On February 13, 2010, the management at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine ordered an electrician to disable a methane alarm that kept going off, according to NPR. This is the equivalent of being annoyed that your fire alarm is going off, so you turn it off; then your house burns down and kills you and almost everyone inside.

The drumbeat has already started: We can’t afford to indict BP because it would cause a lot of harm to employees and shareholders. The Obama Administration has demonstrated its acceptance of this mindless mantra, and we shouldn’t hope to win real sanctions against this rapacious company. But what are the consequences for the employees of BP who created the mess? “The New York Times” reports that criminal indictments aren’t likely against employees, except at very low levels. That seems odd.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion was not a tragic unavoidable accident, it was an inevitable consequence of weak regulation coupled with corporate corner-cutting and greed.