful crackdown on contraband. With less untaxed imports, he argued, food prices soared.